From the profile of stage 19 of the 2023 Tour de France, Friday’s stage should have been a fairly unstressful trek through the foothills of the Jura mountains for the main overall contenders. Instead, a colossal fight for the breakaway that went on for 100 of the day’s 172.8 kilometres made for a much more gruelling challenge and resulted in one of the fastest stages in history.
Once the definitive breakaway of 31 had gone, the peloton sat up and tried to recover its strength. But for the riders ahead, there was no such respite, with the pitched battle for the last transition stage of the 2023 race continuing all the way to the line, where Matej Mohorič (Bahrain Victorious) won in a photo finish.
Subject to final confirmation, the day’s average speed of 49.13kph on a stage featuring more than 2,000 metres of vertical climbing was reported as the fifth-fastest non-time trial Tour de France stage in history. Stage 4 of the 1999 Tour de France from Laval to Blois still tops the ranking at 50.36kph, but stage 19 of the 2023 Tour, at least for the first 32 riders on the stage classification, was hardly gentle on the legs.
As exhausted riders picked their way through the dense crowds milling around the finish area in search of the team buses on the long straightaway behind it, team directors reflected on why it had been such a high-speed day.
“When you looked at the profile this morning you knew it would be a tough day because everybody had a chance,” Ineos Grenadiers racing director Rod Ellingworth told Cyclingnews.
“It was a day for everybody. That’s why it was such a tough day. It was quite dramatic seeing some small guys like Tom Pidcock out there in the same front group with some of the biggest sprinters in the peloton.
“I’m not surprised it was full gas, though. There are some key teams who still haven’t won a stage,” he added. There were 19 teams represented in the attack with only Movistar, DSM-Firmenich and Astana-Qazaqstan missing out.
That made for a very different, faster race than with just 10 riders up the road, Ellingworth said. “When it [the initial break] got up to a minute, I thought that was it. But fair play to Uno-X” – with Anthon Charmig and Rasmus Tiller in the move – “they did a smashing job, they put themselves in the mix and had people in the break. It was an exciting day of racing, that’s for sure.”
The terrain also lent itself to a breakaway sticking, Ellingworth pointed out, with a lot of twisty, technical roads and a hefty amount of…
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