Today's stage was a hilly restart to the Tour de France after the first day off in Clermont Ferrand. After a fast paced, crazy, and chaotic first 9 stages from Bilbao to the Puy de Dome via the Pyrennes. The second week started in the Massif Central
Route Description: The tenth stage was from Vulcania to Issoire over a
distance of 167. km. The stage was run thru the Massif Central region
of rolling terrain that includes extinct volcanoes, like the Puy de
Dome. The climb featured two category 3 climbs preceding the category 2 Col de la Croix Saint-Robert. This was followed by two category 3 climbs with the last one leading to the descent into Issoire.
Race Summary and Analysis: This stage started with attempts to form a breakaway, but every attack would result in a counterattack that would bring the peloton back together. Eventually Tadej Pogacar and Jonas Vingegaard would drive up the pace to an even higher rate when they began to attack. The first hour was run at an average speed of over 51 km/h. This high speed start after a rest day actually caught some of the yellow jersey contenders out as they were having trouble over the hilly parcours. Romain Bardet of DSM and David Gaudu of Groupama-FDJ were dropped and fell behind by up to two and a half minutes from the front of the race, which at points was the peloton. Bardet and Gaudu would get their teams to chase the peloton and would bring the time gap down. A break of 14 riders would form with 86 km to go. In the group were Pello Bilbao of Bahrain-Victorious, Michal Kwatkowski of Ineos-Grenadiers, Kristin Neilands of Israel-Premiere Tech, and Julian Alaphillippe of Soudal-Quickstep. This break didn't get away easily as the peloton chased for a while due to Pello Bilbao's high position in the GC, the yellow jersey race. Once the break was formed, the pace in the peloton backed off which allowed the Bardet-Gaudu group to return to the peloton. The breakaway would get a three minute and a half lead over the peloton. The second category climb and three category climb afterwards reduced the peloton size. The sprinters were left behind to try and survive the time cut and ride another day. Neilson Powless, wearing the polka dot jersey, would be dropped and would arrive to the finish line after the peloton. The breakaway was split over the rolling terrain with the lead group including Bilbao, Neilands, and O'Connor. A chase group formed that had Julian Alaphillippe. Neilands would attack at 53 km to go. Wout Van Aert and Mathieu VanderPoel broke away from the peloton, but would be caught several kilometers later. Meanwhile Neilands has broken away by himself with 33km to go. He would crest the last climb by himself with approximately a 40 second lead. He would race down the descent trying to elude the two chase groups. The first chase had a 20 second deficit with approximately 5 km to go. He would be caught with 3km to go, but the Alaphillippe group would never get closer to 20 seconds behind the front, but would fall back to a 40 second deficit by the finish line. Ben O'Connor would make an attack at 1.8 km to go to try and solo to victory. In the reduced bunch sprint Pello Bilbao took the stage for Bahrain-Victorious. He would dedicate the stage to his recently deceased teammate Gino Mader. In addition to winning the stage Bilbao made a great strategic move getting in the breakaway. His deficit was over seven minutes at the start of the stage and he shaved over three minutes with the breakaway that stayed away. He timed his time gain and stage winning breakaway with the opportunity to ride in the peloton and recover from the effort on a flat stage. On stage 5 Jai Hendley was in a day long breakaway and gained over three minutes to pull on the yellow jersey, but he would pay for his efforts the next day on stage 6 in the high Pyrennes.
No comments:
Post a Comment