Women
For the mass start race:
L. Curinier (FDJ) P. Ferrand-Prévot (Visma) C. Kerbaol (FDJ) M. Le Net (FDJ) E. Muzic (FDJ) M. Squiban (UAE) M. Bunel (Visma)
Ferrand-Prévost and Squiban are ill and shall not compete.
I had forgotten J. Labous on my list. She will certainly be the unique leader then.
For the ITT today, will Küng be overtaken before or after Allex?
Just after. He and Evenepoel were on the same picture at the intermediate line.
ITT: Strong headwind on the last third of the course. If so, there is probably some on the second third too, according to the map.
Denmark coming with Vingegaard, Skjelmose and not 1 but 3 Pedersens will be something to see!
For the ITT today, will Küng be overtaken before or after Allex?
He starts second to last, the last being Evenepoel. There are only 24 km to go, but the gap between start times is only 1 minute, even among the last competitors.
Selection for France 🇫🇷
Men
B. Armirail (Décathlon) and R. Cavagna (FDJ) for the ITT.
The same + Thibault Guernalec (Arkéa) for the mixed relay.
For the mass start race:
remark:
Women
C. Kerbaol (EF) and J. Labous (FDJ) for the ITT.
The same + M. Borras (Cofidis) for the mixed relay.
For the mass start race:
remark:
According to his technicians, this (second) bike change would not have been needed, the two bikes he switched were the exact same; they checked and checked again. But Evenepoel believed the opposite; I reckon he was fooled by the pain he developed on the first bike after it ‘broke’, pain which was transferred on the second (correct) bike, while returning to a normal position. I would add that, after riding the second, normal bike a while and standing for a while on the roadside, his pain vanished and so he felt better on the 3rd bike, despite it being the same as the 2nd.
Anyway, Evenepoel was allowed to get back in the trunk of a car, possibility which had been denied to many other riders previously… And because of that, he seems to believe he was faster than Pogatchar and lost only because of his bike incident (indicentS according to him).
I mean, that’s Evenepoel being Evenepoel: it’s always something external that happens to him and prevents him to crush everyone, according to him.
Truth is he only was faster when he was dragged by a car. He also regained a handful of seconds when he accelerated to drop Healy and Skjelmose, but lost them again soon after, which is pretty normal.
While Pogatchar rode 66 km alone (and the previous two with only one helper), Evenepoel only rode 20 km alone: before that he was with 2 or 4 others guys. Of course their relays were not as strong as his own, but still he could rest. It also forced him to go slightly easier, in order not to drop them, which allowed him to save extra strength for the future compared to riding full gas (same for Pogatchar when he was trying to keep Del Toro with him).
Despite all this, after he ditched Healy, apart from the handful of seconds he regained at first, he continuously lost time to Pogatchar along the last 20 km. Oh, he was only slightly losing, but he never won anything; he was slightly slower.
Battle of Giants today on the French SSR of the week-end, Paris-Chauny: 5 points for Cofidis vs 3 points for Uno-X 😆
Good UAE team race 😀 Anyway, the single climb of Mount Kigali sealed the fate of the race.
After the usual string of stupid attacks, the peloton managed to maintain and reduce the gap a bit by being organised, which was much better than usual. But it lasted barely more than 1 turn (?) and then UAE’s Vine gave up, so the Australian team ceased to take the important part they had in the chase, and stuff returned to the normal disorganisation. Then Evenepoel came back and burned everyone behind him, so that riders, especially the remaining domestiques, were dropped, splits were created and good-but-not-top riders became reluctant to relay.
On the French side.
Good race by the young Seixas. He just lacked a few meters not to be dropped in the last episode of the race, and then missed catching up by just a few seconds.
One might blame it on the asinine tactics of the French team in the first loop of the race: where Voeckler had told them to attack and attack again (except for the protected Pavel UAE Sivakov and Mr Valentin I-swear-I-have-the-best-legs-of-my-life Madouas), as well as putting Julien Bernard in a breakaway promised to death (and it was made obvious by the Belgian+Slovenian teams, helped by the USA and Ireland whenever they slew down a bit, keeping the gap between 2 and 3 minutes), so that he was cooked and swallowed before the top of Mount Kigali.
Voeckler’s problem is that he was so much told he was a genius after the double victory of Alaphilippe that he started believing it.
Anyway, tactics today were not as important as yesterday: the legs did most of the result.
But in the end, the result is exactly the same as yesterday:
Seixas just turned 19 years old during this Championship. Yet, he is the only rider in the top-30 who rode all 3 races of the Championship (ITT, mixed-relay TT, and today)!!
Hindsight is cheating.
I cannot travel back in time 😀
I did get it very wrong though!
Well, no, I mean, like 2 turns (or 3?) from the finish, they still had the situation in hands, they still had personnel which could still be used, they still had their two leaders: so, there had been no misfortune, and the level displayed was OK. It still looked like a strong team, in a good position to control and later send its leaders for the final attack(s).
And then they made all sorts of assessments and choices wrong.
Sorry for replying now, after the race; I haven’t connected in a few days.
I don’t know what ‘stacked’ means in this context, I don’t suppose it means that they have big boobies, so I will assume in the following that it means ‘strong’ or ‘dense’. 😀
As far as other teams are concerned, I don’t know them well, but Netherlands is always a favourite.
Concerning France, Kerbaol has shown in the previous races that she wasn’t in shape; Muzic hasn’t been good this year; Le Net can’t take so much elevation; Curinier is about the same; and Squiban really didn’t dig the cobblestone climb during the mixed-relay TT where Labous had to wait for her. That leaves, as real chances, Labous and a Ferrand-Prévot who has only race 1 day in 2 months.
So while that team may show a relatively good level of domestiques (especially once Kerbaol could be demoted to domestique), those were neither capable of winning, nor truly capable of keeping / catching up with other teams’ leaders’ attacks if it was needed.
Once the race was on, then finished… Well, the strategy and the tactics of the French team were an unmitigated disaster (they were not the single team in this case, though).
France, Netherlands, Italy looked like they had 3 neurons for the whole team. Female races sometimes exhibit weird/crappy tactical sense; male races without earpieces sometimes exhibit weird/crappy tactical sense; when you sum both, you get female races without earpieces which are often outlandish…
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.
Today in Belgium again, Uno-X did bad again (5 points), but Cofidis did worse (3 points) and their sprinter Milan Fretin crashed rather badly yesterday. As a result, Uno-X is now ahead of Cofidis in the 3-year UCI ranking by… 1 point!
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?
Meanwhile in Slovakia,
Stage #1: 1. Magnier 2. Kubich 💤
Stage #2: 1. Magnier 2. Kubich 💤 💤
Stage #3: 1. Magnier 2. Kubich 💤 💤 💤
Stage #4: 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.
Stage 4: time trial
GC situation before/ the time trial:
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,
Stage #1: 1. Magnier 2. Kubich 💤
Stage #2: 1. Magnier 2. Kubich 💤 💤
Stage #3: 1. Magnier 2. Kubich 💤 💤 💤
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.
Today, Uno-X didn’t score a single point in Wallonie. It looks like they had sent a B or C team, but still, there were points awarded to the first 40 riders, and they didn’t get one. It is much easier to score on a 1.Pro like this, rather than on the stages of a 2.Pro (like Luxembourg) or 2.1 (like Slovakia). Wagner-Bazin, Flanders-Baloise and even the conti Beat managed to score a handful of points, only Tarteletto didn’t.
Mixed relay TTT: it’s gonna be quick, as there are only 7 teams… (but that’s 1 more than in 2024, and there never was more than 8).
Official startlist (PDF)
Belgium didn’t bother to send a team, after having finished more than 4 minutes behind in Kigali 😀