One for the sprinters on Bordeaux.
La Gave de Po-gačar: Mads Pedersen went on the rampage with Victor Campenaerts to collect max points at the first intermediate sprint. He’s now on 168 points with Max Kanter and Biniam Girmay still on double-digits so likely to keep it here. No other move could stick until Ben O’Connor ended up solo off the front to start the col d’Aspin. He quickly got swept up like a stalk of wheat going into a combine harvester.
UAE continued the threshing on the Tourmalet setting a pace that cracked rider after rider and the old phrase of “riders get popped before La Mongie, riders attack after La Mongie” came to mind.
Isaac del Toro led out Tadej Pogačar in the streets of the eyesore resort but the Mexican’s easil readable facial expressions weren’t a response to the architecture, it was a tell and he couldn’t stay.
Jonas Vingegaard didn’t respond and tried to pace himself across. He got the gap down to 8-9 seconds but was pulling all sorts of faces and sure enough he would crack and lose 30 seconds by the top. A chase group of Paul Seixas, Florian Lipowitz and Del Toro made it over next and the trio were caught by Remco Evenepoel, Juan Ayuso, Matias Skjelmose, Sep Kuss and Lenny Martinez.
The eight rider chase group struggled to work together, Evenepoel and Lipowitz might have been wearing different jerseys, although this can speak to fatigue more than intrigue (update: Evenpoel has blasted his team mate for Lipo-suction, “I had asked for a lead-out, and I didn’t get one. Yes, I was angry, and rightly so. In the Tour of Catalonia, I rode at the front for him for 30 kilometres. I asked to do 1 kilometre of work at the front, and that wasn’t possible“… good luck to team management and its PR staff). The longest turns were taken by Evenepoel with help from Seixas as they chomped into Vingegaard’s lead, the former got over the Tourmalet without a disaster while the latter cleared it for the first time in a race and impressed. Meanwhile Pogačar was away and clear.
Pogačar finished with a bigger gap than he took at Hautacam last summer. While Vingegaard had a tough time he can console himself that he can almost climb as fast as Pogačar which might help for the mountain stages to come. Plus Pogačar is going to be in yellow for days to come. In his post-stage TV interview on FranceTV there was event a hint of concern about this, but a stone in his shoe rather than disaster.
Worse happened to yellow jersey Torsten Træen. Flame-grilled by the pace up the Tourmalet was understandable, even if he was probably among the top-20 before imploding. Then he crashed on the descent after touching wheels with a team mate and he broke a rib. The jersey had been plucked off his shoulders by then but this wasn’t the adieu he wanted.
Out come phrases like “le Tour est encore long” and “anything could happen“, journalese for result in Paris looks like a foregone conclusion but please don’t tune out. But if Pogačar looks likely to win in Paris today, he did before the race started too. Each to their own for tastes, you’re free to go for a ride or read haiku instead but there’s plenty to see behind Pogačar’s wake from sprints to breakaways, the podium and the green and polka-dot jerseys are all in play.
The Route: 175km and 850m of vertical gain, the flattest stage this year. The start in Hagetmau is because if the race has been camping in Pau it was too far to start from there to reach Pau and this small town was picked instead.
There’s the monotonous passage through the Landes forest. The intermediate sprint is gently downhill.
The passage through Cadillac – which gave its name to car brand via the founder of Detroit – has some pinch-points, as does the the climb of Béguey is 1.2km at 4%, a big ring kind of climb but some teams will want to get into position before all of this.
From here it’s flat again through the Côtes de Bordeaux terroir where the monoculture means exposed roads and little shade.
The Finish: flat and the same finish line. But the approach is different to 2024 when the race crossed the Garonne river with 2.5km to go after spiralling through an underpass to reach a bridge. This time the sprint zone begins with 5km to go and then it’s straight over a bridge and then onto the quays with 3.8km to go.
The Contenders: Jasper Philipsen (Alpecin-PremierTech) won here in 2023 but has talked about fatigue and not having the legs so far and so a harder pick. The flat day is ideal for Tim Merlier (Soudal-Quickstep) who lost contact with his train in Pau, but also lost his lead-out Bert Van Lerberghe on the Aspin, DNF. Biniam Girmay (NSN) is looking reliably quick. Olav Kooij (Decathlon-CMA CGM) made it look easy.
It’s hard to look beyond these four, only informed by Wednesday’s stage the ratings change. As with the preview for the Pau stage others have a chance and will ride on this hope but for the sake of argument send the peloton down the quays in Bordeaux and eight times out of ten one of the four wins. Still Max Kanter (XDS-Astana) did look good, both form and the formation are there.
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Merlier, Kooij |
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Philipsen, Girmay |
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Kanter, Pedersen |
Weather: 37°C and sunny. Normally it won’t be windy but there’s the outside chance of thunderstorms later on and if the clouds build so will the gusts of wind.
TV: KM0 is at 1.25pm and the finish is forecast for 5.25pm CEST. Tune in for the finish as this could be a real siesta stage if nobody attacks, but Baptiste Veistroffer may try again and if others accompany him we could see some sport later on.