Welcome to the GCN Racing News Show - this week, we talk through the winners and losers
from the first week of the Tour de France, including some really cool power stats from
TrainingPeaks.
Plus, there’s a dominant performance as the Giro Rosa hits the Zoncolan and a week
of wins for Bahrain Merida at the Tour of Austria.
It’s been a dramatic first week of the Tour de France, we’ve absolutely loved bringing
you daily highlights on Facebook, and as we hit the first rest day, we thought we’d
go through some of the winners and losers from the first 9 days.
Before that though, we want your opinion on the cobblestones - do they have a place in
the Tour de France, yes or no?
Take the poll at the top of the screen and give your reasoning in the comments, we’d
love to hear your thoughts.
Entertainment at it’s best, or simply too dangerous?
Anyway, we’ll start with the sprinters - in our Tour preview show Si and I talked about
a possible changing of the guard in this regard, and so far that looks to be the case.
2 wins a piece for 23-year-old Fernando Gaviria and 25-year-old Dylan Groenewegen - they’ve
clearly been the fastest in the race so far.
Meanwhile, the trio of riders who have been the dominant force in sprinting for the last
10 years, Cavendish Kittel and Greipel, have arrived at the first rest day with virtually
nothing.
Greipel has fared best, with a 3rd place on stage 4, and he would have been 2nd on stage
8 had he not been relegated.
Kittel also managed a third place on stage one but has been struggling since, whilst
Cavendish has clearly been a long way from his best.
So can we write the old guard off?
No, not yet, but what’s clear is that they’re going to find it hard to dominate as they
did in years gone by, and there are only limited chances for them.
And then there’s Sagan - what can you say about this man that hasn’t been said already?
2 stage wins, his worst result was 8th to Mur de Bretagne, but he did still manage to
put time into some of the world’s top climbers.
That means he has now raced 105 Tour de France road stages and finished in the top 10 in
62 of them.
Bonkers.
One team and one rider have fallen into both the winners and losers category are BMC Racing
and Dan Martin.
Starting with BMC, they have, in many ways, had a stellar first week, perfect given that
they still appear to be searching for a title sponsor, but on the other hand, it’s been
bittersweet.
They won the stage 3 TTT, putting Greg Van Avermaet into yellow, which he has held ever
since.
He also got 2nd on the Roubaix stage, but that was where their GC ambitions came unstuck
- Richie Porte hit the deck before he’d even seen the cobbles, breaking his collarbone
and abandoning the race - he must be wondering if he’s ever going to fulfil his Grand Tour
potential.
Meanwhile, Tejay Van Garderen also crashed, and although he didn’t break anything, he
lost over 5 minutes, and all hope in the GC. Dan Martin, had a brilliant stage win - he’d
previously finished 2nd on the Mur de Bretagne after leaving his move too late 3 years ago,
and he wasn’t about to make that mistake again - he attacked with over a kilometre
to go and would never be caught, taking his 2nd career Tour stage win.
But then it all went wrong on stage 8, where he hit the deck hard and lost over a minute.
On the positive side, he did look amazing on the Roubaix stage and even took a bonus
second en route.
The ferocity of Martin’s attack on the Mur de Bretagne was highlighted when we saw some
of the numbers from that stage on TrainingPeaks.
We don’t have Martin’s power for the climb, but we do have the file of Pierre Rolland.
The Frenchman finished 35th on the stage, a full 31s down on Dan Martin, and yet produced
505w at 67kg, or over 7.5w/kg for the 4 minutes that it took him to complete the climb, including
a first minute of the climb where he produced over 9w/kg to stay in the group.
Dan Martin is clearly a man on form.
Another big winner from week one was John Degenkolb, on that Roubaix stage.
It was a really emotional win for John - this was his interview after the stage.
And not surprising that it was emotional, and he almost made me emotional too.
John was one of the riders was involved in that horrific accident on a Giant Alpecin
training camp early in 2016, and many had speculated that he’d never return to his
best.
But in winning over the cobbles, it was like coming full circle after his win at Paris
Roubaix three years ago, and in turn it meant that he has now won stages in all three of
the Grand Tours.
Well done Mr Degenkolb, you deserved that.
The other big winner from week one has been Geraint Thomas.
The man who normally attracts bad luck has managed to completely avoid it over the 1st
9 days and now sits in 2nd place overall, the best of the GC prospects.
It’s certainly going to be interesting to see how this dual leadership dynamic plays
out at Team Sky in the mountains - it’s hard to see a 4 time Tour de France winner
accepting anything other than outright leadership, but it’s also hard to see Thomas sacrificing
a decent buffer in the overall GC.
Time will tell.
Along with the winners and losers in the stage win and GC hunt, we have Lawson Craddock - the
American had the unfortunate honour of being the very first rider to crash, on day one,
breaking his scapula in the process.
But, against all odds, he’s still in the race, and not only that, he’s raised close
to $100,000 for the Alkek velodrome in Texas - it’s stories like that which make you
love the Tour de France.
And let’s not forget, he’s riding the race, WITH A BROKEN SCAPULA - he’s hardly
been able to get out of the saddle, but has still had to produce some impressive powers
just to get through.
Imagine the pain of riding 22km’s of cobblestones with that injury, AND averaging 249w for 3
hours 40 to boot.
The hardest stage of the Tour de France so far, though, purely in terms of power output,
was the stage billed as the mini Ardennes classic - stage 5 to Quimper.
There, Lawson had a normalised power of 294w for over 5 hours, with a TSS of almost 300.
Before we finish with the Tour this week - have you ever wondered what it’s like to wear
the Polka Dot jersey?
Well, here’s your answer, Kiwi Dion Smith sent us this very cool diary.
The race resumes tomorrow as we hit the mountains, so make sure you head over to Facebook for
our stage summaries there.
We were also delighted to have highlights of the Giro Rosa with Marty McDonald and our
very own Emma Pooley, and what a race that was.
It was dominated by two teams, Sunweb and Mitchelton Scott.
In fact, every single rider on the Sunweb lineup held a leaders jersey of some sorts
on at least one day - that’s quite a record!
Mitchelton Scott, though, were just on another level.
After back to back sprint wins for Jolien d’Hoore, Amanda Spratt took a commanding
victory on stage 6 to Gerola Alta, taking the leader’s pink jersey in the process.
However, from that point on, it became the Annemiek Van Vleuten show.
Her performance on the mountain time trial was about as dominant as you will see, finishing
almost two and a half minutes ahead of Ashleigh Moolman Pasio in the space of 46 minutes.
Interestingly she was one of the only riders to opt for a time trial bike with climbing
wheels, whilst most opted for a road bike with deep section wheels.
Marianne Vos took a popular win on stage 7, and what I loved about that was just how exuberant
she was in her celebration - this is a lady who has won pretty much all there is to win
in the sport of cycling, and yet that victory clearly meant an enormous amount to her.
And then the Van Vleuten show resumed as the peloton tackled the Zoncolan, a horrific climb
which I’m sure needs no introduction.
Van Vleuten attacked Moolman Pasio with two kilometres remaining to the summit, putting
40s into her by the top, and creating a virtually unassailable lead in the GC, and netting herself
11th overall on the Zoncolan Strava segment.
And then, she went and won the final stage for good measure, just to cement her domination.
A thoroughly deserved overall win for Van Vleuten, who at 35, appears to be in the best
form of her life.
Talking of form, Emma showed us that she’s not only good at winning bike races but also
good at predictions, qualities never before seen here on the GCN presenter line-up.
We shall finish with a brief look at the Tour of Austria, a tough 8-day race which doesn’t
get the attention it deserves, coinciding as it does with the Tour de France.
It was a pretty amazing week for Bahrain Merida.
Matej Mohoric outsprinted teammate Visconti to win stage one, his first as Slovenian national
champion, but Visconti himself went on to win three stages in total.
Their 5th stage win came courtesy of Antonia Nibali.
His situation almost mirrors that of the Tour of Austria, in that his career is overshadowed
by that of his brother Vincenzo, but stage 7 marked his first professional victory at
the age of 25, and one that was clearly very popular amongst his teammates.
The team also finished 2nd overall with Herman Pernsteiner, but they weren’t able to topple
Ben Hermans.
The Belgian had won atop the Kitzbuheler Horn on stage 3, and his Israeli Cycling Academy
team defended the jersey admirably from there to the finish.
That’s all for this week - next week we’ll be back with week 2 of the Tour, the BeNe
ladies Tour, plus La Course by Tour de France, a race that you’ll be able to catch live
on our Facebook page if you’re in North or South America, commentary coming from Marty
McDonald and Dame Sarah Storey.
Don’t forget to head over to the GCN Shop if you want to get into the July groove, there’s
a link on the screen right now.
And down here, you can check out the 5 climbs we are most looking forward to watching at
the Tour this year.