The first rest day of the 2023 Tour de France arrives and there are many riders and teams already marked by the opening nine stages. Billed as the hardest start to a TdF for many years, the race has certainly been difficult. However, in terms of tactics, it’s not been as spectacular as we could have expected.
Only one early breakaway has succeeded, which is quite a rare occurrence given the desperation that’s beginning to show for some squads who don’t have a general classification interest and whose sprinter hasn’t met expectations.
I can’t imagine the Belgian media are going easy on Soudal-QuickStep or Lotto-Dstny in their reporting and if it wasn’t for Jasper Philipsen (Alpecin-Deceuninck) then the stick Wout van Aert (Jumbo-Visma) will be getting for not a winning a stage yet would be even bigger.
The latter could point out he’s Belgium’s leading rider on GC in 25th position, however, I imagine that would only add to the woes and the brutal headlines that Patrick Lefevere will be seeing.
The biggest disaster of the week is, of course, the loss of Mark Cavendish (Astana Qazaqstan) in his last Tour, joint record holder of stage wins and the beacon of the Astana team who now have to regroup and wonder what they’re going to get out of the next two weeks of racing.
You could say the same of Movistar now that Enric Mas didn’t get out of the Basque Country before being involved in a crash but now they have an unexpected amount of freedom to go in the attacks, which is exactly what Matteo Jorgenson did when he almost pulled off a spectacular win on stage 9. Being mugged by Michael Woods (Israel-Premier Tech) on the slopes of Puy de Dôme was cruel, but then the Tour isn’t exactly a polite environment.
Britain goes into the rest day with three riders in the top ten which is quite remarkable in itself given the Yates twins and Tom Pidcock (Ineos Grenadiers) have all had very different pre-Tour results. Adam Yates (UAE Team Emirates) has been better than we have seen for a long time, Simon (Jayco AlUla) has been hiding away after abandoning early in Romandie while Pidcock has amused himself with a bit of mountain biking, but now they’re solidly in the fifth to seventh places and certainly in with a chance of a podium place.
The main disappointments after being competitive in the opening stages are Mikel Landa (Bahrain-Victorious) and David Gaudu (Groupama-FDJ) whilst Ben O’Connor (AG2R-Citroën) has been getting worse as the days go by so…
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