This ‘Tour’ is in fact a sort of Brittany → Lake Geneva straight line in 9 stages.
22 teams of 7 riders are engaged, including all top riders I believe.
This ‘Tour’ is in fact a sort of Brittany → Lake Geneva straight line in 9 stages.
22 teams of 7 riders are engaged, including all top riders I believe.
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.
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.