The first important stage race of the year (and its random weather conditions) shall start on Sunday the 8th in France, one day before Tirreno-Adriatico.
This year, the course completely avoids the Massif Central, but pays a brief visit into Morvan.
Despite the avoidance of the Massif Central, looking at profiles, there seems to be only 1 stage guaranteed for pure sprinters (the 2nd). The first one may smile upon sprinters-punchers, but even the stage going down the Rhône valley ends with climbs for punchers or punchers-climbers.
We may keep an eye on (among others):
- Vingegaard🇩🇰 from Visma, for his first race since his withdrawal from the European Championship last year;
Almeida🇵🇹 from UAE, a little bit sluggish so far;- Ayuso🇪🇸
& Skjelmose🇩🇰from Lidl-Trek; - Onley🇬🇧 & Vauquelin🇫🇷 from Ineos;
- Gaudu🇫🇷 & Costiou🇫🇷 from FDJ, if you are French and masochist, or if they raise the level they showed lately;
- L. Martinez🇫🇷 from Barhein.
Stages profiles
stage 1 (Sunday the 8th): 
stage 2: 
stage 3 (Team Time Trial): 
stage 4: 
stage 5: 
stage 6: 
stage 7: 
stage 8 (Sunday the 15th): 
Stage 5
Another 3 riders didn’t start. A Jayco and Sivakov (🇷🇺🇫🇷 UAE) withdrew early in the stage too.
Gaudu (🇫🇷 FDJ) is dropped by the peloton in or at the top of the first 3rd category climb of the day…
20 km farther, Gaudu🇫🇷’s goin’ home… ➡️ 🏚️
I thought it could be one of his early failures when a stage starts quickly on a hilly terrain and the battle for breakaway remains intense for 1 or 2 hours, and then he recovers and catches up with the main groups, as he is familiar with this type of temporary failures, but no.
Before it started, everyone said that the course of this Paris–Nice would not allow creating gaps. Well… 🤣
It was quite a race today again. It lacked the harsh weather and dramatic events of yesterday, but otherwise…
After the first 70 km of battle to create a breakaway, the rest was short before the final series of 4 Ardèchois climbs. In fact even that part wasn’t eventless, as Campenaerts (🇧🇪 Visma) and two Movistar had decided to make a (big) jump from the peloton to the breakaway (and succeeded).
Visma was keeping the gap suspiciously low. As soon as the first climb (Sècheras) started, there was an attack in the breakaway, and an acceleration by Armirail (🇫🇷 Visma) at the front of the peloton. In the breakaway, I think (I missed a few seconds) that Cavagna (🇫🇷 FDJ) was the first to drop after Cepeda (🇪🇨 Movistar) attacked, followed at distance by Prodhomme (🇫🇷 Décathlon) and Vlasov (🇷🇺 Bora), and farther by Tarling (🇬🇧 Ineos, in the breakaway again!) and Campenaerts🇧🇪. In the peloton, Armirail🇫🇷’s attack reduced it to about 30 riders, but as he was the only teammate of Vingegaard🇩🇰 left, he reduced his pace mid-slope.
Then Vingegaard🇩🇰 got Campenaerts🇧🇪 coming back from the breakaway, to help him catch Cepeda🇪🇨 and accelerate at the beginning of the second climb. While the peloton was being thinned again, Vingegaard🇩🇰 attacked; L. Martinez (🇫🇷 Bahrein) tried to follow a bit, to no avail (he also had tried to attack a few seconds before Vingegaard🇩🇰, I think, or was it someone else? edit: most likely Paret-Peintre). Ineos, with Onley🇬🇧 pulling Vauquelin🇫🇷, was preparing to attack too, but they didn’t have the time.
Behind were mostly the top riders from yesterday, in disorderly positions, with riders dropping then coming back. But they didn’t help each other much: in the following sections, they mostly attacked each other, stopped, attacked and so on. The only successful attack was V. Paret-Peintre’s (the 🇫🇷 skeleton, Soudal-QS) attack #17.
Summary of the day: Daddy Jonas teaches the kids a lesson.
Among the non-Danish top-10 riders, Vauquelin🇫🇷 didn’t look as strong as he was yesterday, nor as he hoped to be; the legs didn’t exactly follow his will to climb in the classification.
The time lost looking at each other in the first (non-Danish) group allowed Rondel (🇫🇷 Tudor) and even Soler (🇪🇸 UAE) to come back. So, Soler🇪🇸 is still an important threat for L. Martinez🇫🇷’s 5th place in GC, deprived of the last time bonus by Tejada’s (🇨🇴 Astana) sprint.
Good performance by 37 years old I. Izagirre (🇪🇸 Cofidis) who is in good shape at the moment, and managed to stay with Vauquelin🇫🇷 and Co. 👍 (and that’s 20 UCI points for his Pro Team).
Nice roads/landscape today.
Only 129 rides left. In Nice, it will look like Bessèges’ peloton 😃
FDJ’s secondary leader, Costiou🇫🇷, finished today ½ hour behind the winner, for the second day in a row. He has now the worst GC position in his team, 113th at 1 hour…
128, as Romeo (🇪🇸 Movistar) won’t restart, despite having joined the breakaway with Campenaerts🇧🇪 yesterday. A scheme I seem to see more and more often:
Anyway, Movistar is now down to 4 riders. Still one more than Jayco.
125 in fact. Onley🇬🇧, J. Bernard🇫🇷 and another rider do not start either. Lidl-Trek is thus down to 4 riders too.
I thought yesterday was a good stage, though I think the distance with which Vingegaard won was larger than it needed to be because the group behind just couldn’t work together. I guess they’re resigned to fighting for 2nd - which I understand, they’re not catching Vingegaard.
I wonder if he will go for more stages - usually he takes 2 in a row and then relaxes and plays it more or less safe. But he’s a lot more explosive than he used to be, so maybe he can’t help himself.
Yes. I think we can even go into detail a bit farther.
There was not an inch flat or flat-ish after the moment Vingegaard attacked, therefore the advantage of a group over a single man was weak (in these modern times, basically nil). That’s why everyone seemed to have wanted to attack right there.
He attacked in the St-Jean climb there:
But this being stated, not only they didn’t work together well, but they actively worked against each other (too many Frenchmen ⇒ too much infighting?). They did that so much, that they were caught up by weaker, dropped, more isolated riders. So they were on average really slow; and therefore as you say lost way more time to Vingegaard that they could have.
The opposition having been decimated (before and during the race), and him being in good shape, he may accidentally win other stages, if his team doesn’t put 10 kg of lead in his romper suit 😆 Having 4 Frenchmen in top-10 is a sign that riders who could have competed with Vingegaard are not there any more 😜
Anyway, yesterday’s victory was planned by the team (Campenaerts positioning, the chase, the use of Armirail and Campenaerts, the perfect location for the attack), and perhaps the team will want to have a rest, even if Vingegaard is still hungry. If they don’t want to rest, now… he may win all 3 remaining stages 😀
Don’t threaten me with a good time! I’d like to see the people who claim he is well below Pogacar’s level start to wonder a bit.
Still, for the sake of cycling and the race, let’s hope not,
I forgot the case where Visma wants to rest, but other teams bring Vingegaard in the same position his team would have done. That’s quite common, after all.