This article was produced in association with Hansgrohe and published in Rouleur 130
Earlier this year, I stood on the Promenade des Anglais in Nice with Ralph Denk, the Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe team manager, who was in buoyant spirits. It was the morning of the final stage of Paris-Nice, and the team were flush with the success of Alexandr Vlasov in the previous day’s stage to La Madone d’Utelle above the city. Denk was looking and sounding fairly optimistic, even if the team’s new leader Primož Roglič had been a little off form during the week and was sitting in sixth place over- all, 1:21 behind leader Matteo Jorgensen. (I didn’t see Denk that afternoon after the stage finish; he might have been a little less cheerful after Roglič shipped four minutes and slipped to 10th.) Denk suggested that Roglič was focused entirely on the Tour de France and that being a few percentage points below full fitness in a miserably wet stage race in March was nothing to worry about; also Roglič and Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe were still getting to know each other following the Slovenian’s transfer from Visma-Lease a Bike at the end of 2023.
Which brings me to standing just off the Promenade des Anglais with Ralph Denk at the end of the Tour de France, four months further down the line. The weather was a lot better this time – the weather at Paris-Nice was terrible, while the Côte d’Azur basked in summer heat when it hosted the Grande Boucle. The atmosphere was celebratory – a combination of the good weather and the novelty of the final stages of the Tour de France taking place in Nice gave the whole day a buzz that was neither better nor worse than the buzz of the traditional Champs-Élysées finish but was definitely different.
Around the Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe team bus, the atmosphere is… not as bad as I feared it might be. A sunny day in Nice will do that to you – people come to the Côte d’Azur to have a good time, and those kinds of vibes are contagious. There is a table set up with a stack of pizza boxes, the post-Tour staple, and beers chilling in buckets of iced water. Alexandr Vlasov didn’t make it as far as Nice on his bike, having pulled out of the Tour after a crash on the gravel stage to Troyes at the end of the first week. But he’s made it here on his crutches, and Denk directs him to the liquid refreshments. Soigneurs and mechanics have an easy day – just six riders left for the TT, so as they come in, their…