Some steep climbs await in the finish.
Loire : Ineos won the stage, their first team time trial win since the Tour of Britain in 2020 which says something about the team’s reconstruction and something about the dwindling amount of these races too.
Lidl-Trek were two seconds behind but because Juan Ayuso took bonus seconds from placing on an intermediate sprint on Monday he’s in the yellow jersey.
Decathlon-CMA CGM were third, pipping Visma-LAB. UAE were eighth. Once again the format provided something interesting to talk about on a Tuesday. Josh Tarling seemed to be worth two riders for Ineos while Decathlon-CMA CGM’s Daan Hoole went solo for the final 4.5km.
The Route: 195km and “only” 2,520m of vertical gain, it’s hilly ride but the steep climbing is only for the finish. It’s a long ride east and the the first climb to the hamlet of La Croix des Cerisiers is just a long gradual road up. It’s over to the unmarked Col du Rebout but nothing steeper.
After the intermediate sprint it’s on to the route of the 2021 Tour de France but that continued to Le Creusot where Matej Mohorič won a lively stage. The Croix de la Libération is harder than the roadbook suggests, it’s got a wall of 20% which then eases and soon after comes a 15% section. Then comes a quick descent, a short flat passage and then the road starts to drag up.
The Finish: a tricky climb to ride, and equally hard to describe in words because the gradient just keeps changing in the final 1.5km. Flat then 12% then 6% and then it’s 16%, 18%, 14%, 18%. It’s not got the ferocity of the Mur de Huy but the difficulty comes from change in slope.
The Contenders: Lenny Martinez (Bahrain) is almost a local, having grown up about 40km to the west of today’s finish. Better for him he’s suited to sharp climbs and changes in pace and he has a good final kick. It’s how he won last year’s stage above La Côte-Saint André. But he hates the cold weather which means a chainring less.
Juan Ayuso (Lidl-Trek) is in yellow and so can afford to watch, react and snipe the win rather than gambling to take back time with an attack.
Kévin Vauquelin and Oscar Onley (Ineos) are both ideal for the stage today and if either wins, even in a photofinish on the line they stand to take the race lead thanks to the time bonus.
Axel Zingle has won uphill finishes like this before and can apparently do 1,250W for 30 seconds but is more likely to be deployed to help Jonas Vingegaard even if the Dane would like a longer climb.
At his best David Gaudu (Groupama-FDJ) could take this stage but his form isn’t sparkling.
Almost half the field are four minutes down so the breakaway has a chance but if a punchy climber is going to win from this then chances are the big teams won’t want to let them back in the race so the break will have it hard. Eddie Dunbar (Pinarello-Q36.5) and Pavel Sivakov (UAE) fit the bill as both are seven minutes down but the Irishman isn’t on great form and Sivakov might be more useful for UAE in support of McNulty in the finish. Expect TotalEnergies to try and Mattéo Vercher is their best bet ahead of Alexandre Delettre.
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Onley, Ayuso |
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Vauquelin, L Martinez |
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Gaudu, Vercher, D Martinez |
Weather: 10°C and wet as a weather front crosses France. The following days should better and today is just cold rather than icy but the damp conditions will make things harder.
TV: tune in for the final hour at 4.00pm to see the steep climb out of Autun and catch the finish at 5.00pm CET.
Postcard from the Signal d’Uchon
Today’s finish on the Signal d’Uchon sits in the Morvan, France’s smallest mountain range. The Morvan tops out with the Haut-Folin at 901m. Today’s finish is only 635m. You can ride higher with the Col de Haut-Folin which sits at 857m but which ever way you approach the pass the slope rarely gets more than 6% and it’s all on a wide, regular road. If a stage was to finish there the result would be different.
No hairpins, no cuttings, no embankments, the Signal d’Uchon is a tricky climb because it has few concessions to engineering to level the slope. It’s disruptive to ride up, the uneven gradient is hard to master. Ideally you want to profit from any easing of the slope to accelerate but it’s hard to judge and one wrongly timed surge can be ruinous.
France has rules for road construction that regulate the maximum gradient but there are many exceptions, particularly when old tracks have been incorporated into the road network. What constitutes the steepest road keeps forums busy as it’s a question of measurement, you can find half a metre of 50% on the inside of a hairpin bend, but for a sustained portion the chapel above Alès that hosts the finish of the Etoile de Bessèges is said top the bill with 33%. There are plenty of options for a kilometre over 15% too.
Race organisers are on the lookout for these steep roads. Paris-Nice has used Mont Brouilly before, or see last year “wall” stage. The Dauphiné/Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes tackles the Grand Colombier this summer, it’s done the even steeper Bastille road above Grenoble in 2023 where Giulio Ciccone won. The Tour de France has a “new” version of the Col du Haag which has 10% and 15% but also some nasty 1% and 3% to disrupt things.
Today is tricky and tomorrow’s stage features some backroads in the finale. Such climbs work best for racing and the TV spectacle the gradient keeps changing.
The paradise, or hell, for these kind of climbs is the Basque Country. The Itzulia Tour of the Basque Country puts the spotlight on some of them for a week, notably the Alto de Arrate above Eibar but there are plenty more. Indeed there are plenty in the French part of the Basque country too and around Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port you can find several of France’s steepest roads. But no race visits them and so they don’t exist in our psychogeography.