Alpe d’Huez awaits, the classic climb but this time with a more gentle approach. Can UAE keep a lid on things so that Tadej Pogačar gets a prestige win for his palmarès?
Festival des Cannes: one of the enjoyable aspects of stage races is seeing multiple races happening at the same time. One saw Mads Pedersen going in the breakaway he managed to make moves all the way to the intermediate sprint in Corps after 129km to take a valuable 25 points.
Early on Richard Carapaz and Valentin Paret-Peintre were in a different contest as they battled for the mountains points, the Frenchman picking off each sprint with a sprint that belied his waif-like build.
Later a solid move got clear but Carapaz missed it. His EF team mates Alex Baudin and Ben Healy set about correcting this and helped tow a willing counter move across to the front.
After Pedersen won the intermediate sprint Felix Engelhardt and Matteo Jorgenson floated away and then Tobias Halland Johannessen got across. Once they’d got a few metres things changed and you could see their backs hunched and elbows going in as they accelerated. Raul Garcia Pierna moved taking Mauro Schmid with him. This allowed Engelhardt to pull harder for his team mate Schmid, prising open the gap before he could do no more. Netcompany-Ineos had missed the move but while Thymen Arensman tried to chase Richard Carapaz darted past with a big counter-attack, taking Paret-Peintre with him. This left six clear with 45km to go and Ineos chasing.
Coming to the finish Garcia Pierna had been dropped but got back and looked like the weakest of the six. At times they were spread across the road to Orcières-Merlette, nobody wanting to lead, looking at each other like poker players around a table trying to second-guess who held which cards and scrutinising rivals for the slightest tell in body language.
Jorgenson looked the most likely to attack and was the first to move. He prompted a counter-attack from Richard Carapaz and Paret-Peintre dived on the Ecuadorian’s wheel. Carapaz went again and this time nobody could follow. Paret-Peintre cracked in finishing fourth missed on the points to take the polka-dot jersey for real rather than leasing it.
It’s a victory for a rider with an artistic and rebellious streak. He attacked on the Puy Mary in an attempt to slip the UAE yoke on Stage 10. And he’s not done yet.
Elsewhere Brandon McNulty abandoned the stage, another UAE rider to fall ill after Adam Yates and Tim Wellens was among those dropped early. Any team talk of Yates’s illness being an isolated affair looked questionable. Tadej Pogačar seems fine but no rivals tried a move on the final climb to test. Also a final plotline in that UAE were spared some duties when the likes of Pinarello-Q36.5, Tudor and Total chased to protect the GC standings of Tom Pidcock, Yannis Voisard and Jordan Jegat.
The Route: 128km and 3,500m of vertical gain. It’s uphill from the start out of Gap on the Col Bayard. This road’s often featured for arrivals in Gap as the climb to take before the white knuckle “Rochette” descent back into Gap. The Bayard is a big wide road.
The Col du Noyer is not, a start amid fields and woodland and then a wild feel. It’s 7.5km at 8.5% with the final 2km with 10% sections between the hairpins.
The route then crosses back across the landscapes taken on the previous stage via the Route Napoleon.
The Col d’Ornon is a quiet backroad and a gentle climb. The descent is more remarkable, rarely steep either but with more hairpins and some moments where the road is cut into the cliff. It’s “technical”, cycling’s euphemism for a dangerous descent.
The Finish: Alpe d’Huez is a tough climb, over 13km at over 8% is hard by any measures and an amphitheatre with its raucous crowds. The start is the hardest part, the ramps have double-digit gradients. It’s famous for the 21 hairpins and they count, a rider can pick their line through these bends to suit and allow someone with energy to spare to accelerate. The slope kicks up for the ramp that leads into the ski resort and from there after the slope eases. There’s a left turn onto the finish line on the Avenue du Rif Nel.
The Contenders: having given Richard Carapaz (EF) three chainrings for the previous stage and writing that even if he won he’d be tipped again, he is. Watching him race to the finish he didn’t ease up when he’ll need plenty to be be able to go again today. Ben Healy helped set him up and isn’t the same force as last year but has a chance too.
Tadej Pogačar (UAE) will want the stage win but given several team mates are ill this poses questions above his team’s ability to control the stage, and that’s before we ponder if he’s immune to this. So he’s not the shoe-in he ought to have been for this stage. It’ll be hard to engineer a stage win for team mate Isaac del Toro as this could let in Remco Evenepoel (Soudal-Quickstep) again.
Netcompany-Ineos missed the winning move yesterday and later shut down the chase but does Thymen Arensman have anything to spare? Valentin Paret-Peintre (Soudal-Quickstep) faded on the previous stage but if he can recover this stage will be less intense for him, especially if he gets a colleague in the breakaway with him.
Riders who fit the bill and were not riding as hard on the previous stage include Sepp Kuss and Davide Piganzoli (Visma-LAB), Ilan Van Wilder (Soudal-Quickstep), Harald Tejada (XDS-Astana) and Einer Rubio (Movistar).
Finally Tom Pidcock (Pinarello-Q36.5) sits eighth overall but has still been making moves and he won the last time the race came to the Alpe in 2022.
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Carapaz, Arensman, Pogačar, VP-P, Kuss |
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Evenpoel, Jorgenson, Rubio, Healy, Tejada, Piganzoli, Pidcock |
Weather: sunny and 29°C.
TV: KM0 is at 2.15pm and the finish is forecast for 5.35pm CEST. The intermediate sprint at the foot of the Col d’Ornon should be reached around 4.25pm and the climb to Alpe d’Huez begins around 5.00pm.
The racing has been excellent the past two days, hopefully another stage like that today.
And despite all the talk of Pogi being too dominant, it would be a shame to loose him to illness. On the other hand, if he loses 5 minutes today and recovers tomorrow (Tastes seemed a lot better already yesterday), it would make for an epic story.
Small typo alert, Arensman is Thymen, with e
Autocorrect made tastes out of Yates 😁
A few days back I would have tipped Pogacar for this stage without question. But not now. Half his team appear sick and there is a rumour (and its only a rumour) he might be too which perhaps explains the black shorts he suddenly wore yesterday for the first time in four years apparently. Given he has a four and a half minute lead one might also ask why he needs to attack anyone anymore – especially if, as also rumoured, he is going to announce a Vuelta bid after the race. Consequently, I see him more marking today than attacking or, as some have suggested, trying to break Pantani’s Alpe d’Huez record (although it would be cool – or disturbing depending on your point of view – if he did).
In fact I wonder if, from GC perspective, this might not be a boring stage. Pogacar has the time gap we know about so has no need to make preemptive moves and can bide his time whilst Remco would surely be happy with second so can stay cool so long as everyone is together. Del Toro would be overjoyed to get a podium and has been matching Remco most of the time. Which leaves Seixas as the first guy with a desire to get something he hasn’t yet got and a need to attack. But can anyone see him and Decathlon having what it takes to put people in jeopardy, to make the race? Those below this is GC don’t seem to have what it takes to get more than a top ten so it wouldn’t surprise me if this is a breakaway win. The GC will only kick off in my view if someone gets into trouble giving the others opportunity to make hay.
I have a similar feeling.
It’s a hard scenario to call but you’re right, there’s a version where the break is gone and Pog is simply pacing Del Toro, you’d expect that would put most riders except maybe Remco into loss limiting mode and negate any real fireworks – although most find Pogacar winning solo with grandissimo bravura also boring so maybe it’s a lose-lose for them with the GC battle today!
There’s also two other scenarios, one that Pog doesn’t need much of a team to win, so if he really wants AlpeD’H and his remaining team or others can keep the break within range he should be able to saunter to the top and take the prize still as per the above. The third scenario is the crazy one, if his team are really suffering and no one is willing to do the riding to keep the riders up the road in range… he could attack solo early on and give us a ride for the ages. If the Vuelta wasn’t coming soon maybe that would be more of a possibility.
While reading the INRNG preview I couldn’t help but think of the alternate scenario where Pogacar becomes the one man team, bending the peloton to his whim, if he truly desires the prestigious stage win in yellow.
His team first claimed that Yates was the only one and now say that both Pogacar and Del Toro are fine. To paraphrase the famous words of Mandy Rice-Davies, they would wouldn’t they.
As a former mediocre cyclist I find it almost impossible to understand how riders can concentrate on their performance when the road ahead on celebrated climbs appears blocked with dense and manic fans opening up metres in front of the rider.
Wait for it: Dutch Corner.
Remco mentioned that the crowds might possibly limit attacks, or riders might race for favorable position before the tunnels of humans.
Or were the black shorts a mis-direction to get other teams to control the break to the bottom of the Alpe (thinking that maybe their climber has a real chance to win the stage) and then Pogi and UAE only have to pull hard on the final climb… Pogi wins again…!
When the spectators crowd the climb, the choice of line through the hairpins is made for you, surely.
I’ll be fascinated to see whether Remco or Seixas gamble on their team attacking a weakened UAE in a bid for glory. My suspicion is no, but the anticipation of possibilities is delicious!
Even with Les Hairpins d’Huez 128 km seems inadequate. I think Pogacar just watches and waits and makes up his mind at the bottom of the climb.
Truly outstanding ride from Mads Pedersen yesterday to get over those 3 climbs with that group.
Does he have the walnuts to try again today?
Is this a mistranslation or a pun on “noix de Grenoble”?
If the Alpe climb is forecast to begin at 5.00, then the finish won’t be by 5.25!
Thanks, small fix made as it was 5.25pm finish but now moved out 10 minutes.
Small grammar nitpick – shoe-in should be shoo-in.
“Shoo-in” has certain connotations as well.
This blog is so educational, I never knew shoe-in was shoo-in and I’m English! Apparently it comes from rigged American horse-racing in the early 20th century when the pre-designated winner was shoo-ed to the finish line first…
“Shoo-in” has certain connotations as well.