3 heavy-weight riders shall start: Pogatchar (🇸🇮 UAE), Vingegaard (🇩🇰 Visma) and Evenepoel (🇧🇪 Soudal-QS).
There will be a few outsiders as well, like Lipowitz (🇩🇪 Bora), Mas (🇪🇸 Movistar) or L. Martinez (🇫🇷 Bahrein).
This will be the last professional race of Romain Bardet (🇫🇷 Picnic). On the other side of the age spectrum, Seixas (🇫🇷 Decathlon) will start his first major race.
During the first half of the race, sprinters and punchers will battle for stages: Milan (🇮🇹 Lidl-Trek), Healy (🇮🇪 EF)…
Stage 1
The organiser has placed no less than 7 4th category climbs over this 1st stage, all of them in the second half of the route, which includes a long circuit ridden a bit more than 2 times. Each climb only grants a single mountain point to the first rider.
A stage for sprinters and possibly sprinters-punchers.
Result:
It is going to be a long week 😬
Weird stage. Did enjoy the finish, though, as much as it promises a predictable race.
Yeah, the same race finish with different names would have reconciled everybody. 😀
Yes, indeed, if you didn’t know any of the riders and this was your first finish you’d be pretty pleased. It had a lot of excitement.
I’m just happy there seems to be more competition for Pogacar this year. Vingegaard seems to be in great shape, almost had Pog in the sprint.
Would I enjoy things more if we had an even field of 5-6 riders who could win here and in the tour? Yes, but we don’t. So I’ll settle for a real competition between the top two.