Round 1 of the breakaway world championships.
The course is shortened by about 30km because of the ongoing heat wave.
Fast and friendly: there are no slow days on the Tour de France any more but this was still a majestic day to watch from the sofa and enjoy the scenery and heritage roll past while pondering the best way to stay cool. Hide in one of the many limestone caves? Sit in the shade on the banks of the Dordogne or Vézère? Cold slices of flan and clafoutis? None of the riders had it so easy in the heat but plenty were able to lurk at the back for a long time.
There was sport and early breakaway rider Liam Slock dropped two companions and had a minute’s lead with 10km. Chapatte’s Law got repealed long ago but it set up suspense to rouse some from their Saturday sieste.
Merlier was again the quickest in the finishing straight. Roughly 15th place going into the last corner with 500m to go, he launched with about 400m to go. He was 10th with 200m was 10th and, benefitting from their slipstreams, overtaking riders like they were queuing traffic before getting on terms with Jasper Philipsen, Olav Kooij and having the reserves left to kick past. If you haven’t seen the overhead footage, it’s on Youtube.
Two sprint wins for a rider who is the opposite of the sprinter stereotype as someone with little ego; there’s even talk he could willing become Paul Magnier’s lead-out when age catches up and he accepts someone else is faster.
It’s notable that Merlier won and the other places went to Girmay, Kooij and Philipsen, they seem reliably ahead of the rest. Merlier’s 70 point win puts him 15 points short of Mads Pedersen… but advantage Pedersen for the coming days again.
The Route: 155km reduced from 185km because the red weather alert in the Corrèze department. The map shows the new route.
This is not a mountain stage but a hard day out. With the course skipping some scenic villages and small roads, the intermediate sprint comes earlier but it’s still on a climb to Beynat with 2km at 5% to the sprint so advantage Pedersen.
The official climb of Naves is followed by a very similar but unmarked climb.
The Suc au May featured in the 2020 Tour, it’s where Marc Hirschi rode away for the stage win. It’s 3km at 10%. The descent starts on a small road then picks up something bigger for most of the way down.
The Côte de la Croix du Pey is 95% of the Col de Lestards and while listed as 4.8km long, it’s a question of measurement as its starts climbing out of Treignac 8km before the top. Midway there’s a good 2.5km at 7-9%. This makes it a key moment in the stage, a place for stronger climbers to exploit.
Mont Bessou used to be a fixture for the Tour du Limousin every August and here it’s a main road and a drag with a small kick to the mountains point.
After the descent into Meymac and out there’s an unmarked climb that stings, 2km at 5% with some 10%. These days no riders are surprised as the whole course is mapped but it’s still got to be cleared and a chance for anyone unsure of their sprint to jump.
From here on there’s 14km, including a big road that connects the A89 autoroute to the Ussel.
The Finish: with 1km to go the route crosses a bridge over the Diège river. From here it climbs up at 5% before easing to the line.
The Contenders: a big day for the breakaway and plenty of teams will have been studying this day more than the Alpe d’Huez stage as it’s open to plenty. Climbs like the Suc-au-Mey and Croix-de-Pey will entice some climbers while the amount of long drags and the final kilometres will appeal to many others.
Quinn Simmons, Mads Pedersen and Mathias Vacek (Lidl-Trek) are all candidates for the stage, the only issue is whether Simmons and Vacek go all in for Pedersen again to sustain his green jersey bid or if they get room for themselves; Vacek could even take yellow if he’s in a move that gets eight minutes.
When the route was unveiled this looked like a stage for Ben Healy (EF) but is the form there? He was one of several sat on the back of the peloton during Stage 8 to save energy. As ever even he has said he can’t sprint so will want to go solo. Georg Steinhauser and Michael Valgren bring more options, Richard Carapaz even more.
15th on GC, Tom Pidcock (Pinarello-Q36.5) is stage hunting and ought to be ideal here but he is also nursing a saddle sore.
Movistar pairing Raul Garcia Pierna and Pablo Castrillo get hillier roads to suit after featuring on the stage to Foix.
Luke Plapp (Jayco) is suited to this course but a rare winner, Michael Matthews has a shot if he can cope with the climbing.
The headline writer’s pick should be Marco Frigo (NSN) as his family name means refrigerator in French.
Now to outsiders. Do Alpecin-Premiertech reach for Mathieu van der Poel? It’s hilly for him in the heat and he’s not looking imperial. But if not today, it’s Stage 17 or Paris.
Romain Grégoire (Groupama-FDJ) gets terrain to suit but he’s been wilting in the heat of late so not an easy pick and is even saying he wants to sit things out and get to the rest day; team mate Clément Braz-Afonso is the local rider but he’ll find it hard to win.
Jonas Abrahamsen (Uno-X) is a breakaway specialist but this is a hilly day, it might explain why he was on the move yesterday. Team mate Anthon Charmig is more suited but his Aura Tour stage win is big for him already.
The route suits Julian Alaphilippe (Tudor) but he’s 34 and lost his sizzle; he’s had health and form issues this season so it was a surprise he was selected even. Still he won a Giro stage last year thanks a longer raid.
Can UAE spare any riders? Tim Wellens is an outsider. Arguably Visma-LAB need to try this tactic more, we might see Victor Campenaerts.
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Carapaz, Simmons, Vacek |
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Healy, Plapp, Aranburu, Garcia Pierna, Pidcock, Van Eetvelt, Frigo, Debruyne, Van der Poel, Pedersen |
Weather: sunshine and up to 38°C at the start but with altitude and woodland later things should be cooler after. A 5-10km/h breeze will blow from the east.
TV: KM0 is at 1.45pm and the finish is forecast for 5.40pm CEST.
Slightly off topic, but the mention of Marc Hirschi rekindled memories of just how good he was in 2020. He’s not been terrible since then, but never reached the same heights. Any thoughts on why? An anomaly amidst the COVID disruption? Motivation dampened by a big contract? I suspected him to be the next Gilbert or Alaphilippe but it hasn’t panned out that way.
Hirschi had stellar results in 23 and 24, but after leaving UAE he never really showed same quality.
He hit the heights again in late 2024 with a lot of one day wins
Was never the same after that “misunderstanding” at DSM….funny how that happens🤷♂️
Was never the same after the “misunderstanding” with DSM….funny how that happens🤷♂️
Thanks for the YT link, some sprint by Merlier
7k to the intermediate sprint?! Mads is going to have a hard time winning that.
It’s about 14km now. But uphill. He might have preferred the original version with the chance to get in the breakaway and win from there. Now it’ll probably part of the breakaway race.
Just learned that unusual lack of gc teams in the sprint stages finales is deliberate. Apparently Jonas suggested it and so far every gc team backs off after 5km to go.
Very nice.
Well, Wout isn’t there…
Yes, there’s an informal pact.
Looking forward to a tussle in Ussel on what seems to be one of the more open days of this year’s Tour. Don’t see why the Lidl-Trek threesome of Simmons, Vacek and Pedrsen won’t work together and see what they can get. Its a question of who plans to stop them. I suspect the constant heat has some of the guys just wanting to get through to a day off.
The heat is getting to plenty of riders. A month ago today would have been perfect for Romain Grégoire but he’s been fried. Tom Pidcock is having his struggles. The same for many others who are looking forward to the rest day in Aurillac, semi-famous in France as the coldest place in France on TV weather bulletins… but it’ll be 36°C for the rest day and 39°C when they resume racing.
Someone needs to invent a bike with integrated cooling. Something more complex than ice socks and bidons of water.
I think that will be hard, because compressors and heat exchangers are bulky and heavy and take a lot of energy to run, so you need big battery too.
I can see someone developing a kind of cooling vest that can get store a lot of cold, but releases that cold slowly to its surface over several hours, so you keep wearing during a race to lower your come temperature. If it is really hot, it might be worth the extra weight and loss of aero. But I suspect than when you look into the physics it, the ice socks and dousing yourself in water are surprisingly efficient ways of cooling. The heat energy needed to melt ice and evaporate water are enormous; hard to beat that cooling effect.
On today riders: I remember Wellens as another rider who is not good in heat, although that might just have been pollen allergies.
Yeah, doing the hard work of freezing off the bike and then handing ice to the riders from the car makes a lot more sense. A slow melting cooling vest is possible of course but you need mass to store heat, so only viable on a pan flat stage and even then…. Solar powered thermoelectric cooler vest, it’s not impossible but more something for an unsupported desert bikepacking trip than a bike race like the Tour.
Any sign of the heat breaking?
Storms due across the SW from Tuesday night with more ‘normal’ temperatures forecast.
Technically still in canicule (heatwave) which is defined as 3 consecutive days of min >20c and max>30c but a lot cooler than the extremes of the first week.
Good to hear. Hope everyone over there is coping ok. Unrelenting heat can be horrible
Yes, later next week the temperature should drop to 30°C or even 28°C… but with this some thunderstorms and rain showers are expected and so high humidity levels are possible too which can be uncomfortable for racing.
Once the rain has passed the temperatures will go back up but the forecast is getting a long way out and hard to be accurate for the week after next.
Seriously warm yesterday so opted out of our local stage – besides more or less the one raced a few years back (2020). Much more pleasant (cooler) to watch local roads ridden indoors. Scenically fabulous from the air. No surprise today’s shortened. Suc au May tougher than it looks + paragliders jump from the top too. Off the the Alps end of next week… cooler there? Hoping so.
Hopefully the weather cools off, as otherwise next weekend and the ITT will be carnage.
Big break today maybe with a select few at the finish.
Malemort translates in my extremely limited knowledge of French to Bad Death. Ussel is Norwegian for lousy. Thank you for your attention to this matter.
England were Ussel but somehow managed to beat Norway but if we come up against France in the final it will surely be Malemort.
Any thoughts on Vauquelin and Van Gils today?
Vauquelin was ill at the Aura Tour and despite punctures spoiling things, the form isn’t great either, eg see the breakaway to Foix where he could make the break but struggled to make moves. He has a chance today; the list was getting long already and team mate Foss could be a contender today but not a regular winner.
Van Gils came to mind as a contender but hard to pick because he might be on team duty and so sits out the action but having said UAE and Visma might try, it’d be good if he does too.
I was concerned by the comment made by Rob Hatch on TNT (and seconded by Jonathan Vaughters) that UAE’s (ordinarily incomprehensible) tactics were there to let the riders in the break away “cook” as their team cars could not get to them to get them bottles and they only had access to water from the neutral service car.
What would have happened if one or more of those riders had keeled over with heatstroke? What would ASO and the UCI have done afterwards? If this is indeed the case, this is a pretty despicable “tactic” from UAE. Is there anything in the UCI rulebook to deal with this situation? Though I can see it would be hard to police. Perhaps one of more of the media should raise this with the teams in the rest day.
The team cars were often up there for the breakaway that did form as the gap was over a minute for most of the time.
To take advantage of the situation to deprive the rivals of nutrition is a classic. When you could only grab food at feed zones, Cyrille Guimard’s teams would attack precisely there, forcing rivals to choorse between chasing or eating. It caused great disruption (and hunger knocks) and great racing. That’s why I disagree with allowing cars to feed the riders.
I don’t really know much about Vaughters, but I wonder how reliable his view of this is as a manager of a rival (ish?) team.
I heard the same remark and about 20 seconds later the EF rider in the break–Baudin?– was getting food and ice from the team car…
You consider Rob Hatch reliable? Heavens. Curiously, I heard no mention of this ‘tactic’ via the France 2 commentating team. If any team used that as a ‘tactic’ given the heat we have here at the moment, we’d have seen red cards being issued left right and centre. I think Hatch’s imagination ran away with him and/or he’s into conspiracy theories. Besides, the break was being serviced by the water carrying motos the entire time and we could all see that.
The one bit I did find incomprehensible was… why were Ineos riding?
Two reasons for Ineos: at first because two GC contenders were up the road and they wanted to defend Bernal’s position, this was an early order passed over their radio from the team car to the riders; then later once they were close as Ganna had a chance at the win. Perhaps if Bernal had joined in the chase with a couple of short turns in the finish it could have made the difference? More so if Lidl-Trek had all got involved too for Pedersen.
Thanks. I hadn’t caught the team order radio call. I expect we’ll see whether Bernal has legs or not in the next few days.
I think it was actually Declan (last name?) who was commentating with Vaughters at the time. Vaughters, as I recall, proposed the idea, and his fellow commentator said, roughly, “really, that’s a strategy?” or something to that effect. Whatever the case, it seemed incorrect given that the cars were there, etc.
I wonder if the win by MvdP has made the tension with Philipsen in the team bus better or worse…??
It seems fine. Van der Poel said words to the effect of Philipsen “just don’t have the legs” on French TV, adding “at the moment” and he hopes this changes but it all came across as obvious rather than acidic.