The sprint chances are few on this year’s Tour de France and stage 13 looked like one of them, but a number of factors worked against a bunch finish and into the hands of the breakaway. BikeExchange-Jayco’s late arrival to the chase could be counted among them.
Through the early stages of the lumpy 192.6km day from Bourg d’Oisans to Saint-Etienne it was Lotto Soudal and Alpecin-Deceuninck working at the front to try and keep the breakaway in check, but then Lotto Soudal’s sprint hope Caleb Ewan crashed and despite attempts to make it back to the peloton – and attempts by the Alpecin-Deceuninck team car to help him – Ewan was out of the running.
Alpecin-Deceuninck then struggled to find allies in the chase as Jumbo-Visma, despite having the green-jersey clad Wout van Aert as a serious prospect, had bigger goals than a stage win on their mind and QuickStep-AlphaVinyl’s Fabio Jakobsen looked to be struggling to hold on through the climbs. However, there was also no sign of BikeExchange-Jayco, who appeared to have two solid options for the day with not only stage 3 winner Dylan Groenewegen but also Michael Matthews if the climbs proved too hard for the pure sprinter.
Though both were only prospects if the break was caught, and as Mads Pedersen (Trek-Segafredo), Filippo Ganna (Ineos Grenadiers), Stefan Kung (Groupama-FDJ), Matteo Jorgenson (Movistar), Fred Wright (Bahrain Victorious) and Hugo Houle (Israel-Premier Tech) crested the climb of the Côte de Saint-Romain-en-Gal with just over 40km to go, the gap had stretched to three-and-a-half minutes.
“It was a tricky one, it was always going to be touch and go. We had to wait and see if Dylan was going to pass the category 3 climb,” said Head Sport Director at BikeExchange-Jayco, Matt White. “A lot of things happened during that stage today with Caleb Ewan crashing and the chase being disrupted by that. Then we thought we would give it a try to bring it back.”
The team lined up on the front after the Côte de Saint-Romain-en-Gal, led by Amund Grøndahl Jansen, Chris Juul-Jensen and Jack Bauer. They pushed the pace on the front, and it did have an impact, pulling the gap back to around two minutes, but eventually the work took its toll. It was then down to key lead-out men Luka Mezgec and Matthews to continue the chase and with 15km to go, and still a gap of more than two minutes, the team soon decided to call it a day on what was now looking a futile task.
“We didn’t have the…
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