You can see the exhausting effects of this approach in the long breaks the racers must now take between races.
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I was reminded of that practice while reading an article in L’Equipe yesterday, about a time trial ‘innovation’ brought about by Team Ineos.
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At around this same time, Tom Pidcock, who’s been sitting in 12th overall, 8’:40” down, had made his way up to the break, and we all thought that a Jai Hindley type of long-range General Classification raid was in the cards, but somehow his Ineos team called him back to the field.
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The dreaded Col de Joux Plane was the final battleground of the day, 11.7-km, 8.5% average gradient climbing up to 1690-meters, chock full of spectators primed and ready to witness what was certain to be an historic and vicious fight.
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Michal Kwiaktowski was warmly gracious in his post-race interview, thanking his fellow breakaway companions for having worked to hard together, complementing their collective desire to, against almost every prognosis of the stage (again!), hold off the charging peloton on the 17.7-km slopes of the Grand Colombier.
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Everyone wanted to be in on the action in what was the final ‘normal’ stage before today’s Grand Colombier then the Alps this weekend.
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The small climber was fourth in last year’s Tour and a podium place became the unique focus for his Groupama-FDJ team this season, controversially leaving their sprinter Arnaud Démare home in favor of another climber for the squad.
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Matteo Jorgensen, showing the form that has suddenly appeared for him in this Tour, was early out of the blocks. He blasted away, along with seven others including former World Champion Michael Kwiatkowski, as the field went berserk on the first climb right from Kilometer Zero
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A story from the 1973 Tour de France
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The break’s lead ballooned up to over 16-minutes, Powless gobbled up the points on the three minor climbs along the route - he is really grinding out that lead, it’s a most impressive display of fortitude.
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At 60-km to go tragedy struck when Mark Cavendish crashed to the ground, breaking his collarbone. He’d come so close to winning and capturing the all-time stage winner record in Bordeaux, so the shock of his Tour ending in that brutal way was shared by us all.
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The Alpecin-Deceunink team have been perfecting their lead-out train all year and the fruits of that labor have been on clear display this Tour. It is an incredible team, beginning with the powerful Dane, Soren Kragh Andersen - a double Tour stage winner in his own right - who keeps Philipsen protected until the train is ready to be launched.
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Van Aert was crazy. Watching him is as close as we’ll ever get to seeing the physicality of an Eddy Merckx. Of course, times are different and comparisons difficult to make, but as my keen cycling observer friend Wade Hinderling puts it: “If the Tours of the 1960’s and 70’s were designed like todays, only the tiny climbers like Charly Gaul would have ever won.”
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Up front, Van Aert was incredible, constantly going off the front forcing the big group to ever harder efforts - efforts that were beginning to kill the desperately chasing UAE team. With 33-k to the finish, Van Aert was the virtual Yellow Jersey, Hindley second and Buchmann third.
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The real mountains begin today, and as is now the norm, the race will explode into action from the gun as the riders who’ve already lost chunks of time in the Basque Country hope for a bit of leeway from the controlling Jumo-Visma and UAE teams.
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UAE came out blazing on Stage 2, the longest of the Tour, 208.9-kilometes from Vitoria-Gastiez to San Sebastian. While American Neilsen Powless made the early morning break, and in the manner of his EF Education Easy Post teammate Magnus Cort last year, putting his all into grabbing KOM points along the route to add to his Polka Dot Jersey tally, the UAE kept an iron grip control of the peloton the entire day.
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Of course, the race waits for no one and up front the boys were raging. Carapaz’s teammate, the excellent Nielsen Powless took the KOM points on the penultimate climb, putting him in the Polka Dot jersey, a recompense for their EF Education-EasyPost podium hopes being crushed by that crash.
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Yet, just as in Paris-Roubaix, and of course through no fault of the winners nor of any intention of diminishing the value of their victories, the two promised matchups between great champions were denied the public.
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World Champion Evenepoel is finally, like Zeus descending from Mount Olympus, abandoning his North African altitude training camp where he’s been since the beginning of March - having left only to race the Volta Ciclista a Catalunya - and is ready for his assault on “the most beautiful classic”, and his main objective for the season, the Giro d’Italia which begins May 6th.
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Behind, nothing but gaps and struggling racers: Mads Pedersen was in the first chase group along with Alexander Kristoff, while even further behind was group three headed by Ineos’s Connor Swift fighting with everything he had to bring Ganna – who’d really gone backwards on those stones –into contention
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