And on Sunday, the little brother of the Classica where we usually find most of the same riders who rode the Classica on Saturday: the Circuit of Getxo.

Official site: https://www.circuitodegetxo.com/
PCS page: https://www.procyclingstats.com/race/circuito-de-getxo/2025

It will be officially streamed on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/live/gHgoiPux9po

Interestingly in the desert people do wear black because it’s as cool or cooler than white: https://backpackingguys.com/why-do-bedouins-wear-black-in-the-desert/

You will note that this blog post does not quote a single study…

Stage 9 (last one) (Sunday 3: 15:20–15:25 → 18:45–19:15)

A stage where teammates can play an important role, as the main pass is in the middle of the stage, and riders who will be dropped uphill or downhill in this pass or the smaller next one will need teammates to catch up on the false-flat sections. And of course teammates of riders ahead will be used to pull hard the front groups so that dropped riders cannot come back.

With over 2′30 gap over the second, Ferrand-Prevost will be hard to beat, but the rest of the podium and top-10 is not so clearly decided yet.

I didn’t understand Squiban’s (🇫🇷 UAE) attitude at all. She didn’t dispute the mountain points to Chabbey (🇨🇭 FDJ) and just went for the second place on each of the 2 climbs the breakaway passed ahead. The only reason I can imagine is Chabbey offered her money, because I can’t figure out any sportive reason, and I also fail to see what Chabbey could have exchanged in the sport domain.

For the final win… Let’s sum it up by saying that the favourite Vollering (🇳🇱 FDJ) massively failed one more time. She was beaten hard by Gigante (🇦🇺 AG) and above all Ferrand-Prevost (🇫🇷 Visma). She could have been beaten by Niewadoma (🇵🇱 Canyon) as well, if the latter had got another rider’s help like Vollering behind her got (and the first two riders got too before her).

With only one stage remaining, the biggest team with the biggest favourite, FDJ, has zero stage victory and won’t win the Tour unless Ferrand-Prevot has an accident and Gigante is a bit dropped; even the podium was compromised 1 mile from the line. That’s the result of the “all for Vollering, all for stage #8” plan.

In my opinion, Christen’s (🇨🇭 UAE) immediate attack when he joined Del Toro (🇲🇽 UAE) and Ciccone (🇮🇹 Lidl-Trek) caused the loss of the race for UAE. If he hadn’t, Ciccone🇮🇹 wouldn’t have attacked so soon, UAE would have enjoyed a 2 vs 1 longer, Ciccone🇮🇹 would have made a narrower gap or not gap at all over Christen🇨🇭, and Del Toro🇲🇽 wouldn’t have been pushed so far, so Christen🇨🇭 could have stayed in the wheels of Ciccone🇮🇹 until the end.

Stage 8 (penultimate) (Saturday 2: 13:45–14:00 → 17:15–17:45)

This summit finish will probably be decisive.

At the other end of the stage, starting directly with a 13 km climb will probably thin the ranks of the peloton even if no strong pace is put there.

Same winner as yesterday, Squiban (🇫🇷 UAE), this time from a breakaway.

Again, the FDJ team was pretty lethargic, not trying to catch up with the breakaway, not trying to finish the riders who had been dropped in the last climb, except for a mile or so before and after the pass.

Le Court had temporarily lost her yellow jersey, but she managed to catch up in the second half of the descent, and didn’t lose a second in the end.

Obviously, her team and herself see Vollering way above the others in the future stages. Well… this kind of overconfidence has already bitten her in the past, I think. She is still the favourite, but who knows what can happen when you chose to place yourself at the mercy of a bad day, an incident, a pee break?

I also didn’t understand that Le Net, FDJ teammate of Chabbey who wears the mountain jersey, didn’t contest the points to Squiban on the first two climbs despite being in the same breakaway. Chabbey wasn’t going to lose the jersey on this stage, given the poor points scale (the second climb was particularly under-categorised), but still… Now that I think of it, Squiban wasn’t lucky with pints the day before either: on top the second climb she passed in first position, they had put a time bonus sprint in place of a mountain sprint! That’s why she ends up with so few points, in spite of having ridden 5 out of 6 climbs in first position since we arrived in the (pre-)Alps.

Stage 7 (Friday 1: 13:30–13:40 → 17:30–17:55)

This stage brings the riders into the Alps (Chartreuse), after about 100 flat kilometres. The finish line is at the bottom at a long descent. Will downhill abilities matter more than climbing ones? Riders who struggle in descents had better get a head start in the main climb.

Perhaps GC favourites will attack (like they did in the punchy final part of stage #5); perhaps it will simply be a game of attrition before the following harder stages, as the two major climbs are a little bit far from the finish line today.

It looked more like option B.

I am not quite sure what FDJ (Vollering’s team) attempted to do in the final two climbs. They were pulling the ‘peloton’ (about 15 riders only), but weren’t reducing the gap with the breakaway (the lone Squiban) and weren’t dropping anyone. And Vollering didn’t get any time bonus, neither at the last climb not at the finish, while Le Court took all she could (it probably won’t matter after real mountain begins, but still…)

Stage 6 (Thursday 31: 14:00–14:25 → 17:30–17:55)

A short-ish stage with some mountain passes in the Massif Central (the Forez mounts, I believe). There are several climbs, none of them is too steep, but the main one is very long.

Perhaps GC favourites will attack (like they did in the punchy final part of stage #5); perhaps it will simply be a game of attrition before the following harder stages, as the two major climbs are a little bit far from the finish line today.

Wiebes was quickly dropped in the little climb 20 km from the line, and neither Kopecky nor herself made a big effort to try to come back.

It was a much more interesting and pleasant final part than the previous stages (even the first two). Successive splits left a group of 7 for victory, and Le Court wins and takes the yellow jersey, even though her recklessly stopping 10 metres from the line almost caused Vollering to cross the line before her.

After the easy half of the Tour, we have already lost 19 riders. That’s almost the equivalent of 3 full teams.

Stage 5 (Wednesday 30: 13:20–13:35 → 17:30–18:00)

This stage should be for punchers rather than sprinters, but Wiebes has already won harder classics than this. It may depend on her team’s capacity to control attacks.

Oh surprise! there was a sprint and Wiebes won for the 38^th time in two years. 🙄

Several but not too many hard crashes, I believe.

Ah yeah, the barbecue budget (prize money). Here they are:

Each Intermediate sprints:

• 1^st – 1500 €
• 2^nd – 1000 €
• 3^rd – 500 €

Mountain:

• HC:
  • 1^st – 800 €
  • 2^nd – 450 €
  • 3^rd – 300 €
• 1^st cat.:
  • 1^st – 650 €
  • 2^nd – 400 €
  • 3^rd – 150 €
• 2^nd cat.:
  • 1^st – 500 €
  • 2^nd – 250 €
• 3^rd cat.:
  • 1^st – 300 €
• 4^th cat.:
  • 1^st – 200 €

There’s a bit of money at the end, beyond the jersey and the UCI points for the first 3, even though it drops sharply between the podium and the 4^thplace.

Points classification (mountain is the same):

1. 25,000 €
2. 15,000 €
3. 10,000 €
4. 4,000 €
5. 3,500 €
6. 3,000 €
7. 2,500 €
8. 2,000 €

So basically, when they are stuck in such rankings, they only fight for 500 € extra. But yeah, scoring the daily 500 € and paying attention not to fall beyond the 8^th place is worth the small effort.

Concerning Coquard, there is that, but I think there are also two other factors.

I think that in the beginning he always goes for the green jersey or at least the point classification podium in the long run, in the hope that other sprinters will abandon; and they often do, as they are more often involved and crashes, and have more trouble going through the mountain. Unfortunately for him, this last point is less and less true, as nobody is kicked out by delays any more.

The last factor is that he is a bit old-school, in the sense that he tries to give his best all the time, he ‘grinds’; even though he knows that his best doesn’t allow him much hope any more, it can be seen as some professional conscientiousness as well (especially in the context of his team).

One major factor in the fact that it has become harder to get into breakaways, is IMO that most stages were very stereotyped. Out of 18-19 mass start stages: all flat or useless minor hill in the middle of the stage ⇒ sprinters (5 stages), flat(-ish) + 2-3 steep hills in the end ⇒ punchers (3-4 stages), mountain with a final hard climb ⇒ pure climbers/leaders (5 stages). So that leaves 5 open stages where everyone and their grandmother will attempt to go on a breakaway, creating a very tough concurrence.

On the other hand, it should mean that it is easier to get into breakaways on many stages where everyone believes breakaways have zero chances to win. Therefore, spraying a few generously categorised climbs here and there, and changing the points scale to something that looks more like the one of the Giro d’Italia, should fix the problem. Well… fix that problem, but we could see sprinters in a breakaway on the Giro who weren’t interested in intermediate sprints, despite the fact that the Giro has more intermediate sprints than the Tour, and that it has a special intermediate sprints extra classification (the Giro has many more secondary/tertiary goals than the Tour).

In this year mountain classification, despite the final climbs bringing in many points to GC leaders, the gaps are narrow in the final classification. I think that riders like L. Martinez made a mistake in neglecting small points and just going all in on a few hard mountain stages (to be honest, Martinez tried in the first part of the race too, that’s in the other parts that he gave up on small points). Yes, the crappy scale gives 20 times more points for an HC than for a 4^th cat. climb, and it gives points to many riders compared to one single rider; and there were too many HCs. Yet, even with this crappy scale, L. Martinez would be ranked 2^nd, just 14 points below Pogatchar if he hadn’t cheated. That’s for example the exact number of points which was available in the last two stages, which were not mountain stages.

One strange thing is that riders still seem to only give consideration to the first place of those classifications, despite UCI now granting points to the 3 ‘podium’ places in those, and not just for the 1st place. Well, I don’t know: for the green jersey, Turgis and Abrahamsen kept on scoring points until the end, despite being ranked 5^th or 6^th or 7^th… Was it like a parade to them? Did they hope several guys from the podium would abandon? Did they believe there was a separate Intermediate Sprint classification as on the Tour of Italy? 😀

Paris stage was a good surprise. Although I may not have said this if Pogatchar had won (nevertheless, I must congratulate him for trying, he didn’t need to), or if there had been a crash. They were on a razor’s edge, in spite of being more careful than usual. I wish the organiser could find a less risky way of going downhill, but that’s probably not possible.

Looking at maps and Google Streetview, the chosen downhill path is the most straightforward, and the easiest too. It actually looks much safer than when it is filmed by a camera just ahead of riders. The curves don’t look as bad as on TV. So perhaps just put a few big & high protections like those they started putting in places like the curves of the descents of the Cipressa and the Poggio on Milan–San-Remo, and it should be OK.

Stage 4 (Tuesday 29: 14:35–14:45 → 17:35–17:55)

The second of the Wiebes stages.

100% expected outcome of a sprint stage:

• Wiebes (🇳🇱 SD-Worx) wins,
• mass crashes, involving GC leaders.

🙄

What are your feelings about this tour?

As far as I am concerned, I rather liked it.

The mountain stages were somewhat disappointing, but aren’t they almost always so? (Except 1 recent year when Pogatchar and Vingegaard were knocking up attacks from outer space.). Vingegaard couldn’t do anything against Pogatchar and Pogatchar behaved weirdly once he had asserted his domination on the first two Pyrénées stages (mass start and TT). Mont Ventoux stage was however a positive surprise, we can note it is also the only one when the leaders’ peloton allowed the breakaway a sufficient time gap, so we could have two separated levels of racing.

Then there were 5 sprint stages. For me, these are absolutely useless, but there have a few vocal fans. I think that they are more than useless: detrimental. They may be the main cause of the withdrawal of important riders, not to mention those who didn’t abandon but were diminished. Ganna (!), Bisseger and Van den berg as soon as the 1^st stage; Philipsen and Jeannière on the 3^rd; Zimmermann and Wærenskjold on the 9^th; Barthe and C. Rodriguez on the 17^th.

Punchers stage were OK. Good but stereotyped: I would like to see more open stages, like the last before Paris, or Carcassonne and perhaps Toulouse, where punchers can shine, but also tough all-terrain breakawaymen/classicmen and possibly a couple of all-terrain sprinters. Note: the Mûr de Bretagne stage was the main cause for withdrawals after the sprinters stages. When the stage has a strong puncher stereotype (the Flèche Wallone sterotype, if you want), the unfolding is too similar to a sprinter stage: most of the stage is relatively slow, boring in the peloton (which can also cause crashes), and then the final is super fast and tense.

Paris stage was a good surprise. Although I may not have said this if Pogatchar had won (nevertheless, I must congratulate him for trying, he didn’t need to), or if there had been a crash. They were on a razor’s edge, in spite of being more careful than usual. I wish the organiser could find a less risky way of going downhill, but that’s probably not possible.

Side classifications were rather disappointing. With the withdrawal of the two Alpecin riders, Pogatchar could have won it if he wished so. Milan did want his jersey and did what he could for it, but in a way he only got it thanks to Pogatchar AND other teams handing it to him.

There were few riders interested in the mountain jersey. L. Martinez was the most interested, but he failed badly at it: very bad tactics, random legs, cheating; that’s a bad mix. Woods tried a bit, Arensman perhaps but he was lucky to get two wins on the top. Most the time, the jersey was worn by someone who didn’t want it… The scale and the distribution of passes (mountain stages in the tour and passes within mountain stages) didn’t help, but the problem is deeper.

On the French side, Jegat and Vauquelin were unexpected in the top-10 (even though the gaps are terrible). They put up a good fight everyday (often in the background, so they are lucky that it was the tour of France filmed by French TV and we could follow their struggle), and despite those daily efforts, they were again at the front of the race on the last Saturday (Jegat) and Sunday (Vauquelin)! Stage-wise, V. Paret-peintre saved the honour on the Mont Ventoux; other than that the appraisal for France is awful: a single stage podium with Alaphilippe (Carcassonne). If we consider that best French riders are almost only punchers and it was a tour for punchers, that’s terrible.

Stage 3 (Monday 28: 13:50–13:55 → 17:30–17:55)

The first of two flat stages for sprinters Wiebes in a row.