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5 days of racing, including one Time Trial, for this class Pro stage race.
Winners of previous editions were Hirschi🇨🇭, Tiberi🇮🇹 and McNulty🇺🇸. None of them is coming.
Van der Poel (🇳🇱 Alpecin) is coming back to the road. Will he be active or just training for the World Championship?
Here is the general map. As you can see, Luxembourg is small, and each stage is already almost a Tour of Luxembourg 🙂
Stage 1: Wednesday 16
158 km, D+ 2400 m
It can’t be seen on the stage profile, but the last 250 m are uphill. There is also a sort of hairpin to cross the river a bit after the flamme rouge.
Stage 2: Thursday 17
167 km, D+ 2000 m
The last 30 km are on a circuit (2.5 laps).
Stage 3: Friday 18
179 km, D+ 3000 m
The last 30 km are again on a circuit (2 laps), a very hilly one.
Stage 4: Saturday 19
20 km, D+ 350 m, ITT
There is a 1 mile climb after 4 km, half of which is around 10% steep. Then very light hills, and then a mini wall followed by an uphill false flat after 14 km. On reaches the line after a 2 km long descent.
Stage 5: Sunday 20
177 km, D+ 2900 m
Guess what? The last 30 km are on a circuit (a bit more than 2 laps), very hilly again.
Stage 2: Thursday 17
167 km, D+ 2000 m
There was quite a lot of action today.
50 km from the line, Coloquick launched a team attack; their 2 guys managed to close the 1′–1′30″ gap with the breakaway where they already had 1 guy.
After the bonus sprint, the 3 Coloquick dropped everyone else in the breakaway!
Around 20-22 km from the line, Soudal-QS accelerated at the front of the peloton and created splits. Van der Poel (🇳🇱 Alpecin), stuck behind, had to wear out his teammates and work himself to form the peloton again.
1 or 2 miles later, 4 men from different Word Teams broke away. At 13 km from the line, 3 moved back to the peloton, leaving Honoré (🇩🇰 EF) look for a contract alone 🙂
The Coloquick fellows were caught 10 km from the line, as there was a series of attacks at the front the peloton, often by Lidl-Trek riders.
Finally, S. Kragh (🇩🇰 Lidl-Trek) and Vercher (🇫🇷 Total) managed to break away. The Frenchman looked ‘busy’ in the Dane’s wheel all along but he still instantly took every relay the Dane asked.
The peloton chase was successively led by single riders from various teams: Alpecin → Soudal-QS → EF → UAE, and they caught the duo just before the flamme rouge.
The final part was made of uphill false flats section: a steeper one until 400-500 m, a flatter one until 200 m and a steeper one again. I mean, the steeper ones were not as steep as yesterday’s. Van der Poel🇳🇱 launched his sprint from a good position at the right time (around 150 m), but he couldn’t take over many riders and was probably taken over by one or two, and only finished 5th, as Van den Berg (🇳🇱 EF), 3rd yesterday, scored his first victory this year, allowing him to take the leader jersey as well.
Gautherat (🇫🇷 Decathlon) makes it onto the stage podium again, thus takes 2nd place in GC.
A Coloquick rider (Haugsted🇩🇰) had sprinted to get time bonus at the I.S. He managed to stay in the peloton and stick to the first part before the split, so he is close to GC top-10 now.
Coloquick riders also occupy the first 2 position in the Mountain classification. (BTW, all climbs bring the same amount of points, but the number of climbs differs from stage to stage: tomorrow there are plenty, 3 in the first two thirds of the race, and 5 in the last quarter!)