A long day and one for the breakaway.
Stage 1 review: the win for Alex Baudin, he went in the early breakaway with eight others and the group struggled to get more than two minutes with Decathlon-CMA CGM leading the chase although reduced by one rider when Matthew Riccitello abandoned, struck with food poisoning. The escapees looked doomed going into the final climb.
Baudin rode away from his companions and crucially did not lose any time on the chasing bunch. The big teams set a strong pace up the climb and dropped plenty but no squad would use up their riders. Baudin was out of reach as long as the main contenders watched each other.
He landed his biggest win, after taking the tricky Tour du Limousin before and is now building a palmarès when before he was noted for being disqualified from the Giro following a Tramadol test, an outcome that was never explained.
One back to the valley floor the group saw attacks fly and riders profiting from the lack of control, notably Netcompany pair Oscar Onley and Kévin Vauquelin. Lidl-Trek missed the moves completely and Mattias Skjelmose and Juan Ayuso made some big moves to chase, Paul Seixas had Léo Bisiaux up the road but later on joined in the chase and his effort along with Ayuso seemed to shrink the gap and being 30 seconds behind at one point it was down to 12 on the line led home with a powerful sprint by Isaac Del Toro.
The Route: 234km and 3,800m of vertical gain. This amount of climbing is worthy of a mountain stage but today’s route has nothing too severe, instead the distance over a long course just means the climbing adds up. The route sticks to hilly terrain, avoiding valley roads and plains.
The Col du Chatain at the start is the hardest climb of the day, irregular and on a narrow road. The next climb is more gentle amid farmland. Then it’s across to the Rhone valley.
The Col Robert Marchand is the subject of today’s postcard and comes mid-way between the Rhone valley floor and the unmarked Col des Barraques, this is about 50km of climbing and if it’s rarely steep, it’s long period of load on the pedals.
The Côte des Baraques is a tough climb with 200km done, there’s 3km at 8.5%.
The final climb through Saint-Vidal is irregular with some steep sections but all open, it’s less about ambush and who has any force left.
The Finish: a scenic run through Le Puy-en-Velay and flat.
The Contenders: this is probably a day for the breakaway but several team have a house sprinter who could win today, think Dorian Godon (Netcompany), Wout van Aert (Visma-LAB), Benoît Cosnefroy (UAE) and Michael Matthews (Jayco) so we’ll if they go in the breakaway or if not whether their teams want to chase for five hours. All these names can infiltrate the break and win from there too.
Otherwise take a pick from breakaway candidates who are no threats to the GC contenders. A stage winner last year, Ivan Romeo (Movistar) is suited to this course, likewise team mate Pablo Castrillo. Baptiste Veistroffer (Lotto-Intermarché) is a breakaway specialist but this is a hilly day and he’s not a prolific winner nor is his team. By contrast Georg Steinhauser (EF) can win from here but will he be needed to defend Baudin’s yellow jersey, likewise Ben Healy? The course suits Quinn Simmons (Lidl-Trek) and Finn Fisher-Black (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe)
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Cosnefroy, Van Aert |
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Godon, Simmons |
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FF-B, Romeo, Matthews, Kron, Govekar |
Weather: sunshine and 25°C along the way but with a good chance of a downpour and thunderstorm towards the finish.
TV: KM0 is at 11.30am and the finish is due for 5.00pm.
Postcard from Saint-Félicien
Midway today there’s the Col Robert Marchand, a mountain pass named in tribute to Robert Marchand who among many things, set an hour record at the age of 102. He was a racer from the start, as a boy he had to pretend he was older in order to be able to start his first race.
As an adult he took up gymnastics and became French champion in one discipline. A firefighter, time spent in Venezuela and the Caribbean planting sugar cane, a lumberjack in Canada, he led a colourful life. But it was in retirement that he became famous when he took up cycling again at the age of 67 and started doing various long distance cyclosportif events.
One of these was the Ardèchoise where he made his debut at the age of 88 and he became a sort of mascot of the event. Such that he got to enjoy a mountain pass being named after him in 2011. But the moment was spoiled when riding to the commemoration as a truck clipped the Ardèchoise’s co-founder Gérard Mistler, who swerved and took out Marchand. The 99 year old fell hard needing 17 stitches. He resumed cycling but after the crash decided to limit himself to 100km a day.
At the age of 100 and then 102 he set hour records on the track, reaching 26.925 in 2014. This was a side-project, born out of a challenge to see how far he could ride on a static bike in his home on his 100th birthday. He kept on riding for more years and considered a fresh attempt at hour record at the age of 107 but this was not an official attempt, in part because the UCI did not want to be responsible for an event with a 107 year old and any health issues… but he still lapped the velodrome and in front of big audience. He died in May 2021 at the age of 109. Gérard Mistler put his longevity down to “physical upkeep, mental upkeep and optimism“.
The Col Robert Marchand climbed today was easy to rename. It is not a new road, instead it had long been Col du Marchand, literally “Merchant’s Past”, suggesting a long-established trade route to and from Saint-Félicien. It doesn’t show easily in the photo above but squint and you can see the old Col du Marchand sign on the left and on the right, set in fresh concrete, is the Col Robert Marchand sign. It’s a fitting tribute – especially as he was born in 1911 and the pass sits at 911m – but also opens up the possibility of renaming other mountain passes. But it’ll be a while before we get a story as remarkable as Robert Marchand.