Ok, so we’re not going to create a race thread for ALL races this year, especially since we’re only about 10 people reading here :)
This thread is available for you to write about all the races which don’t have a race thread.
Ok, so we’re not going to create a race thread for ALL races this year, especially since we’re only about 10 people reading here :)
This thread is available for you to write about all the races which don’t have a race thread.
Stage 1
There was a breakaway of 5 little riders, then 4, then 3 after the Bike Aid guy was dropped on top of the first GPM: 1 from Rouen, Maximilien Juillard🇫🇷 from VilleFranche who grabbed all bonus sprints, and Davy🇫🇷 from Nice who always gets in breakaways since he was freed from FDJ’s shackles 😀
They never got much more then 2 minutes. Controlling the peloton were 1 guy from Cofidis, 1 from Lotto, and E. Jacquelin (🇫🇷 Decathlon) who pulled until there was only 20 km to go and the gap was down to 20 seconds! He is really much better than I thought he would be (and easy to spot as he has bigger arms than all others).
Then there were a number of attacks in those last 20 km. Cavagna (🇫🇷 FDJ) started one (the first one?). Later, Joris Chaussinand (🇫🇷 CIC), whom we already saw being active on Sunday, did a small solo. There were a few others.
Anyway, the peloton arrived for a sprint in this long, straight uphill false-flat. Isidore (🇫🇷 Décathlon) hadn’t made any effort before the sprint, contrarily to Sunday, so he won it. The 2 Cofidis riders who were on the podium on Sunday made it into the top-5 today again. Gautherat (🇫🇷 Décathlon) sprinted along his sprinter after ‘launching’ him, it was a bit weird and he could have helped the Cofidis behind him by doing so, but fortunately for him, Page (🇫🇷 Cofidis) was located elsewhere and it was the slower Aranburu🇪🇸 in his wheel.
The surprise is the name and pedigree of the 2nd: Daan Depuydt🇧🇪 from Baloise Verzekeringen - Het Poetsbureau Lions. I knew neither the rider nor the team 😄
Maximilien Juillard (🇫🇷 VilleFranche) managed to stay within the peloton, and thanks to the time bonuses, he is now 3rd in GC. While this doesn’t award any UCI point or anything, it is always nice for someone from this division. (He used to be in the Roubais team.)
Other than that, yeah, it is indeed the weakest startlist in this century for this race. I though that this race would rise to 2.Pro one day (not that I wished it…), but it seems to go the opposite way. They probably are short on money, as they picked a cheaper producer/broadcaster than previously – you could see from the deteriorated picture that a 4G communication was used. Previously a national channel was producing the race, now it is only a regional one; it belongs to France TV and is available (in France) on satellite/fibre for free but you have to actively look for it, you cannot stumble upon it if you don’t already know the race is going on and is broadcasted on the channel, and as they barely promote the races they show on their national channels (except for TdF, Roubaix and women races), you can imagine that they do absolutely nothing for a program that they buried on a regional channel.