The Tour de Romandie starts today with a prologue, the only World Tour race that still has one. It’s different from an opening time trial as it’s defined as no more than 8km, also the rules say if a rider crashes and doesn’t finish they can start tomorrow’s stage with time of the slowest rider.
It’s not just the prologue, Romandie’s course is often traditional, even retro: no wall-climbs, no cobbles, no gravel. But this is part of the attraction for participants where Giro contenders get as risk-free racing as they can hope for, all on opulent Swiss tarmac. Also teams can test out younger riders in a World Tour stage race that’s less hectic. For a change the weather forecast looks good too.
Remco Evenepoel is the obvious pick for Romandie, two time trial stages and the long, steady climb to the Thyon 2000 summit finish suit him but he’s got to get past UAE and last year’s winner Carlos Rodriguez who looked handy on the way to Liège. Evenepoel’s returned to racing at an usual time as there are few races to suit him in May given he’s not doing the Giro d’Italia. So Romandie is a key test before he returns to training and with an eye on the Dauphiné in June. Reading Daniel Benson’s blog it seems Ineos have their eyes on him too.
If Romandie is retro, contrast it with the Giro that has something new and innovative: the Red Bull KM. Only it’s just the day’s intermediate sprint which offers a regulation time bonus; the rest is presentation with the kilometre of road to the line branded by the soft drinks maker.
The search has been on for other forms of novelty here. There’s often been a “classics revelations” review to see which riders made a name for themselves in the spring classics away from the headline results and podiums. Only this time few riders got a look-in, even the established classics contenders struggled so a couple of paragraphs rather than a full post. Matthew Brennan (Visma-LAB) is the stand-out pick as he won the GP de Denain at the age of 19, he outmanoeuvred a breakaway of eight riders and got his team’s only spring classic win.
Louis Barré (Intermarché-Wanty) was sixth in the Amstel and even trading counter-attacks with Ben Healy and Tom Pidcock in the finish. Thibau Nys (Lidl-Trek) was among many frozen out in the Flèche Wallonne but fifth place in Liège shows he can now handle 250km races, that was arguably his challenge this spring. 25 year old Yevgeniy Fedorov (XDS-Astana) had some strong moments too.
A revelation of a different kind was Uno-X’s 7-Eleven kit for Liège-Bastogne-Liège, a retro throwback to the old American team which seemed to work, it was easy to spot and clear. Under the UCI rules teams can have special kit for up to three events per year, so it could be one Sunday but an event could be a grand tour too. Lotto’s combination jersey was also a retro theme that cleverly blended every version of past jerseys into one. Soudal-Quickstep had one to promote co-sponsor Ekopak, less memorable. We might see more of this but with ordinary fans struggling to spot teams there are trade-offs too.
Here’s the World Tour relegation battle chart above. XDS-Astana are now just 1,022 points short of 18th place and World Tour safety having started the season 4,720 points behind. They’re not far off their score for 2023 and 2024 and it’s “only” April, which feels early in the year but we’ve had a disproportionate chunk of points already. But the story so far of this relegation battle is one of steady trends rather than see-sawing fortunes. As the chart below shows Astana keep rising, Cofidis score here and there while Picnic-PostNL are stalling.
Away from the three year rankings, Lotto are having a stinker this season. They qualify for promotion to the World Tour thanks to past efforts but are not scoring like a top team right now. Injuries and illness are partly to blame. They’re in a Catch-22 situation where they really need promotion to the World Tour because if they don’t make it they’ll struggle for invites and attention next year as they won’t get the automatic wildcards. But financially they’re missing a co-sponsor when they surely need one to help fund a deeper squad in the World Tour?
Finally a riddle: if a team gets relegated from the World Tour, can it still participate in One Cycling?