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It took us about two months longer than before to get to this point, but the Critérium du Dauphiné is here, and it’s hard to overestimate how impressive this year’s race is.
Take a look at the start list and you’ll see at most all the big favourites of the upcoming Tour de France with the maximum of your lieutenants for five days of WorldTour mountain races. As if that wasn’t a sufficient explanation for why to look, for the maximum of the big names on the start list, this is the WorldTour’s first level race appearance since at least March. Egan Bernal, Geraint Thomas, Tom Dumoulin, Mikel Landa and many others have not yet appeared on the WorldTour this year.
In other words, the maximum of the great stars of the Tour are about to fight in a great race in France, and yet, two weeks before the Tour, we still do not have a clever concept of the drivers who are flying right now and that the cyclists are falling behind. There will be no shortage of plots to stick to in the Critérium du Dauphiné. Here are six that we will be watching closely …
You probably didn’t want me to tell you it’s a wonderful setting, given it’s in the headlines everywhere.
The four-time Tour champion spent months recovering from a serious injury with the primary purpose of counterattacking at La Grande Boucle. Running in February (on the UAE Tour) was a wonderful achievement, however, running at a high enough point to gain variety on the Ineos Tour list is another matter. Froome is reportedly struggling for a position less than 3 weeks before the start of the race.
After Froome’s quiet appearances in La Route d’Occitanie and the Tour de l’Ain, the Critérium du Dauphiné is his chance to turn his place into the Tour de France. And what a race to be this testing ground. Froome has won the Dauphiné 3 times in his career, tying him with some other runners to get the top wins at the hitale of the event. Of course, the Dauphiné was also the site of the crash that placed it in this position at the beginning. If I could use this year’s edition of the race to find out he’s actually back, what a story it would be.
Of course, it’s up to Ineos what kind of functionality is enough for Froome to join the Tour team. Would you do it simply by serving as a fake lieutenant in the mountains? Will you want to do more and get a level win or a respectable result in the general? I guess we’ll have to track down and we won’t have to wait long. The long race in the most sensitive of the Col de Porte at the moment level of the Dauphiné and a 3rd level with the Col de los Angeles Madeleine before a climb in Saint-Martin-de-Belleville will give us (and Ineos manager Dave Brailsford) a broader concept of where Froome is ahead of the Tour.
Speaking of Ineos, the other situation everyone has talked about recently is the war between britain’s Team WorldTour and the Jumbo-Visma team, which seemed to take over the recent Tour de l’Ain.
The Jumbo-Visma all-star team was effective in the small French race, with Primoz Roglic earning the overall name and Steven Kruijswijk, Bennett and Tom Dumoulin completing among the 11 most sensitive in the overall standings. The Dauphiné, however, is a much more vital event, the first focus of the game before the Tour and a race in which former Team Sky has a long history of victories.
This year’s race includes some long ramps where team tactics come into play (unlike shorter and steeper climbs where drafting doesn’t play such a vital role), so we have a good chance to see where things are. for any of the teams.
Long ago, at the start of the season, before motorcycle racing was interrupted around the world, Surely Nairo Quintana was flying, taking rides that reminded other people why they were so excited about him when he became a star years ago. But it’s been almost five months since he won the last level of Paris-Nice.
He has competed in two races since the resumption of the competition, achieving a respectable eighth place in the Mont Ventoux Develé Challenge and in the most sensible form in the Tour de l’Ain, where he finished at the same time as Roglic on a mountain level (level 2) and six seconds (level 3). The Dauphiné will offer a more complete picture of the Quintana shape, with mountains to climb every day.
If Quintana proves she has the form she showed in February and March, the Tour’s speech can also take on a whole new dynamic. It may seem like it was a long time ago, but don’t forget that Quintana was the Chris Froome moment in the 2013 and 2015 Tours, and is still only 30 years old. With a flat day at the Dauphiné this year, the total race looks like a first-class territory of Quintana.
The redesign of the Bahrain-McLaren list was a great story of this last movement season, but we haven’t had the chance to see the team’s flagship acquisition at GC, Mikel Landa, in a WorldTour level action. We still have the chance this week.
Landa’s resolve to point out with Bahrain-McLaren seemed like a smart resolution at the time. In Bahrain-McLaren, the Spaniard still discovered a team in which he would be the undisputed leader of the Tour, and moreover, this resolution reconnected him with Sky’s former director of functionality, Rod Ellingworth, who is one of the most productive skill developers in the sport.
Landa looked wonderful in the Vuelta de Burgos, her first round trip race from halftime. The festival point in the Dauphiné will be higher, but with so many tap climbs, you will have the chance to show off your skills. He will also have great talent around him, so it will be a wonderful opportunity to prove that he is in a position to be the undisputed leader of a Tour de France team.
Thibaut Pinot was, for a brief period of last year’s Tour, the first favorite of the bookies to win the total. Obviously, that’s not how it developed, but Groupama-FDJ still obviously believes in Pinot’s chances of moving forward, having signed it for a long extension last month. He has made a good impression on 4-level racing appearances so far this year. With the form he had on last year’s Tour, you’d think he’d be fighting for victory this week. We’ll see.
Then there’s Julian Alaphilippe, who looked wonderful on his way to honours in Milan-SanRemo on Sunday after a series of punctures derailed his hopes for Strade Bianche. For Alaphilippe, however, this is not so much a question of form as it is a concentration. The driver who took the yellow in the third week of last year’s Tour, although it all finished fifth overall, said he did not aspire to this year’s overall ranking. He said his team wasn’t made for that. Once again, he doesn’t gain anything by telling us he dreams of the glory of the GC Tour. Keep an eye out for the French flexible Dauphiné.
What about Romain Bardet? At this point, expectations are a little lower for the double podium of the tour than they were, say, two years ago. But he still has two Tour podiums in his record and is only 29. I’ll take a look to see how he behaves in a race where he started each and every year since 2014, like Sunweb, who just hired him to be the team team. new GC leader.
I would love to close this list with something a little more cheerful and, of course, there are many other stories to watch (for example, Tadej Pogacar getting a position for his first tour) but there is no way around that. All those pre-Tour scenarios probably wouldn’t matter much unless the Tour is happening as planned, and the Dauphiné has to go smoothly for that to happen.
This year may be slightly reduced (five levels instead of 8), but the Dauphiné will be the longest level race in France since the resumption of the competition and the first WorldTour event. If the platoon spends the week (and the next) without problems, this bodes well for the possibilities of the Tour. Otherwise, France’s attitude towards setting a three-week run through September can also quickly replace. Let’s hope for the best.