this post was submitted on 12 Aug 2025
5 points (100.0% liked)
procycling
597 readers
2 users here now
for news and discussion of professional cycling
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
So much for riding defensively on stage #4! 😆
The Danish nutter could have waited for the final little climb, he could have waited for the last series of little climbs 10 km from the line, he could have waited for the first loop of the circuit 30 km from the line, he could have waited for the last categorised climb 40 km from the line; but no, he didn't even wait for the first passage on that categorised climb 60 km from the line, he attacked almost 10 km earlier than that, almost 70 km from the line! I wondered if he didn't consider that, should things go wrong, it would serve as training for a World/European championship, but as he is going on the Tour of Spain, that's not likely.
He was close to being caught a couple of times, but he could count with the usual idiocy of the chasing peloton: riding hard in climbs and, as a consequence, losing manpower and good will on the following flatter roads were a big group should have a great advantage over a small or solo breakaway, if only they could ride orderly.
I remember one moment when one Uno-X comes on the front of the peloton faster than anyone, and then... doesn't pull but just stops pedalling. It was like they had a man at the front of the race and he wanted to break the chase, except he had no one any more at the front. By the way, Uno-X completely vanished in the last miles. A disappearance worth a magic trick 😀
Visma wasn't much better. I always found the hype around Zingle overrated. Anyway, that's his comeback race after a long break caused by a crash, and perhaps Visma had nothing better in stock than Van Baarle and him. Laporte will come back for his first race in 2025 (!) on Sunday in Hamburg; I would rather have seen him in Denmark if he was ready, as Hamburg's startlist will be too hard for him, and I am not sure he can be much useful as a domestique there, but perhaps they preferred to see him on a one-day race.
The young Blaise and l'Hôte from Decathlon aren't bad. Same for the older Beton guy Larsen and, perhaps more discreetly, Kubish from Unibet.
Naturally, he was that close to win today, just to annoy me! 😀
I am not sure Lidl-Trek played it very well, choosing to favour collaboration in the breakaway, especially after they saw that Zingle was easy. It is strange because their very first strategy seemed to have been harassment, when Pedersen left a split after his 2 teammates, and Zingle (I think it was him?) had to make an effort to close the gap. It was his only chasing effort, by the way, as someone else always did for him.
Yeah, that was a fun stage, you have to hand it to Pedersen - he's never boring! I can't wait to see him in the Vuelta, he will go for the points jersey and in this shape he is likely to win a couple of stages too.
I am pretty sure he'll go on to do the European Championships as well, actually, he's been talking about the TT in his podcast (Lang Distance) saying it's his best shot of an international TT title ever.
Yeah. The main issue I see is that many riders don't wanna go to the World Championship this year, so more of them will wish to take part in the European Championship than in other years.
Otherwise, the European Championship this year will be pretty much like the Spring classics “Boucles Drôme-Ardèche”, the mass start being like the Ardèche race, and the TT like a small bit of the Drôme race.
The TT is short (again, this same problem of willing the women to ride the same length as the men, which ends up with everyone riding only a short distance).
It looks like they don't climb the whole Allex wall like thy do on the Drôme classic; if they did it should be as high as the final wall. They made it easier for TT bikes, I guess.
And here is the mass start race:
The 2 climbs are the same as on the Drôme classic, just repeated more often.