On The Road
by: Bill Oetinger 7/1/2023
In Between the Grand Tours...
Usually, for a column hitting the street on July 1—with the Giro d'Italia over and the Tour de France yet to begin—I step away from the world of pro bike racing and find something else to talk about. This July, though, I've decided to post an interim installment of race stuff.
Back in my May Spring Fling opus, I reported on eight races of between four and eight stages, plus all the one-day classics. Now I only have three stage races to review: the Critérium du Dauphiné (June 4-11), the Tour de Suisse (June 11-18), and the Tour de Romandie (April 25-30). That last one was way back before the Giro but it was too late for me to cover in my May column. (Actually, I could have squeezed it in but that column was already bulging at the seams.) So I'm reaching back and hauling it up to the present moment for a little review.
For this year at least, the Tour de Romandie was kind of a B-list event: not too many of the really top tier riders were there. Quite a few big names on the start list but for most of those notables, their best days are behind them. Also on board, as always, a lot of fresh young talent, looking to becomes stars or at the least to survive at this level.
It was a six-day event, including the almost meaningless 4-mile prologue. Stages 1 and 2 ended in mass field sprints for the bulk of the peloton. The only two stages that really mattered were 3 and 4. Stage 3 was a time trial. It was less than 12 miles but it had a more-or-less continuous climb in the middle of almost four miles at over 6%. Not brutal but enough to separate the sheep from the goats. Juan Ayuso (UAE Team Emirates) was the fastest, with young US rider Matteo Jorgenson (Movistar) at :05 and Ayuso's UAE teammate (and team leader) Adam Yates at :17. That left Ayuso in the leader's jersey with Jorgenson at :18 and Yates at :30.
Stage 4 was the only mountaintop finish and it was a serious test. After four catergorized climbs, the final ascent to Thyon 2000 was 21 km (13 miles) at almost 8%, with a stretch of 3 km near the top at around 10%. On yet another day of miserable rain, about 50 riders made it onto that last climb still together, but the long, steady grind soon saw that group shedding riders out the back. Eventually, with around 9 km to go, they were down to about 10 riders up front. Between 9 km and 4 km, maybe half of those riders tried to get off the front, with no success. Meanwhile, GC leader Ayuso slipped out the back of the lead group and kept fading, eventually losing a whopping 3:28. No problem for the UAE team, though, as just about the time he was cracking, Adam Yates was rolling away off the front. It wasn't a dramatic attack; just a little upping of the tempo with no one else able to stay with him. Little by little, he opened up a healthy gap. Thibaut Pinot (FDJ) made a valiant charge to try and catch him but it was too little, too late. (They should put "Too Little, Too Late" on Pinot's tombstone. It's the theme song of his whole career.)
After all the riders were back in their team buses, trying to dry off and warm up, the GC standings had Yates on top and the surprising Jorgenson at :19. The final stage was another field sprint, so that's how things ended up. Perhaps the only significance we can take away from this event is the fact that Yates is in pretty good shape and will be lining up alongside his team leader, Tadej Pogačar, at the Tour de France. Pogačar lost last year's Tour at least in part because his team was weak and disorganized. Adding Yates to their roster might go some way toward fixing that problem.
Now fast forward to June. The 8-stage Critérium du Dauphiné was a much more interesting race altogether, not least because it assembled a much more exalted start list of better GC riders. The course was significantly harder as well.
The Dauphiné takes place in Southern France: Provence and the Southern French Alps. As such, it does a good job of replicating the challenge and feel of the Tour de France, if only for a week. The conventional wisdom is that this is the definitive launching pad for the Tour de France; that if you win here, you will likely go on to win the big race in the following month. That was true for Chris Froome in 2013, '15, and '16, and for Geraint Thomas in 2018. But not in the years since. Regardless, it is always a prime-time tune-up for la Grande Boucle. Will that be true this year?
The only one of the big four of today's cycling pantheon—Pogačar, Vingegaard, Evenepoel, Roglič—entered this year was Vingegaard (Jumbo-Visma). Roglič was resting on his laurels from the Giro d'Italia. Pogačar was still recovering from his Liege-Bastogne-Liege injuries. Evenepoel, after being forced to abandon the Giro with a COVID positive, had elected to enter the Tour de Suisse. So it may not have been the very toughest test of the best against the best, but Vingegaard still had to contend with a strong field...almost everyone else who might figure as a top-ten contender in a big race.
Long story short, Jumbo-Visma controlled—dominated—the race from start to finish. On the first three stages, all ending in field sprits, Christophe Laporte won Stages 1 and 3 and was 4th on Stage 2 (a painful uphill sprint won by Julian Alaphilippe). Team leader Vingegaard took some stout pulls in the run-ups to those sprints to help deliver Laporte to where he needed to be. Team leaders who are climbing specialists don't always get in the trenches like that. You can be sure the rest of the team appreciated it.
Stage 4 was a time trial of just over 19 miles, with the final 6 miles steadily uphill...not a serious, categorized climb but still uphill, all the way to the finish. Mikkel Bjerg (UAE Team Emirates) won. Vingegaard was 2nd at :12. Other GC hopefuls? Ben O'Connor (AG2R) at :41 and Adam Yates (UAE) at :57. With all the prior stages having been "same time" field sprints, those numbers reflected the overall standings as well: O'Connor and Yates :29 and :45 behind Vingegaard.
Stage 5 did not look like a decisive stage. Hilly, for sure, but not in a big way, and with 14 km of rollers and downhill to the finish after the last summit. Perhaps a day for a breakaway? Yes indeed, but the breakaway was not what most folks expected. On that last climb—Cote de Thésy: a little under 4 km at a little over 8%—Vingegaard attacked the lead group and set off on a 16-km solo escape to the finish. All of the other hopefuls—places 2 through 19—trailed in :31 in arrears. It was a bold, confident move and it left the little Dane in first, O'Connor at 1:10, Alaphilippe at 1:23, and Yates at 1:26.
All three of the remaining stages featured uphill finishes. Stage 6 was the least daunting with two fairly moderate climbs, back-to-back, to finish it off. This time an authentic break got away and the last three riders out of that bunch managed to stay away and take up the first three places. Places 4 through 22 all came in together: all the GC contenders, with Vingegaard among them. So status quo for another day.
Stage 7 was a big, bad bully of a stage, with the HC Col de Madeleine mid-stage (25 km at 6%) and then the double-whammy of Col du Mollard (18 km at 6%) and the top part of Col de la Croix de Fer (13 km at 6% but the final 7 km at 8%). (I have a special feeling for this finish. We did it on a tour in 2009, and while it didn't wipe us out, we weren't doing it at race pace.) A small group containing many of the best climbers in the world were still together well up the Croix de Fer ascent, but with a bit over 5 km to go, Vingegaard once again attacked and left everyone else behind. Yates finished at :41, Jai Hindley (BORA-hansgrohe) at :53, and O'Connor at 1:04. Seven other riders came in at 1:10.
The final stage might have been even harder than Stage 7, with seven categorized climbs, including an HC, a Cat 2 and two Cat 1s in the latter half of the stage. If you just looked at the profile briefly, without really studying it, you might have missed the final uphill to the finish (la Bastille, near the city of Grenoble): just a little blip of under 2 km (just over a mile). To be rated a Cat 1 at less than 2 km...you know it's got to be the steepness that does it. The average is about 14% but the steepest bits are 24% and most of the last, cruel sections are in the high teens., and all on a narrow, one-lane road. Insane...but also jolly fun for the crazy fans thronging the roadside or for those of us watching from the comfort of our sofas.
Over all those big climbs and descents, the situation resolved itself with Giulio Ciconne (Trek-Segafredo) off the front by a good bit, with the yellow jersey group chasing. After a hair-raising final descent into Grenoble, where Ciconne nearly bought the farm on one cliff-hanging turn, the leader hit that final "little" climb with a lead of :55 over the chase group of 14. On the lower slope, Vingegaard was content to sit in and let UAE teammates Rafal Majka and Adam Yates set the tempo. But at exactly 1 km to go, in an 18% hairpin, he came to the front and simply rode off. Yates and O'Connor tried to respond but couldn't match his tempo. Ciconne managed to stay away and win, although his lead on that short climb was cut from :55 to :24 at the end. Yates finished :10 behind Vingegaard and O'Connor was another :16 behind Yates.
Final podium: Vingegaard on top, Yates at 2:23 and O'Connor at 2:56. Those gaps are an eternity in an 8-stage race. Other big stars—Jai Hindley, Egan Bernal, Enric Mas, Mikel Landa—were further adrift. David Gaudu, 2nd behind Pogačar and ahead of Vingegaard at this year's Paris-Nice, was almost 26 minutes behind. Richard Carapaz, a winner of the Giro not that long ago, was over 35 minutes back. The point is, Vingegaard blew everyone else away. He and his team took no prisoners. How might things have differed if Pogačar, Rolič, or Evenepoel had been there? Who knows? What we're left with is Vingegaard heading for le Tour looking like a well-stropped straight-razor. Stay tuned...
The Tour de Suisse does not have the star power of the Dauphiné, nor the level of difficulty. It seldom does and it certainly did not this year. Hard to figure why Remco Evenepoel and his Lotto-Soudal team elected to do this event and not the Dauphiné. These decisions are not made on a whim. It's also hard to figure out who might have been his strongest challengers for this race. Scrolling through the start list, no one really jumped out as a serious threat. Perhaps that's why he chose to do it!
Stage 1 was a short time trial, less than eight miles. ITT specialist Stefan Küng won it with Evenepoel nipping at his heels, :06 back. So far, so good. Stage 2 was a field sprint and the overall didn't change.
Stage 3 was the only genuine uphill finish of the week: 11 km at 8%...a hard but steady grinder. Midway up that last ascent—6.5 km to go, in yet another downpour—Evenepoel threw down the attack everyone was expecting, firing off the front of a select group of around a dozen riders. At first it looked like the winning move, perhaps for the whole week. But all he managed to do was get about ten seconds ahead of the group and hang there, not expanding his lead at all. And while he was doing this, he pulled two riders with him on his escape: Mattias Skjelmose (Trek-Segafredo) and Felix Gall (AG2R).
Now...let's hit pause for a minute and consider this. Mattias Skjelmose and Felix Gall are not exactly household names in the current front rank of Euro-pros. I had to look them both up to learn about them. Skjelmose is 22 and Danish. Gall is 25 and Austrian. I've seen Skjelmose's name in and out of top tens in various races lately, so not quite an unknown. Notably, 2nd at Fleche-Wallone this year behind Pogačar. Gall is 189th in the UCI rankings. Skjelmose, although only 22, is already ranked 17th. Perhaps it's time he became a household name!
Anyway...Evenepole attacked and we would have expected him to power off into the rainy distance, never to be seen again. Instead, he only gained five or ten seconds over the little chase group and plugged away there, getting nowhere, with these two riders glued to his wheel. Finally, at 2.6 km to go, Gall attacked and rode away. Skjelmose soon took off in pursuit, but Evenepoel didn't respond. Didn't or couldn't. Skjelmose came around Gall and won the stage. Evenepoel kept chugging along, on his own. Juan Ayuso (UAE) bridged up out of the little group, passed Evenepoel and dropped him. No reaction from Evenepoel, who eventually finished with the little group, :21 behind Skjelmose.
This is the World Champion we're talking about. The defending Vuelta champion. Winner of Liege-Bastogne-Liege the past two years. One of the brightest stars in our current firmament. What's going on?
More of the same the next day. Stage 4 is almost an uphill finish. 19 km of mostly uphill, with one small descent in the middle, and at the end, another little downhill over the final three or four km. Somewhere earlier in the stage, Felix Gall got into a break of about ten riders that went off up the road. How the teams of Evenepoel and Skjelmose allowed their biggest rival to get in a break is beyond me. Somewhere on that last climb, he dropped his breakaway cohort and soloed home alone. Behind him Evenepoel and Skjelmose and a much reduced group chased hard but never caught up. Evenepoel won the little sprint for 2nd, with Skjelmose 3rd, so they both were awarded a few bonus seconds. However, they both finished over a minute behind Gall. The overall after this stage was Gall first, Skjelmose at :02 and Evenepoel at :16. Close!
Various riders in that chase group had tried attacks over the last miles but nothing panned out. Evenepoel never tried a thing. He just set a steady tempo that brought back each attacker and eventually netted him 2nd place. As I was watching, I was thinking: what the heck is he thinking? If he were as strong as he's supposed to be, he should have chewed these guys up and spit out the seeds. Then again, perhaps what he was thinking about was the time trial on the final stage: 16 miles over a mostly level course. He's almost certainly the strongest time trialer among the GC favorites...although Skjelmose was 6th in the Stage 1 ITT (just :13 behind Evenepoel), and Ayuso won the ITT at the Tour de Romandie...
Stage 5 was another hilly stage, with two HC summits and one Cat 1 summit. The second HC ascent was Albulapass: 17.4 km at about 7%. The top of the climb was about 10 km from the finish and all of that last section was fast downhill. Juan Ayuso (UAE) began this day in 6th place, 1:18 behind the leader, Felix Gall. On that last big climb, there was a break of 11 riders around a minute ahead of the yellow-jersey group. With 14 km to go, Ayuso jumped off the front of the leader's group and quickly bridged up to the break and then left them behind. Gall, Skjelmose, Evenepoel? None of them tried to cover Ayuso's move. He went over the summit alone and soloed all the way down the hill to win. Skjelmose was 2nd at :54, Gall was at :58, and Evenepoel was way back at 1:20. With time bonuses factored in, Skjelmose was now back in the leader's jersey, :08 ahead of Gall. Ayuso's big day moved him up to 3rd at :18, and Evenepoel was bumped off the podium, 4th at :46.
But the bigger news on this day was of a serious crash on that last, fast descent to La Punt. Gino Mader, 26, Swiss (Bahrain-Victorious) plunged into a gorge and ended up underwater in a creek. He was resuscitated at the scene but later died in the hospital. This is the first fatality in a top-tier pro race in several years and it cast a pall over all aspects of the stage race. After consulting with Mader's family, the organizers decided to continue with the final three stages of the event.
Stage 6 was neutralized and run as a tribute to Gino. Stage 7 was actually run off at race pace, sort of. It was announced beforehand that times would be recorded 25 km from the finish, at which point most of the group was still together. At 17 km to go, Evenepoel launched one of his signature solo breakaways and flew home ahead of everyone else. He did it as a tribute to Mader, finishing with one hand over his heart and one pointing to the heavens. It was a classy gesture.
For the record, he finished ;34 ahead of a group of sprinters who chose to duke it out for 2nd place. Because everyone was given their time from 25 km out, it's impossible and anyway moot to try and calculate how much time he would have gained on those ahead of him in the standings. They all sat up and cruised in after the 25 km-to-go point.
So it all came down to the final time trial. Evenepoel rode well but so did his rivals. Ayuso finished first, Evenepoel was 2nd at :08 and Skjelmose was 3rd at :09. That left the final standings with Skjelmose on top, Ayuso 2nd and Evenepoel a distant 3rd. A good result for Evenepoel but not what he might have expected.
Perhaps that COVID positive during the Giro meant more to Evenepoel than just a failed test. Perhaps the viral load really did knock him back a bit. (When I caught a mild dose of COVID last August, I was tired for a couple of weeks...afternoon naps were a regular part of my days. And then I was just that wee bit sluggish for a month afterward.) Even an extremely fit 23-year old might lose his tip top performance if he were recovering from the virus...just enough to slip from 1st to 3rd.
In any event, Evenepoel and his team have made it official: no Tour de France for him. Nor will Primoz Roglič be there. Neither of those riders has made any official announcement about their plans for the rest of the season, but the obvious inference at this point would be that we'll see them both again at the Vuelta a España.
So that leaves Jonas Vingegaard and Tadej Pogačar squaring off in the Tour de France. I'm neither brave nor foolish enough to predict a winner. But I can summarize what we know now. Both of them had active and successful spring campaigns, winning just about every race they entered. In their one head-to-head match-up, Pogačar comfortably defeated Vingegaard. But then there's Pogačar's LBL accident. His general fitness is good, but the fractured wrist is still not quite 100%. In fact, he was so impatient to get back on the bike and back to serious training that he may have aggravated the injury and set his recovery back a little. It now looks like he's going to have to wear some sort of brace on his forearm during the race. Clearly, this is not what you want when beginning the longest, hardest race of the year.
So all bets are off! Gentlemen: start your engines!
Bill can be reached at srccride@sonic.net