This 6-stage race (Monday to Saturday) starts with a Time Trial, and then goes on with a collection of steep hills everyday. Even the Time Trial is not flat at all, starting with a 2.5 km climb, and finishing with a smaller but steeper one.
🌞 Weather forecast: a very un-Basque weather (no rain), and the first days are going to be very hot for the season.
🚴♂️ Teams:
We’ll get to see Del Toro (🇲🇽 UAE), Ayuso (🇪🇸 Lidl-Trek), Seixas (🇫🇷 Decathlon), Roglitch🇸🇮 and Lipowitz🇩🇪 (Bora) for GC. Perhaps Landa (🇪🇸 Soudal-QS), McNulty (🇺🇸 UAE), Uijtdebroeks (🇧🇪 Movistar) and one Ineos behind them. For stages, we can watch the 2 Basques from Cofidis who are always in shape at this time of the year when they smell home: I. Izagirre🇪🇸 and Aranburu🇪🇸 who just made 1st and 4th on the Indurain GP – where Q. Simmons (🇺🇸 Lidl-Trek) 2nd seemed to have finally found his good legs too; as well as the EF team (Healy🇮🇪 and others); I am not about the shape of Astana riders at the moment.
🗺 General map (they picked the separatist version, where Spain and France do not exist, and the Basque Country includes parts in France):
Stage 1 (Monday 6, Time Trial)
Stage 2 (Tuesday 7)
Stage 3 (Wednesday 8)
Stage 4 (Thursday 9)
Stage 5 (Friday 10)
Stage 6 (Saturday 11, last day)
Stage 6 (final)
What a difficult Tour of Basque country this was! The riders had no time for a nap since the first minute…
Lipowitz (🇩🇪 Bora) played with fire until the last yards. Why the heck was he hanging in last position of his group? He was lucky not to take a split, and that on the contrary, Johanessen (
🇩🇰🇳🇴 Uno-X) was very unlucky to be counted a split in his own group. Anyway, it was a good idea to ‘secure’ his GC position yesterday!I never understood where Riccitello (🇺🇸 Decathlon) was. The movement of Seixas (🇫🇷 Decathlon) and the location of his movement didn’t make any sense if his American teammate wasn’t ahead and able to drop to help him.
edit: did the whole Decathlon team (but Seixas) collapse or what? At the moment on PCS, I see 4 DNF, and the only 2 survivors, Riccitello and Staune-Mittet🇳🇴, at 20 mn…
The biggest surprise for me was to discover on this last stage that Picnic was taking part in this race 🤣
Congratulation to Johanessen
🇩🇰🇳🇴 and Uno-X for their action today. It was obvious in each climb, that they didn’t have the climbing chops others (like the comical duo Soler🇪🇸–Healy🇮🇪) have, yet they managed, thanks to a good pace averaging, to create gaps with behind, and reduce gaps with the front. They are rewarded by a podium, which looked unreachable in the morning. They missed the 2nd place for nothing, but eh, this is already a great comeback.Roglitch (🇸🇮 Bora) drowned under the return of the Basque weather which poured all the rain it hadn’t poured in a week.
G. Martin (🇫🇷 FDJ) was in every breakaway those last days, but is always too weak for the finish, and I think that even with so many favourites staying behind today, he was too far to make it back into top-10?
You’ve done it again, but in the reverse :D
Are you sure he didn’t change nationality?
Hem, well, okay, okay, I’ll have him sail the Skagerrak the other way round. 😃
Looking at what the actual Danes did today, I see that Cort was part of the 50 (!) withdrawals today.
Now I notice that I haven’t mentioned August (🇺🇸 Ineos), the winner of this difficult stage.
That’s another 20 years old! His teammate Laurance🇫🇷 who won 3 days ago wasn’t that much older: 24 (I though he was younger than that). The only exception this week was Aranburu🇪🇸 who is 30 y.o.
The stage podium, as well as the GC podium, don’t go over 25-26 years.