The race restarts on the National Day, and it will be as hot as the first week which cooked many riders who will spend Monday in an ice pool. The temperature will not decrease until Thursday perhaps, or Friday more surely, when it will not even be cool but just ‘more normally’ hot.
Weeks are shorter now, 6 days only. This one starts with a medium mountain stage, then presents 2 easy days, before getting harder over 3 mountain days, with a finish on top on the two week-end stages.
Standings after week 1
General Classification:
While the Slovenian detached a bit already, there are still many contenders (8) for the podium, and they all are expected favourites.
- Tadej Pogatchar 🇸🇮 UAE
- Jonas Vingegaard 🇩🇰 Visma: +2′42″
- Isaac Del Toro 🇲🇽 UAE +3′27″
- Remco Evenepoel 🇧🇪 Bora: +3′30″
- Juan Ayuso 🇪🇸 Lidl-Trek: +3′34″
- Paul Seixas 🇫🇷 Decathlon: +3′55″
- Florian Lipowitz 🇩🇪 Bora: +4′00″
- Lenny Martinez 🇫🇷 Bahrain: +4′21″
- Mattias Skjelmose 🇩🇰 Lidl-Trek: +4′57″
- Egan Bernal 🇨🇴 ineos : +9′12″
Points classification (Green jersey):
- Mads Pedersen 🇩🇰 Lidl-Trek: 268 pts
- Biniam Girmay 🇪🇷 NSN: 223
- Tim Merlier 🇧🇪 Soudal-QS: 213
- jasper Philipsen 🇧🇪 Alpecin: 191
- Max Kanter 🇩🇪 Astana: 172
- Olav Kooij 🇳🇱 Decathlon 110
Mountain (Polka Dots jersey)
Few points were scored so far.
- Tadej Pogatchar 🇸🇮 UAE: 28 pts
- Jonas Vingegaard 🇩🇰 Visma: 19
- Lenny Martinez 🇫🇷 Bahrain: 16
- Alex Baudin 🇫🇷 EF: 13
- Valentin Paret-Peintre 🇫🇷 Soudal-QS & Paul Seixas 🇫🇷 Decathlon: 12
Stages
Stage 10, Tuesday 14
167 km, D+ 3800 m
The stage in the Massif Central looks a bit like the previous (Ussel) stage, but the climbs are significantly more substantial and there is even less flat for recovery, so a breakaway of climbers more than punchers can be expected (if UAE doesn’t decide to win it from the peloton).
Press to the finish profile
Stage 11, Wednesday 15
161 km, D+ 1100 m
This is a sprinters stage.
Press to see profile and map
Stage 12, Thursday 16
179 km, D+ 1400 m
This one is a bit more hilly than the previous one, but those hills look far from enough to prevent another sprinters stage.
Press to see profile and map
Stage 13, Friday 17
206 km, D+ 2300 m
After 2 days of sprint, we are progressively getting back in business with this pilgrimage into the land of Pinot. Because the following two days will be finish-on-top stages, this one is likely to be granted to a breakaway. As always these days, it means that a ton of riders will try to join it. The two (not very difficult) climbs only start after 150 km of slightly hilly terrain, and this is the longest stage in this Tour.
Press to see the map and the profile of the main climb (Ballon d'Alsace)
Stage 14, Saturday 18
155 km, D+ 3900 m
This Alsatian mountain stage is a loop in the Vosges. It climbs again the same side of the Ballon d’Alsace that was climbed the day before. The almost final Haag Pass is basically a different road to get to the same point as the Grand Ballon climbed early in the stage.
Press to see the map and the profile of 2 climbs (Grand Ballon & Haag)
Stage 15, Sunday 19
184 km, D+ 4100 m
This weeks ends up as this year’s Dauphiné did (when Del Toro (🇲🇽 UAE) beat badly the rest of the field). The final climb is the same but the whole course which starts in the Jura mounts, before bypassing Geneva by staying on the French side, is very different, much more varied.
Press to see the map and the profile of 2 climbs (Croisette Pass & Solaison Plateau)
Stage 13, Friday 17
There was indeed a fight for a the breakaway. Several fights actually.
First there was a small group of 5. Of course too many teams were unhappy with this, so they never got more than a 10 seconds gap in what, 10 km? 15 km?
Then a huge group of more than 30 riders broke away., including some big names (not GC guys except Pidcock (🇬🇧 Q36.5) but many good contenders for the stage as well as top sprinters like Philipsen (🇧🇪 Alpecin)). This was a complete failure for Uno-X and Lidl-Trek who had nobody at the front! So Lidl-Trek started a hard pursuit, it was going super fast at the front as well as in the peloton. Pedersen🇩🇰 himself was pulling. This chase lasted 20 km, and then Lidl-Trek gave up. Strangely, riders from teams who hadn’t helped them or very little, like Uno-X, started attacking as the gap had grown to 45 seconds and the breakaway was still going fast.
Then, I don’t know how because I missed it, but Pedersen🇩🇰 whom I believed cooked by the chase, was in a counter-attack group! And that was the start of a new crazy pursuit which lasted close to 50 km! Pedersen🇩🇰 joined the first breakaway, which thus grew to more than 50 riders, perhaps 20 km from the Intermediate Sprint. He managed to pass the I.S. in 2nd position between Philipsen🇧🇪 and Girmay (🇪🇷 NSN)! He had managed to overturn a situation wrecked by his team.
In the first climb, there was only a tiny attack by Healy (🇮🇪 EF) followed by Vauquelin (🇫🇷 Ineos).
In the main climb (Ballon d’Alsace), Grégoire (🇫🇷 FDJ) blew up in less than 2 km… (he had also been taken in a split on the flat during the crazy chase, with other riders who didn’t participate much in the breakaway).
The group splits in many sub-groups. Matthews (🇦🇺 Jayco) managed to stay in the front group with 3 other teammates until relatively close to the summit, and passed with a bit more than 30 seconds only behind a group of 10. I thought the 2 Jayco at the front would wait for him, as he would be the fastest on a sprint among the 20 first riders and they had personnel to bring him back and control the resulting group.
But instead Jayco played with Plapp🇦🇺 and Schmid🇨🇭. And the later won, after breaking away a few miles from the line with Tejada (🇨🇴 Astana). There were 3 Frenchmen in the group of 10 that played the victory before those 2 left; not one in the top-5 in the end…
After dropping from the breakaway as the Ballon d’Alsace started, Pedersen🇩🇰 took a quick nap and then pulled the peloton… Jesus… 🤣
Pidcock🇬🇧 didn’t win the stage, but he is back in GC, just missing the GC podium for a handful of seconds. Of course, he may pay today’s efforts as soon as tomorrow, when there probably will be some sort of battle for GC.
Jegat (🇫🇷 Total) also repositioned in GC (11th), and may now envision the same performance as last year (10th), with a bit of luck and a lot of efforts.
It is not often that we have so many (let’s say 4 at the moment) riders truly fighting for the Green jersey: that’s nice. I would have been great if Merlier and Kooij didn’t scorn it; why do they refuse to take part in all Intermediate Sprints?
Lovely recap 😘 I am not watching the tour at the moment because I am in France with my family and we’re busy doing vacation things like… walking around medium sized French cities and eating out. So I get the live ticker on PCS and your recaps 😂
Like trying to survive the heat? That’s what I am doing, with less and less success, I have been very tired in the last 3 days. I can’t get the house temperature down any more as it gets somewhat cloudy at night, so the house starts at 24°C in the morning (and then obviously it only goes up). And I am lucky I can open several windows at night because there is a 500-acre forest fire just on the other side of the pass but the winds (or lack thereof…) don’t blow the smoke towards us. But when it is still 28°C or more at 1 AM, er…
We’re in Normandy at the coast - St. Aunbin-sur-mer - and while it’s hot it’s not unbearable. Yesterday we had some rain and it’s been cool enough at night, thank god.
I am happy we’re not further south, though. I don’t deal with the heat well, being from the lower part of the High North.
I see… returning to the scene of the crime, 1200 years later. Did you find something left to pillage or burn? 🤣
Rain? I can’t remember what that is. 🙂 I even have to water 40 years old trees so that they don’t die. While there is available water. I has rained once in 5 weeks, and there is no forecast of rain for the next week or 2, so water usage will be restricted soon (I am surprised it is not yet). Before the drought, simply due to the heat, the leaves of many vegetables, shrubs and even creepers have ‘burned’, berries have cooked and rotten standing (well, except the redcurrant shrubs which bore nothing because it developed too early because of the hot winter…). Most apples have fallen, and the rest doesn’t reach 2 inches in diameter and the surface is burned on the side facing south.
Looking at the weather forecast for the place where you are, I see a consistant 10 °C lower than here every day. 😭
Yeah, but those last weeks have been equality hot all over the territory (except coast lines). Though it doesn’t help, in general, that I live more south than 99% of metropolitan France (contrarily to popular belief, including the belief of the people who live there, the french Riviera is not the Southernmost part of France).
And when I say coast lines… The Atlantic coast below Brittany doesn’t seem protected much any more, which came as a surprise. The Gulf of Gascony / Bay of Bascony seem not to play its buffering role any more, or even reversed it to heat up the Western coast of France and the Northern coast of Spain.
You will unfortunately have to get accustomed to it for the next decades, because it is coming up north fast. The other guy got his book all wrong: the fearsome sentence should have been “Summer is coming”, not “Winter is coming” 🤣