Deschanel2017

I always found the hype around Zingle overrated.

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.

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.

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.

It looks like Steff Cras (🇧🇪 Total) shan't start the 3^rd^ and last stage, after finishing 12 minutes behind the winners yesterday. This was his return to racing after withdrawing from the Tour of France in the Pyrénées.

Strangely, Prodhomme went into an early breakaway.

Situation went back to normal (a breakaway without the leader) after Visma's chase, perhaps a bit before the intermediate sprint.

Then climbs started and the distribution of riders went as on previous days.

Bouchard (🇫🇷 Décathlon) was dropped in the descent after the penultimate climb. Visma's Nordhagen pulled the tiny front group on the flat section so that he couldn't come and left Prodhomme alone. Tulett pulled the first part of that steep 15 km pass, then Cian U. accelerated and after a fair while managed to drop Prodhomme more surely than with attacks.

The gaps gradually grew between the Belgian and the Frenchman, and between the Frenchman and the small group behind (Moniquet for Cofidis and Rouland for Arkéa having caught up with Tulett). In the descent Jegat (Total) came back from nowhere and joined this group.

The long descent (where Cian U. and Prodhomme exhibited the exact same level) and then the final part on small hilly roads in the countryside seemed to never end, as the situation was set with about 2 minutes (and growing) between riders.

Despite Prodhomme losing the tour, it was pleasant to see Cian U. finally regaining a truly good level, as his previous comebacks were not so successful (and his pains still present).

FDJ is once again today the only World Team with nobody in the first or second group. Their first rider only crossed the line 13 minutes behind the winner! All Pro Teams and most Conti teams did better. Their leader Gaudu came after 23 minutes, same as the day before; this was supposed to be a preparation for the Vuelta...

Disappointment for the famous Mehmet Şampiyonbisiklet 🤪 who couldn't finish this stage.

• 1^st^ Pro Team riders on GC: Jegat (🇫🇷 Total) 6^th, and the old Brambilla (🇮🇹 Q36.5) 7^th^,
• 1^st^ Conti riders on GC: Axel Mariaut (🇫🇷 Nantes) 10^th^, and the constant Oliver Mattheis (🇩🇪 Bike Aid) 15^th^.

https://www.domestiquecycling.com/en/news/uae-management-decided-not-to-win-ventoux-to-keep-the-french-fans-happy/

“I find it a bit weird if you get your team to ride full gas all day and then on the last climb you just decide not to win the stage.”

Despite the URL, Storer seems to have the Tourmalet stage (#14) in mind more than the following ones. But beyond his anecdote/feeling, we could see how UAE/Pogatchar's attitude on those later stages was equally ambiguous. And he shares that opinion too:

“So I suspect that they took that into consideration as well in the last week, not to take everything.”

Tour de l’Ain 🇫🇷: class .1, Aug 6 to 8

Gaudu's return to competition is as bad as his departure after the Giro. On the 1^st^ stage, don't let the final result fool you, he and his team came back because it was a long descent + flat finish, and because Uijtdebroeks, his teammate and Prodhomme who had broken away in the climb without being followed at all, refused to cooperate. On the 2^nd^stage, today, Gaudu was dropped in a 6% climb 50 km from the finish line, while there were still 40 to 50 riders in the peloton, including several riders from small Contis; he arrived over 20 minutes behind the winners.

While Gaudu and FDJ are well below their rank (despite being the team with the lightest program at the moment), 2 guys are clearly above the rest of the peloton: Uijtdebroeks (Visma) and Prodhomme (Decathlon), the latter looking stronger than the former. However, because of their bad cooperation (the Belgian attacked Prodhomme multiple times, Prodhomme is reluctant to relay), after 2 days they are less than 1 minute ahead of 6 other riders.

Well, in a general manner, I have a hard time believing that there is something really hardcore going on for the last few years and nobody is ever caught red-handed (except a few Portuguese and a couple of South-Americans doing it the old way). Beside anti-doping controls which can come late compared to the use of a new product: not a 'oops' moment in the background of one of the millions of videos and photographs published nowadays; not a disgruntled or gossipy employee among the ton of people who now work with/around riders, not a vengeful WAG publishing information; not a random police or customs car control. Nothing. So we've got a whole bunch of people involved (much bigger than in past times) which are not on average the cleverest in the world, and yet none of them ever makes a mistake... hmmwell...

Beside a few top amateurs to which not a single team wants to give a pro contract because the professional milieu has little doubts about them doing something very wrong, I reckon the whole rest must be microdosing, and at present I don't see much difference with several practices which are officially allowed and yet already beyond any definition of normality in my opinion.

Actually, she's not extremely well regarded. I don't mean among the masses or the officials, but among cycling followers. Her profile (isolation, training methods) has always looked rather suspicious, so the whole picture is so-so. A J. Labous, for example, has a better image among this specific public (but she will probably never win anything).

Ah yeah, I hadn't noticed he had finished so far 😀

Q. Simmons (always impressive but always a bit short) animated a small breakaway (Aular stayed with him the longest) for 35 km, joining the early breakaway after a move initiated by a Caja Rural, and dropping it; before the final peloton acceleration and Ayuso lauching Del Toro 18 km from the line. Cofidis had great hopes for Aranburu, so they had helped UAE chasing the breakaways. After Del Toro's attack, Aranburu tried to follow but never actually managed, his tiny group (of 4?) never managed to catch the lone Del Toro up; he was beaten by Ayuso on the final sprint on the little hill.

A rather suspenseful (Del Toro never really got much more than 20 seconds over his chasers) and relatively hectic race, as usual there. There is always a balance between climbs, wide roads, and a final climb much smaller than the other ones, which causes good fights between the breakaway(s) and the peloton and then between smaller groups, and makes the victory uncertain until the last minute (well, this time, being solo, Del Toro would have needed to fail badly in the last climb, but that's something that may happen).

In a way, it reminds me of the Boucles Drôme-Ardèche in the beginning of the season. Ayuso had lost the first race, Ardèche (because of following a bad direction in the last km), but on the next day UAE and he left no chance to their opponents in the Drôme race, as he won after a 40 km solo.

A stage where teammates can play an important role, as the main pass is in the middle of the stage, and riders who will be dropped uphill or downhill in this pass or the smaller next one will need teammates to catch up on the false-flat sections. And of course teammates of riders ahead will be used to pull hard the front groups so that dropped riders cannot come back.

LOL, it happened right at the start, no need to wait for the big climbs, it happened before anything was climbed. Thanks to the TV direction, we didn't see or understand how it happened, but both Ferrand-prevot and Gigante were dropped, so there was a pursuit that consumed all Visma domestiques (1st chase group), all AG domestiques (2nd than 1st chase group), and several FDJ domestiques (peloton). It also annihilated the SD-Works breakaway.

Kerbaol was dropped in a crash in the first curve of the main climb. She never managed to come back.

Gigante was dropped as soon as the very first hairpin bend of the descent that followed. Heck, they weren't even coming fast in the curve, it has just started going downhill for 75 yards and she was already 10 yards behind at the exit of the curve! Insanely bad. She wasn't as strong as yesterday in climbs, so she hadn't managed to get some time margin before the descent.

Then the whole rest was Labous laboriously pulling a group of 5, with some help from the Polish riders who were interested in dropping Gigante for good. There was nothing Gigante could do, there was no one else being dropped (and very few riders ahead), and the groups behind were very far, so she rode alone for over 50 km, progressively losing time.

Vollering was as likeable and bright as always, asking her opponents for a relay 3 seconds after attacking them and failing; attacking in the worst possible locations for her; pointlessly sprinting for mountain points; accelerations that only drops her own cooked teammate Labous who needs to come back to pull gain (after riding for her leader in climbs and flat for 100 km in two days); and so on. Got beaten in the end by Ferrand-Prevot in the last part of the non-categorised climb a few miles from the finish.

I am not in a good position to emit a strong or detailed opinion, as I was switching between San Sebastian and the women Tour de France 😀 (and as San Sebastian was on Max and not on a regular TV channel, which makes switching between both slow and convoluted, I wasn't switching often).

Yeah, I heard and read the same about the sure win for Del Toro in my country, I reckon. UAE riders scared everyone 😀, especially before Ayuso was unexpectedly dropped. Then Bora and UAE looked almost equally strong. And then the Bora riders disappeared one after the other. And Del Toro looked damn easy. And then Christen coming back too gave the impression they would crunch the only opponent remaining. So, yeah, on the sections I saw, there were many signs that they would easily win. Yet...

I haven't watched Getxo yet (I may do it tonight or tomorrow), just had a glimpse of the situation 80 or 90 km from the finish line: the whole UAE team was leading the bunch (chasing a breakaway) and putting it in line. They are terrorising .1 races now... 😬