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Has everyone got their breath back after yesterday?!
[img] https://img.aso.fr/core_app/img-cycling-tdf-jpg/peloton/48224/0:0,1200:800-1000-0-70/1f293 [/img]
Stage 6 and the race visits probably the most famous mountain of the entire Tour, the Tourmalet, site of the legendary showdown in 1910 on its first inclusion when eventual race winner Octave Lapize confronted the organisers at the top by yelling "Assassins!" at them.
There's a more in-depth look at its history here including a stunning archive photo:
https://www.rouleur.cc/blogs/the-rouleur-journal/why-the-col-du-tourmalet-is-the-most-important-climb-of-the-tour-de-france
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The main climb comes after the Col d'Aspin to loosen the legs up and before a long descent and the first summit finish of the race this year to the ski station of Cambasque above the town of Cauterets, the final slopes much steeper than the climb into town.
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Jonas Vingegaard (Jumbo-Visma) made a strong statement yesterday with a powerful attack which left Tadej Poagčar (UAE Team Emirates) isolated and showing weakness so Pogačar will be determined to find an opportunity to minimise the time lost. But Vingegaard will be keen to extend his lead as much as possible and could look to make a similar move as he did yesterday.
Jai Hindley (BORA-hansgrohe) was of course the big winner of the day and letting a Giro winner sneak into the break like that was possibly not the smartest move all around - while Jumbo will be confident they can take on Hindley, what it has done is show that the Tour is unlikely to be the predicted Pogacar / Vingegaard battle for 1st with everyone else competing for 3rd.
Tom Pidcock (Ineos Grenadiers) - well I reckoned he was in with a chance yesterday and he's now down in 13th, one of 3 Ineos riders in the top 20. However, if he can be among the first riders over the Tourmalet, he can take full advantage of his descending skills - a 20km descent before a summit finish not dissimilar to his Alpe d'Huez win last year.
Neilson Powless (EF Education-EasyPost) missed his chance to get in the breakaway yesterday and gave up the polka dot as a result but if he can get himself into a group that stays away, he could be a contender for a stage win.
Tour de Suisse winner Mattias Skjelmose (Lidl-Trek) is steadily climbing up the GC rankings and is now just inside the top 10, only 16" off Pogacar so he may take heart from yesterday's result and look to move up the rankings a bit, especially if Pogacar doesn't show an immediate recovery to his normal climbing ability.
Thibaut Pinot (Groupama-FDJ) has a special connection with the Tourmalet; he won a stage here in 2019 when it was a summit finish. As this is Pinot’s final Tour, what better place to get a win than on a stage which includes one of the country’s most revered climbs?!
Either way, stand by for a day of stunning scenery (if the weather plays ball - it's actually looking a bit wet there at the moment with a chance of a thunderstorm!)...
[img] https://img.aso.fr/core_app/img-cycling-tdf-jpg/et6-slr-5-arreau-1-resultat/44717/0:0,1200:800-600-0-70/8daeb [/img]
...and another potentially explosive day in the GC. Coverage from 2pm on ITV4, earlier on Eurosport plus of course the official website: https://www.letour.fr/en
Oh and as it's a day of enormous rocks, here's the geology part for the day:
https://www.geo-sports.org/2023/stage-6-wilson/
Oh that doesn't look like a fun day for them.... but should be for us.
It's funny this year to see ALL teams are running 1 leader and basically no-one else. All teams are Solo. Yesterday Kuss was doing OK mostly and Yates was half-there as support, but other than that, the trains of 5-6 at the front for a large chunk of the hills, well, it's just not happening.
I loved riding the Tourmalet, you see every kind of bike, and rider, imaginable.
Thanks for taking this on crazy-legs, you, lunge & klunk are doing a great job of making this time of year a spectacle to really look forward to.
6.85 for 16 mins... that's quite frankly just insane !!!!
It’s funny this year to see ALL teams are running 1 leader and basically no-one else. All teams are Solo. Yesterday Kuss was doing OK mostly and Yates was half-there as support, but other than that, the trains of 5-6 at the front for a large chunk of the hills, well, it’s just not happening.
Racing has changed completely - partly down to the much more stringent anti-doping although I don't doubt that it still goes on in some form or other - but there have been major advances in tech, nutrition, aero etc and the level now is so high that there simply aren't true specialist riders anymore.
Gone are the days when you'd have some climbing domestiques, a couple of sprinters and a leader - everyone has to be able to do everything. There are still some rare exceptions (like Cav!) but they're increasingly on the older side. You do get specialisms of course but now it's more "a sprinter who can also climb" or "a climber who can also sprint". They're all rounders with a leaning to one end of the spectrum or another.
And so many times we've seen what happens when a team throws all its eggs into one basket and that basket falls over in the first week - I'm looking at you Ineos! Better to have a few options and, while you can help each other out, you don't all sit in front of one guy for 3 weeks.
Peter in the vines
he can take full advantage of his descending skills
Happy to be wrong on this, but I doubt it - the descent on that side is pretty easy, some hairpins at the top but lots of long straight sections as far as I remember.
I loved riding the Tourmalet, you see every kind of bike, and rider, imaginable.
Not if you get up early enough! ;0)
no smiles from the Pog on startline
Rolling out now, 1km to the flag drop.
Some good analysis on Eurosport in advance of the stage.
Oh look, WvA attacks!
Flag drops and this looks more like the final km of a sprint stage than the first km of a mountain stage, they're sprinting to get in a break even though it's going straight into a climb
Alaphillipe is in there of course, JV have someone, there seems to be abot a dozen in total but my wifi seems ropy, and frankly I can't tell who's who becuase they've all changed bloody jerseys so I don't recognise them easily
Alaphillipe is in there of course, JV have someone, there seems to be abot a dozen in total but my wifi seems ropy, and frankly I can’t tell who’s who becuase they’ve all changed bloody jerseys so I don’t recognise them easily
James Shaw
Bryan Coquard
WvA
Alaphillipe
Benoit Cosnefroy
MvdP has suddenly popped up in it.
Kwiatkowski (I think...)
plus others
The peloton have finally let it go after an initial hard chase and a few riders bridging.
Edit: UAE have Matteo Trentin in there.
What rubbish timing. I’ve had to go into the office today, gutted!!! First time in months, I bet that means todays race will be a corker!
- Wout van Aert
- Matteo Trentoin
- michal kwiatkowski
- James shaw
- Julian alahilippe
- Nikias arndt
- Benoit cosnefroy
- Matthieu van der Poel
- Bryan coquard
- gorka izaguirre
- krist neilands
- Chris juul-jensen
- m. louvel
- t.h. johanneson
- jonas gregaard
and the block is in place
another 5 chasing to try to get across
<p>Powless and asgreen in the chase group</p>
Amazing work Crazy Legs and Klunk, thanks!
Powless and asgreen in the chase group
Good to see them bridge, Powless gets the 2 points at the 3rd Cat climb.
another snap from yesterday
Oliver Naesen, Ruben Geuerreiro and Anthony Perez were the other 3 in the chase group
WvA must be after sprint points (his climbing doesn't seem to @ the same level as last year) and MvdP is there to see if he can stop him getting the Max ?
Bryan Coquard
WvA
MvdP
for the intermediate sprint. It wasn't really contested, they just rolled over it although BC made sure he was in front and kept a sharp eye out to make sure he got maximum points.
That's Coquard's day done. 😂
Ooh - Jumbo want to ride on the front of the peloton to make life hard for UAE and Bora. The problem is that WvA is up in the break and now being chased down by his own team....
The commentators are very confused.
Jumbo chasing Jumbo
we'll crack the peloton you crack the break ?
Jumbo chasing Jumbo
I think in the peloton they've found an opportunity to crack UEA and Pogacar a little more...
Hindley cracking!!
💥
Was hoping Jai Hindley could stay in contention a bit longer, otherwise i can see this Tour becoming a one horse race before first week is done...
Well it's a 2-horse race so far...
Pogacar so far glued to the wheel - clearly yesterday was an anomaly rather than a total falling over.
Pog got out the saddle this time
Yeah, there's no way that him being a minute in arrears on GC was going to be an issue for the whole race, it's all still on.
Pog wrist aint right hes just been wiggling it about :/
He looks very relaxed though! Almost bored. Good poker face!
The next climb might be quite revealing. It'll be a big psychological blow to JV if he can simply sit there on his wheel and follow every move, even if he doesn't pull back much time.
Moment of consolidation now, the Yellow Jersey group behind has swelled and is at least holding the gap. See how much it blows up on the final climb.
Vingegaard obliterated the old climbing record on the Tourmalet!
Weird from oily jims dodgey lorry boys light it up on the descent then sit up in the valley :/
Mental. JV has taken nearly 2 minutes off the quickest time up the Tourmalet!
probably explain the expression on his face when he looked round just before cresting the Tourmalet and seeing Pog glued to his wheel
Do sometimes think Pog is like an enthusiastic puppy, he clearly has so much natural talent, but sometimes wastes energy when not needed, he has bonked a few times at critical points as he's not fuelled properly etc.. (cycling weekly article today, said when he snapped last year and lost all that time, that he bonked and his coached said his power dropped from 6.8w/kg, to just over 4 and he just blew up)
His broken wrist won't have helped, he's missed loads of racing, probably just needs to ride himself back into it.
Grimace on the face of Wout
From my first post this morning:
Tour de Suisse winner Mattias Skjelmose (Lidl-Trek) is steadily climbing up the GC rankings and is now just inside the top 10, only 16″ off Pogacar
Yeah well that was wrong wasn't it?! Dropped from the yellow jersey group, going backwards.
WvA really rode himself in to the black there.. almost came to a complete standstill, tank emptied!
blown! 😀
This is a fascinating mental game!
Kwiato gone.
Blimey!
boom!!!!
This really does have the feel of stages 19/20 of the Tour de France, not Stage 6!
The Jumbo plan sort of backfired...
Incredible stage - tactical, bluffs and double bluffs, attacks and counter attacks.
Sucker punch!!
cracking stage
Brits doing well - phenomenal from James Shaw, the Yates twins have just finished, Pidcock up there in the top 10.
Brilliant from Pog
the media were writing him off at the start.... but that was clinical from Pog
That's proper racing. A great stage.
Game on
did Jumbo get greedy ?
I don't think they got greedy, they played to their strengths and did all they could to support JV, WvA couldn't have given any more, and it almost worked, bar one fly in the ointment...
His broken wrist won’t have helped, he’s missed loads of racing
keep seeing this, he only has 4 less racing days that Jonas
Cav got in with 5+ mins to spare
Saving his energy for tomorrow, good lad! 😉
I don’t think they got greedy, they played to their strengths and did all they could to support JV, WvA couldn’t have given any more, and it almost worked, bar one fly in the ointment…
This ^^.
I think they expected to drop TP on the Tourmalet, JV would then hook up with WvA in the lead and whatever group was there would ride to the finish leaving TP chasing frantically behind. They were expecting TP to be in the same sort of state as yesterday and they got that very wrong.
I don't think it's quite at the 2-horse race stage yet but it's not far off if they keep going at it like that. Jai Hindley lost a chunk of time in half a stage there.
11 mph cross tail wind tomorrow and quite exposed on the run in to Bordeaux