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:
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Stage 1
Damn, Grégoire (🇫🇷 FDJ) is certainly in shape, to be able to make such a finish, all ahead and on a large development!
Stage 2
A young rider from Lotto’s dev. conti under the jersey of the Luxembourgish selection, Kockelmann, managed to beat the other sprinters! It is a confirmation that the quality of the startlist is much lower than on the previous 2 years.
Van den Berg lead the sprint from very far and is passed near the line by several guys, thus ends up out of the time bonuses, so Grégoire keeps the leader’s jersey.
Giacomo Villa, from Wagner-Bazin finishes in 6th position while there are UCI points only for the first 5. Story of this team.
Stage 3
Lots of movements, caused by the triple climb of a hill which was actually very hard, and even started by a cobblestone section. It didn’t take long to create splits. Grégoire quickly cracked on a terrain which wasn’t supposed to be so bad for him, always on the wrong side of the successive splits; icing on the cake, the two teammates who were trying to bring him back on the flat section crashed on the curve which marked the beginning of the climb… he finishes almost 3 minutes behind the winners of the day! Conversely, a strong collective performance was delivered by the Tudor riders.
It was a pretty good race. 😃
Meanwhile in Slovakia,
spoiler
Stage #1: 1. Magnier 2. Kubich 💤
Stage #2: 1. Magnier 2. Kubich 💤 💤
Stage #3: 1. Magnier 2. Kubich 💤 💤 💤Grégoire quickly cracked on a terrain which wasn’t supposed to be so bad for him
And that’s worrying for the European Championship race in Ardèche which will be held in 2 weeks from now and will be somewhat similar. Especially as *Grégoire seemed to have demonstrated he was in a terrific shape just 2 days ago.
Meanwhile in Slovakia,
spoiler
Stage #1: 1. Magnier 2. Kubich 💤
Stage #2: 1. Magnier 2. Kubich 💤 💤
Stage #3: 1. Magnier 2. Kubich 💤 💤 💤
Stage #4: 1. Magnier 2. Kubich 💤 💤 💤 💤
Stage 4: time trial
GC situation before/ the time trial:
- M. Skjelmose 🇩🇰 Lidl-Trek
- J. Jegat 🇫🇷 Total – 4″
- B. McNulty 🇺🇸 UAE – 8″
- M. Hirschi 🇨🇭 Tudor – 12″
- M. Brenner 🇩🇪 Tudor – 12″
- J. Narvaez 🇪🇨 UAE – 12″
- R. Carapaz 🇪🇨 EF – 20″
- N. Prodhomme 🇫🇷 Décathlon – 20″
- T. Skujins 🇱🇻 Lidl-Trek – 20″
- M. Rondel 🇫🇷 Tudor – 23″
- U. Berrade 🇪🇸 Kern – 38″
- R. Majka 🇵🇱 UAE – 51″
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?
Stage 5
Kulset🇳🇴 scored 25 points for Uno-X in GC, finishing 12th mostly thanks to a crash in the last loop today, I reckon. Those are the only point this team brings back home after this 5-day race: not really a good investment (the crappy Belgian sprinters’ 1.1 of the day brought them 75 points (vs 30 for Cofidis, who also scored 60 pts on the crappy French sprinters’ 1.1 of the day, but this time they had Coquard crashing…)).
Healy (🇮🇪 EF) is still too weak in the climbs to drop Grégoire (🇫🇷 FDJ). Two days earlier, he lead the climb all right, but 20 riders were following him and yet he was cooked on top and had to have a break and go back to the following group for a rest. Today, the advance over the main group was enough to try something else, like attacking and going for a solo on the flat (well, what we can call flat): yesterday, he came 3rdin the TT, he has better legs for that than for punching at the moment. We also could see today how, after leading during the whole climb and being attacked when he was cooked on top, he still could maintain the gap and even close it a little bit on the flat above, which was just 1 km long.