This is a 5 days .Pro race, often hilly, which includes a Time Trial back to normal distance after the short one in 2024.
Maps and profiles of the first 2 stages:
There will be 8 WT, 7 PT, 4 Contis (I just remember that Rembe is the actual team who rode the Tour de l’Ain masquerading as the German selection…) and 1 selection for Luxembourg.
It could be a race for Grégoire (🇫🇷 FDJ), but with the TT, that’s less likely. McNulty (🇺🇸 UAE) who just co-won the GP of Montréal in Canada on Sunday may appear as the favourite; he won the (short) TT on the Tour of Poland one month earlier.
Last year, Tiberi (🇮🇹 Barhein) won thanks to a good performance in the TT and a breakaway in the last stage. His team isn’t present this year.
edit: Stages 3 to 5
The Time Trial:
In spite of the fact that a number of gaps were created the day before, the GC had been significantly upended by this rather long Time Trial.
The biggest losses are probably for the two Frenchmen Jegat and Prodhomme, who are kicked out of the top-10. Mathis Rondel (🇫🇷 Tudor) did a good TT and is now the first French rider, seating on 4th place.
McNulty, finishing second in TT with a margin over the others, grabs the leader’s jersey with a confortable advance over the new second: Skjelmose, who started bad but finished the TT rather well.
Carapaz did a good TT too and land the 3rd place in GC.
To sum it up, McNulty (🇺🇸 UAE) leads with a good margin. Skjelmose (🇩🇰 Lidl-Trek) has a small margin over the 3rd, Carapaz (🇪🇨 EF) at 1′04″, but then it rather packed until the 10th included, Berrade (🇪🇸 Kern) at 1′40″.
Tudor has 3 men between 4th and 7th, which should bring a nice amount of UCI points tomorrow.
The first Uno-X is only 16th. That’s not many points, if it stays so tomorrow.
Grégoire (🇫🇷 FDJ) kept on sinking, down to 27th place and nearly 5 minutes behind in GC. Perhaps is it to save strength for tomorrow? Or his brilliant shape just collapsed Gaudu-style?