The third and last week stays in the Alps – that we already reached on Sunday, except for the last day which suddenly ‘jumps’ to Paris.
Standings after week 2
General Classification:
Unless he undergoes an accident, the race is already won for the Slovenian rider. The battle for podium is however still open, after the unfortunate withdrawal of Vingegaard🇩🇰. The top-10 didn’t change much, but it ‘stretched’, and Pidcock and Jegat entered it.
- Tadej Pogatchar 🇸🇮 UAE
- Remco Evenepoel 🇧🇪 Bora: +5′00″
- Isaac Del Toro 🇲🇽 UAE +5′58″
- Paul Seixas 🇫🇷 Decathlon: +6′23″
- Florian Lipowitz 🇩🇪 Bora: +6′48″
- Juan Ayuso 🇪🇸 Lidl-Trek: +7′28″
- Mattias Skjelmose 🇩🇰 Lidl-Trek: +9′38″
- Lenny Martinez 🇫🇷 Bahrain: +10′28″
- Thomas Pidcock 🇬🇧 Q36.5: +11′19″
- Jordan Jegat 🇫🇷 Total : +19′12″
5 other riders follow close to Jegat, at less than 25 minutes, and can thus hope to enter top-10: Voisard🇨🇭, Carapaz🇪🇨, Van Wilder🇧🇪, A. Yates🇬🇧, and Piganzoli🇮🇹 (Visma) who will have to make up for Vingegaard’s withdrawal. The rest is farther than 40 minutes.
Points classification (Green jersey):
Merlier🇧🇪, who was in 4th position, couldn’t finish the race in time on Sunday and withdrew. Philipsen did the best 2nd week.
- Mads Pedersen 🇩🇰 Lidl-Trek: 417 pts (+149)
- jasper Philipsen 🇧🇪 Alpecin: 191 (+195)
- Biniam Girmay 🇪🇷 NSN: 361 (+138)
- Max Kanter 🇩🇪 Astana: 271 (+99)
- Olav Kooij 🇳🇱 Decathlon 210 (+100)
Mountain (Polka Dots jersey)
Those who try to fight for points cannot seem to be able to beat Pogatchar who doesn’t, and other GC guys aren’t far either. Martinez didn’t go for points this week, and Baudin disappeared.
- Tadej Pogatchar 🇸🇮 UAE: 67 pts (+39)
- Valentin Paret-Peintre 🇫🇷 Soudal-QS: 45 (+33)
- Richard Carapaz 🇪🇨 EF: 39 (+38)
- Paul Seixas 🇫🇷 Decathlon: 34 (+22)
- Remco Evenepoel 🇧🇪 Bora: 31 (+26)
- Isaac Del Toro 🇲🇽 UAE: 30 (+20)
Stages
Stage 16, Tuesday 21
26 km, D+ 500 m, Individual Time Trial
This ITT presents an unusual profile, with an horrible 4,5% strongly uphill false-flat right from the start which lasts for 10 km (!), then a steeper descent and only finally a flat section.
Press to see the map
Stage 17, Wednesday 22
175 km D+ 2400 m
This stage will probably be disputed between a breakaway which could leave in the small/medium climbs of the first 60 km, and sprinter teams. Perhaps Pedersen will attempt to go into the breakaway.
Press to see the map and the finish profile
Stage 18, Thursday 23
186 km, D+ 3900 m
Many climbs, long and short, but never too steep. There is a finish on top, but it might still be good for breakaways if GC guys wait for the 2 harder stages which follow.
NB: the way the profile is drawn makes it look almost flat, but there is almost 4000 m of total elevation to climb, it is really a medium mountain stage.
Press to see the map
Stage 19, Friday 24
128 km, D+ 3600 m
The first Alpe d’Huez stage presents climbs in the beginning and in the end, with smaller and smoother hills in the centre part. It is short. A breakaway might succeed if Pogatchar doesn’t want the stage (who else would ride for it after the withdrawals of Vingegaard and Lipowitz?).
Press to see the map and the profiles of Noyer Pass and Alpe d'Huez.
Stage 20, Saturday 25
171 km, D+ 5600 m
Another finish at the Alpe d’Huez after 3 Hors-Catégorie climbs for the main and last mountain stage. As the stage also starts from the bottom of the Alpe d’Huez, I fear about the crowd being too important, as it will also be compacted on this reduced version of the climb, and those risks come on top of the race staying 2 days in the same place and this stage being on a week-end.
Stage 21 (final), Sunday 26
133 km, D+ 1600 m
Last year’s experiment is renewed: 4 laps of Champs-Élysées only (7 km) and then 3 longer (16 km) laps including the climb to Montmartre and its somewhat scary downhill. The finish is located a bit farther from the last top: 11 km instead of 6, which may cause more regrouping and favour punchers a little bit less.
Special regulations: if the streets are deemed slippery, times shall be taken on the 1st crossing of the finish line, or any later crossing of the line. Riders must complete the full distance in any case. Only one car per team is allowed on the circuits.
Stage 19, Friday 24
128 km, D+ 3600 m
The first Alpe d’Huez stage presents climbs in the beginning and in the end, with smaller and smoother hills in the centre part. It is short. A breakaway might succeed if Pogatchar doesn’t want the stage (who else would ride for it after the withdrawals of Vingegaard and Lipowitz?).
Standings before the first Alpe d’Huez stage:
General classification
- Tadej Pogatchar 🇸🇮 UAE
- Remco Evenepoel 🇧🇪 Bora: +4′32″
- Isaac Del Toro 🇲🇽 UAE +6′51″
- Paul Seixas 🇫🇷 Decathlon: +7′11″
- Juan Ayuso 🇪🇸 Lidl-Trek: +9′22″
- Mattias Skjelmose 🇩🇰 Lidl-Trek: +10′14″
- Lenny Martinez 🇫🇷 Bahrain: +12′50″
- Thomas Pidcock 🇬🇧 Q36.5: +12′58″
- Jordan Jegat 🇫🇷 Total : +14′04″
- Richard Carapaz 🇪🇨 EF: +21′00″
Points classification (Green jersey):
- Mads Pedersen 🇩🇰 Lidl-Trek: 477 pts (+60)
- jasper Philipsen 🇧🇪 Alpecin: 445 (+54)
- Biniam Girmay 🇪🇷 NSN: 361 (0)
- Max Kanter 🇩🇪 Astana: 271 (0)
- Olav Kooij 🇳🇱 Decathlon 230 (+20)
Mountain (Polka Dots jersey)
- Tadej Pogatchar 🇸🇮 UAE: 70 pts (+3)
- Valentin Paret-Peintre 🇫🇷 Soudal-QS: 69 (+24)
- Richard Carapaz 🇪🇨 EF: 63 (+24)
- Remco Evenepoel 🇧🇪 Bora: 36 (+5)
- Paul Seixas 🇫🇷 Decathlon: 34 (0)
- Isaac Del Toro 🇲🇽 UAE: 30 (0)
In the last mountain stage on Saturday (stage #20), they will be as many points to grab (70) as the Mountain classification leader possesses presently after 18 stages 🙄
A confirmation of previous tendencies:
- Seixas (🇫🇷 Decathlon) gets a tiny bit weaker every day. Too bad he never pushed his advantage when he was a bit stronger than several of his opponents. That’s AG2R’s tradition 🙂
- Ayuso (🇪🇸 Lidl-Trek) gets weaker much, much faster. According to stage results, after his breakaway, Q. Simmons🇺🇸 had to babysit him up the final climb, once gain.
- Conversely, Evenepoel (🇧🇪 Bora) and Del Toro (🇲🇽 UAE) appear slightly better now.
- L. Martinez (🇫🇷 Bahrain) is a pain in the ass and he fails to understand that riding like he does may be fine when he and the other guy(s) with hum detached from the rest of the riders because they were the strongest in the race; but it is absolutely not fine, when you are a breakaway of weaker climbers than the GC leader(s) coming fast behind you. Even more so when you also play a GC position.
- Carapaz (🇪🇨 EF) is damn, strong in this 3rd week. Same as last year’s 3rd week when he was on fire. And, again, he isn’t afraid of playing with others’ nerves once he has already secured a victory. Another confirmation is that he cannot outsprint V. Paret-Peintre (🇫🇷 Soudal-QS) but he lasts longer.
Non-Pogatchar GC leaders only climbed faster than Carapaz🇪🇨/Martinez🇫🇷 by about 1 minute, in a 14 km climb! And it’s not like those two climbed in an optimal way…
L. Martinez🇫🇷 takes over both Lidl-Trek riders in GC (not only the declining Ayuso🇪🇸 but also Skjelmose🇩🇰 for a handful of seconds). In a way, it is thanks to the Lidl-Trek riders in the breakaway; however Lidl-Trek pulling the breakaway a bit unnecessarily may have been the result of a deal between Lidl-Trek/Pedersen🇩🇰 and EF/Carapaz🇪🇨. I previously noted that Pedersen🇩🇰 could ride for others in recognition of another team/rider’s attitude.
Jegat (🇫🇷 Total) blew up early, and loses a position in GC to Carapaz🇪🇨 and his good finish.
Carapaz🇪🇨 will wear the Polka Dots jersey tomorrow. For real, but only 1 point ahead of Pogatchar🇸🇮. Vingegaard🇩🇰 then V. Paret-Peintre🇫🇷 wore it for many days (since after stage #6 (Tourmalet)), but Pogatchar🇸🇮 was the actual leader of the classification. Carapaz🇪🇨 was losing only 2 points to V. Paret-Peintre🇫🇷 each time the latter was passing a summit just in front of him, and scored points for 1st and 3rd places in the last two climbs.
Only 2 stages are left to avoid the very rare humiliation of a Tour de France without a French victory (only occurrences: 1999 after the Festina case, and 1926 the longest Tour with 1,500 miles more than the current edition and Belgians all over).
Apparently Pog has never won on d’Huez. So I don’t see how anyone else wins the stage given he’ll be hungry for this. A breakaway with like 10 minutes at the base of the Alpe is probably the only way someone else wins it. UAE being weakened right now, and the potential need to make Del Toro a full domestique, makes this slightly interesting.
Edit: I’ll be rooting for Kuss to get in the break. Somebody like him has a real chance if the break is allowed to get a big gap.
Stage 18, Thursday 23
186 km, D+ 3900 m
Many climbs, long and short, but never too steep. There is a finish on top, but it might still be good for breakaways if GC guys wait for the 2 harder stages which follow.
NB: the way the profile is drawn makes it look almost flat, but there is almost 4000 m of total elevation to climb, it is really a medium mountain stage.
No clear breakaway managed to form before the top of the first climb, where V. Paret-Peintre (🇫🇷 Soudal-QS) and Carapaz (🇪🇨 EF) jumped off the peloton to catch and overtake the small new breakaway which already held 2 EF riders. They passed the summit in that order, and their attack brought the peloton back at the front, with Pedersen (🇩🇰 Lidl-Trek) passing this (admittedly overrated) 1st category in 5th position. He doesn’t look tired!
Pedersen🇩🇰 managed to get in a breakaway soon after that, and while there were a lot of reconfigurations within breakaways along the stage, succeeded in reaching the Intermediate Sprint ahead today!
One more time, V. Paret-Peintre🇫🇷 won all GPMs before Carapaz🇪🇨 except the final one, even though he was in the final group of 6. This pair previously had to jump from a breakaway to another at some point in order to be able to pass first in climbs. In the end, this effort must have stayed in the French skeleton’s legs, but Carapaz🇪🇨 flew in the final climb, after a long period during which the 6 riders were looking at each other. Well, 5 riders, as R. Garcia P. (🇪🇸 Movistar) was struggling to remain with/near the group.
On a very different type of finish, Schmid (🇨🇭 Jayco) beats Jorgenson (🇺🇸 Visma) for 2nd place. Jorgenson has no sprint at all, and Schmid🇨🇭 made 2nd yesterday already, amidst real sprinters; so, there wasn’t much of a chance of a different result 😄
The only survivor from the other breakaways, which included a large number of riders, was another Movistar (Castrillo🇪🇸) who barely managed to stay a few seconds ahead of the peloton. The two Movistar riders finishing 6th and 7th bring 100 UCI points to their team.
The peloton did nothing at all.
When the gap with the breakaway went over 8 minutes, Total and Q36.5 started pulling, because Carapaz🇪🇨 was getting a bit too close to Jegat🇫🇷 and Pidcock🇬🇧 (and of course, it was Carapaz, not a sprinter who would have died in the final climb but a climber more or less as good as they are).
No one tried anything at any time, despite seeing how UAE was losing men.
The final climb was a long procession. The peloton was reduced to barely more than top leaders, yet nobody tried anything at any point, not even in the last mile or half-mile.
In spite of the presence of Ze Elect (🇫🇷 Decathlon) on the race, we are getting closer to witnessing a Tour de France without a single French🇫🇷 stage victory.
It would be the first one since '99, I reckon. And in '99, they had an excuse, as all hadn’t removed the handcuffs they got in '98 🤣
Before that, the only time it happened is exactly one century ago, in 1926… 😱
The third and last week stays in the Alps – that we already reached on Sunday, except for the last day which suddenly ‘jumps’ to Paris.
What a move my Richie! Very happy to see EF on the board before the end of the tour.
Meanwhile things are looking a little more difficult for UAE as a virus tears through their team. They ruled the peloton with an iron fist in the first few stages, but its going to be harder and harder with guys dropping out or being sick.
Stage 17, Wednesday 22
175 km D+ 2400 m
This stage will probably be disputed between a breakaway which could leave in the small/medium climbs of the first 60 km, and sprinter teams. Perhaps Pedersen will attempt to go into the breakaway.
I won’t comment much on this one, as I only carefully watched the first 2 miles, then was hearing fragments from another room, until I
satlay in front of the telly for the last 50 km in order to reconnect properly with race… and slept through a good 45 of them, although a lot of things were happening.Veistroffer (🇫🇷 Lotto) was a km-0 attacker, but blew up as soon as the first gentle slope started.
Del Toro (🇲🇽 UAE) was dropped at some point with sprinters. Nobody took advantage of it.
A. Yates (🇬🇧 UAE) got sick or fully depleted his batteries, and was dropped from all groups.
Jegat (🇫🇷 Total) managed to get into the right, big breakaway. As the peloton only came 9 mn behind, that gives him a lot of breathing space to save his final GC rank (top-10: 9th at the moment). He left the territory of those around 25 mn, to get close to the guys ahead of him: L. Martinez (🇫🇷 Bahrain) and Pidcock (🇬🇧 Q36.5), at 13 mn, are now just 1 minute ahead.
Pedersen (🇩🇰 Lidl-Trek) was extremely active today. Yet at the end of the day, Philipsen (🇧🇪 Alpecin), who spared no effort either, is now at the same level as him in the fight for the Green jersey.
Bit of a wasted day for Pedersen, tried to both win and win the jersey and ended up doing neither. Let’s see if he gets clear today and wins some points.
I don’t know why he stopped riding when he was in the group of 6 (?), and one guy (Stuyven?) broke away. The group was more than 1 minute ahead of the rest of the big breakaway. That’s what happened, right? (everything is fuzzy in my mind)
As for today, he will certainly be tired from yesterday’s expedition. Same thing for the teammates who helped him.
One positive point however is that there is 0 transfer: they restart from the same town where they arrived yesterday! I put an exclamation mark because what should be the norm is incredibly are these days 😄
Another problem is that, although it doesn’t look that, today (stage #18) is very hard: it presents more elevation gain than the first Alpe d’Huez stage will. The I.S. is 55 km from the line, however, thus not all this elevation gain has to be ridden of course.
If I were Alpecin, I’d send at least Van der Poel with the mission to stick to Pedersen’s wheel as soon as he moves an inch. Goal: 1. be a deadweight 2. beat him on the sprint by harassing him.
Glad to see that Philipsen in fact CAN maintain a straight line in a sprint
Stage 16, Tuesday 21
26 km, D+ 500 m, Individual Time Trial
This ITT presents an unusual profile, with an horrible 4,5% strongly uphill false-flat right from the start which lasts for 10 km (!), then a steeper descent and only finally a flat section.
I watched little of the race. In other times, the horrible flat climb would have caused a few riders to miscalculate their effort by not finding their pace on this bastard slope, but in the days of computerised cycling, it cannot happen.
Therefore there were very few surprises. The profile, a more regular version of the Gavarnie stage finish, looked perfect for Evenepoel (🇧🇪 Bora) and Pogatchar (🇸🇮 UAE), and so it was. We might have believed Seixas (🇫🇷 Decathlon) to make a difference over Del Toro (🇲🇽 UAE), but Sunday’s stage was a big warning that one shouldn’t be overconfident about that, and in the end there was almost no difference. Ayuso (🇪🇸 Lidl-Trek) confirmed as well the more serious troubles he experienced on Sunday. Skelmose (🇩🇰 Lidl-Trek) may have done a bit better than expected, but he is used to ITT top-10s.
In fact, the only true change in top-10 is caused by Lipowitz🇩🇪’s crash (on the flat section) and withdrawal.
Among the 6 contenders for places 9 and 10, Voisard (🇨🇭 Tudor) did the best time. Yates (🇬🇧 UAE) probably didn’t give a damn, which allowed Piganzoli (🇮🇹 Visma) to gain 2 ranks in order to try to save GC for his team.
Feel bad for Lipo. Hope he recovers and gets back soon.
Outside of the top GC guys, Tarling made for an entertaining early portion. He was screaming down the course.
Zero chance del toro doesn’t get p2 with the way UAE have been controlling. Happy for Remco’s stage win but that’s the end of that surely
I’d typically agree, but as incredible as Del Toro can ride, he’s had a couple of “off” days that have shown that he’s not invincible.
Remco might be able to build a bigger lead on some of the other guys in this TT stage, but then we’ll see what happens for Alpe d’Huez.
Remco certainly seems due for an off day too, but who knows. I could see him going into the red, getting angry, gesticulating wildly at motos and other riders, and losing 3 min in one of the Alps stages. He’ll probably win today and get a minute or two on Del Toro, but not sure if that’s enough buffer for his eventual Remco© moment.
One thing we’ve learned so far is that no one besides Tadej is unbeatable. They all are at risk of a bad day that changes the standings.
I hope you are right!
What’s procy cling?
