Welcome to the GCN Racing News Show.
Coming up this week, the two biggest races of the season get underway with the Tour de
France and the Giro Rosa, we’ll be talking about the stages up to Sunday, we also have
some retirement announces, while there are some mixed reports regarding Mark Cavendish’s
absence from the Dimension Data Tour de France team.
Before we start, in case you haven’t already seen, we are very pleased to have launched
a new YouTube channel, GCN Racing.
There, you will find our racing coverage, which at the moment includes the Tour de France
and Giro Rosa worldwide.
You can find a link to that channel on screen now, so if you haven’t already subscribed,
make sure you do so, and also click on the bell icon so that you are notified each time
a new video is uploaded.
Don’t worry, there will not be any spoilers in the thumbnail or title.
Right, let’s move on to the Tour de France, where the Grand Depart took place in cycling
mad Belgium.
The fans turned out in force, the atmosphere was electric, and the racing was fast, very
fast.
On stage one the riders faced 194.5km predominantly flat kilometres, bar the two early climbs
of the Muur van Geraardsbergen and the Bosberg.
This opening road stage gave the world’s best sprinters an opportunity not only to
take a stage win, but also to pull on the coveted Maillot Jaune - and they were all
gunning for it.
Cue the usual script of an early breakaway, which actually surprisingly or not depending
how you look at it contained CCC’s Greg Van Avermaet, along with Eritrean national
champion Natnael Berhane and Xandro Meurisse of Wanty Groupe Gobert.
After taking the king of the mountains points on the Muur and going over the Bosberg behind
Meurisse, the olympic champion threw the anchor out and went back to the bunch perhaps thinking
of the team time trial to come.
The break was caught after and this gave way to another Cofidis move with Stefane Rosetto
going clear, no one was motivated to join him and he was left alone.
The GCN curse hit jacob Fuglsang with At 18km to go it was actually the first crash of the
day.
Among the carnage Fuglsang went down hard.
You could see the scuffs on his jersey and shorts but it was the cut on his face that
was the most concerning.
He didn’t look comfortable at all.
Up front and Rossetto was caught with 9.5km to go, Fuglsang could finally breathe a sigh
of relief as he made it back to the bunch.
As they headed back into Brussels a big big crash with 1.5km took Jumbo Visma’s Dylan
Gronenewegen out of the sprint equation, and seemingly, with it, the hopes of Jumbo Visma.
That same crash also saw reigning champion Geraint Thomas hit the deck, but thankfully
he wasn’t injured.
Max Richeze leading out Viviani left Michael Matthews in the last position he would want
to be on the front with 280 m to go.
It was looking all about Sagan until Gronenewegens team mate Mike Theunissen came through to
land the biggest victory of his career and take the first Dutch yellow jersey for 30
years after a great lead out from team mate Wout van Aert…..
Yup you’ve guessed it folks, Teunissen is another cyclocross rider having won the World
Under 23 title in Kentucky in 2013, ahead of his now teammate Wout van Aert, who finished
3rd.Cue tweet from van Aert…….As Wout said, 2019 is definitely a year for the crossers!
Stage 2’s 28km team time trial, also around Brussels, was an opportunity for some of the
GC riders to gain an early advantage on their rivals.
Unusually, Team Ineos set off as first team, a result of the lowly team finishing position
in the previous days sprint stage.
They of course set the best time, and remained in the hot seat for most of the day.
CCC pushed them close, Sunweb even closer, and then Deceuninck Quickstep came in just
a solitary second behind.
But there was one final team, Jumbo Visma.
Teunissen could not have asked for a better team to help him defend the yellow jersey,
counting the likes of Tony Martin and Wout van Aert among his charge.
And they, were, flying.
Up at the first time check, up at the second, and by they time they crossed the finish line,
they’d carved out a phenomenal 20 second advantage over Team Ineos, who still haven’t
won a team time trial at the Tour de France.
Jumbo Visma set a blistering average speed of 57.2kph, just shy of the record set by
Orica Greenedge back in 2013.
It meant that Teunissen didn’t just defend his race lead, he increased it, significantly.
The team fill the first 5 spots on GC, with Teunissen a full 30 seconds ahead of his best
placed rival, Gianni Moscon.
The dominance of Jumbo Visma becomes clear when you look at how close the teams were
behind them.
Just 16 seconds separated Team Ineos in 2nd, and Bahrain Merida in 9th, so to finish 20
seconds ahead of any of all of them really is quite something.
And it really is a well earnt win - when asked when they started working towards that victory,
their in house aero expert Mathieu Heijboer responded by saying ‘2015’.
They’ve invested a lot into performance, or at least as much as they can afford - according
to the inner ring, just 2-3 years ago they had the lowest budget in the WorldTour.
And it’s clearly paying off, this marks their 37th win of the season, and only once,
back in 2013, have they won more than that, with 38.
I have to say it’s nice to see hard work and determination pay off.
In terms of losers in the Team Time Trial, there were a few.
Whilst most of the GC favourites finished within a handful of seconds of each other,
three had a bit of a nightmare.
Movistar’s trio of Quintana, Landa and Valverde lost over a minute in 17th position, Trek
Segafredo and Richie Porte fared even worse, losing 1 minute 18 seconds, but worst of all,
a further second behind, were AG2R and Romain Bardet.
NOT a team noted for the team time trialling prowess, and hindered by the fact that two
of their riders were injured in a crash the previous day, but nevertheless, that’s a
big early blow to the chances of Bardet in the GC.
The race continues today with a 215km road stage, culminating in a hilly and technical
finale that will be very stressful indeed.
We’ll have highlights up just as soon as we can after the stage.
What is known as the grand tour of the women’s pro calendar kicked off with an 18 km team
time trial finishing in Castellania Coppi, the town was renamed in 2019 in commemoration
of the Coppi brothers Serse and Fausto who grew up there.
It was a tough course that awaited the riders with a climb in the middle of the course and
a fairly hefty rise to the finish.
It was Canyon SRAM who once again showed their pedigree as a team time trial formation they
finishing with a time of 31.41 ahead of Team BIGLA and CCC-Liv.
The teams leader Kasia Niewiadoma who pulled on the first Maglia Rosa of this years race,
but more importantly she would relish the fact that she took some significant time out
of her rivals.
Stage one was a typical short punchy Giro Rosa stage at just 78.3 km starting and finishing
in Viu.
With the category two climb of the Colle de Lys early on in the day, we did see some attacks
from some of the big names such as Lucinda Brand and Annemiek Van Vleuten.
With a tough twisty technical finish, both Taylor Wiles and Lucy Kennedy tried their
luck on the climb, but it came down to a sprint with Marianne Vos showing she’s certainly
back to her brilliant best after crashing out of the Women’s Tour in Great Britain
last month, she delivered a masterclass in how to negotiate a technical finish and secured
her twenty second Giro stage win.
Stage 3 was a deceptive one, with another summit finish on a 100.1km stage from Sagliano
Micca to Piedicavallo.
After multiple breakaways were neutralised Eugenia Bujak got clear, unti Taylor Wiles
again went clear with 20km to go catching and passing the BTC Lubjana rider.
Her gap hovered around the minute mark, until Canyon SRAM moved to the front to control
the Americans advantage, as they got her in their sights it was MItchelton Scotts Lucy
Kennedy again who went clear, this time building what looked like a stage winning advantage
with 100 meters to go as they hit the cobble stones, in fact it looked with 50 meters to
go that she had it in the bag despite Marianne Vos again launching her sprint from the bunch
behind, with 50 metres and even 10 metres to go there was no way you ever thought the
Aussie would be denied, but as she put her hand in the air in victory Vos passed her
on the line.
Agony and disappointment for the MItchelton Scott rider, Vos again shows why she is the
greatest of all time!
Shall we have another look at that?
Your heart just goes out to Lucy Kennedy.
She was understandably gutted...
7 stages of the race remain, but unfortunately the Queen stage that was supposed to finish
at the top of the Gavia has had to be cancelled due to a landslide, there is a definite curse
on that mountain where cycling is concerned!
There are highlights every day through to Sunday on the GCN Racing Channel.
After 16 years as a pro Mark Renshaw announced this week that it’s time for him to bring
down the curtain on his racing career.
The 36 year old Aussie turned pro in 2004 for FDJeux.com after a stagiaire slot at the
back end of 2003.
TroBro Leon in 2006 was his first victory as a pro at the start of his three years with
Credit Agricole.
While Renshaw did enjoy success in his own right during his career, he did very much
make a name for himself as the number one lead out man in the business, teaming up with
Mark Cavendish at Team Columbia-HTC in 2009.
Repeatedly Renshaw delivered his man perfectly to the right position, most notably finishing
second to Mark Cavendish on the Champs Elysees at the end of that years Tour de France.
As you would expect Renshaw wanted another crack at being the big fish rather than the
pilot, so moved to Rabobank where many expected him to use that power for himself, despite
some wins, the volume of victories didn’t come and he teamed up again with Cavendish
at Omega Pharma-Quickstep in 2014 where Renshaw took the last (as we go to press) victory
of his career at the Tour of Britain, before heading to Dimension Data with Cav in 2016.
It’s a unique job the domestique or lead out rider, your race finishes when you drop
off your leader who then goes on to take the glory, stand on the podium, stand in front
of the media and have that win on their palmares, but if you watch a modern day sprint and see
some sprinters bouncing around like a pinball when they don’t have a battler like Renshaw
fighting for position, it’s a selfless role, not for the faint hearted, your sprinter has
to have total faith that you’ll put them where they need to be.
Cheers Mark, good luck with whatever comes next….
The announcement from Dimension Data that Mark Cavendish would not be able to add to
his 30 Tour de France stage victories was met with a mixed response, but from the man
himself you could see that he was truly gutted by his omission, for any pro rider The Tour
is the big focus of the year, to be watching it on the sidelines is not where you want
to be in July...
There have been some mixed reports from team owner Doug Ryder who said it was a team decision,
while Rolf Aldag claims he wanted Cavendish there, because he felt he was going better
than in 2016, where if you remember he won 4 stages…
Oh dear, things are definitely not rosey in the Dimension Data team.
For one young fan called Evan, he was equally devastated that his idol would not be on his
screens this July.
When his Mum Louise tweeted how upset he was, probably the last thing she or he expected
was Mark inviting Evan for a ride to cheer them both up…..
I love stuff like that, well done Mark Cavendish.
Before we finish, the inner ring has put up a couple of transfer rumours from l’Equipe
newspaper.
According to them, Elia Viviani will move from Deceuninck Quickstep to Team Cofidis,
and take lead out man Fabio Sabatini with him, a move which you’d imagine means that
Nacer Bouhanni will be looking for a new home next year.
That also frees up a sprint spot at Deceuninck, which will apparently be filled by Sam Bennett,
who’s currently playing third fiddle to Peter Sagan and Pascal Ackermann at Bora Hansgrohe.
And finally, according to Belgian newspaper reports, Lawrence Naesen will join up with
his brother Oliver at AG2R next year.
Right, that’s all for this week, don’t forget to head over to shop.globalcyclingnetwork.com
if you’d like to get your hands on some of our French themed merchandise for July,
and also to subscribe to GCN Racing.
Next week we’ll be back with the conclusion of the Giro Rosa and the rest of the first
week of the Tour de France.
In the meantime, if you’d like to see the secrets of speed in a team time trial, Oli
took an in depth look in a video that you can find down here.