The Champs-Élysées We have our worthy Tour winner decided. Jonas Vingegaard put the final nail in the coffin securing his first Tour de France victory. He produced a dominant TT display to come in second place behind his teammate and more importantly 7 seconds ahead of Tadej Pogacar his nearest rival. Today is about procession and about the sprinters. The road leading to Paris will be full of joy and merriment as the teams chat…
The Race of Truth Only 40.7km lie between the riders and the ceremonial Stage around Paris. The course mostly suits your pure TT specialists such as Filippo Ganna and Stefan Kung however there are two short bumps at the end (1.6km@4.7% and 1.5km@7.8% respectively) which could swing the final result in favour of your slighter rider. Your sprinters and their lead out men will just make sure to avoid the time limit today and save all…
Hautacam! It’s D-Day for Tadej Pogacar, unless he takes significant time on Jonas Vingegaard today the tour is essentially over. He will very likely beat Vingegaard in the time trial however it will not be by 2 minutes 19 seconds unless Vingegaard has a technical issue. The parcours for today are very similar to yesterday but with a little bit more spice added to the climbs. The stage is 143.2km long, of which the first…
Today is the shortest road stage of the Tour at 129.7km however it will potentially be one of the most decisive. The first half of the route is flat with the second half littered with four categorised climbs. The racing will be ferocious, there is no doubt. Will Tadej Pogacar finally unhinge Jonas Vingeg-glue as he has become affectionately known? The evidence to date certainly suggest that he will not but with nothing to lose…
The Pyrenees Over the course of the next three days we will have a clear picture of what is required from each rider come the time-trial on Saturday. Personally I love the Pyrenean stages, the Basque supporters are incredible, the road surface is generally poor and the climbs have very nasty kicks to them, often leading to gaps in the GC battle.Today is a 178km stage and is the only one of the three Pyrenean…
Will we finally see a proper sprint stage today ? The parcour is classed as flat but it is certainly more lumpy than pancake-flat. The majority of the sprinters are at the limit already having tried to survive the last 10 days but with the promise of a rest day tomorrow they will summon the troops and haul their tired bodies out of the trenches for battle. If the chase is left to Jumbo we…
It’s time to catch our breath after the action from the last two days in the Alps. Embed from Getty Imageswindow.gie=window.gie||function(c){(gie.q=gie.q||[]).push(c)};gie(function(){gie.widgets.load({id:’Qde7NE5qR35Z9d9-HXSsxA’,sig:’4I2Qsr784ToV6QmJD8TuSMOkUYTOeEpiP5McsIjQQZs=’,w:’594px’,h:’396px’,items:’1408655231′,caption: true ,tld:’com’,is360: false })}); Today will be a “flat” stage covering 192km and traversing two Cat 3 and one Cat 2 climb. The intermediate sprint point is almost exactly halfway at 101km however it seems that most teams other than Jumbo have given up on pursuing these as Wout Van Aert has a stranglehold…
The real mountains have finally arrived. It is time for the general classification battle to really kick off and what a battle it is going to be over the next two days. Tadej has lost one of his leading generals in the mountains, George Bennett who tested positive for Covid during the rest day, Rafael Majka isn’t 100% and the rest of his entourage isn’t that well equipped to protect him on the two merciless…
It is almost inconceivable that we still have two weeks of racing left after such an epic first week in this year’s tour. Traditionally it is the third week of the tour where we see massive time losses occur, however with the nasty second week the organisers have on the menu I think we will definitely have some clear winners and losers by this time next week.Today is the appetiser to the week ahead, a…
How does one top yesterday’s stage? I don’t think you can. Today we expect a GC truce after the immense battle we saw play out on La Super Planche Des Belles Filles yesterday. If this is the case we will see another frenetic start to the race with all teams hoping for that elusive stage win pushing hard to snap the elastic back to the peloton. The stage is classified as hilly with two Cat…
