The great Circus of July arrive in town on Saturday, for 3 weeks.
It starts in Catalunya, Spain and reaches France by the road. Strangely, while many days are spent in the area, Pyrenees as a mountain are almost avoided.
There are only 2 rest days this year, so the first week is relatively long: 8 days.
Again, there are no long stages this year: only 1 barely goes over 200 km. And the total course is probably the second shortest in history (just a few miles longer than last year’s edition…)
Another heatwave is expected over France in July, starting at the same time as the race. It may not be as bad as the heatwave of June, but it is still going to be significantly hotter than normal for days if not weeks.
Regulations
You’ve got the usual Yellow, Green, Red Polka Dots, and White jerseys. Mountain and Points final classifications bring UCI points for the first 3 riders (only).
On top of the Agressive rider daily and final prizes, there is now a smaller weekly and final ‘best teammate’ prize. Both are jury-based prizes.
Each stage brings almost the same UCI points as a 1.Pro race (!)
The scale for Green jersey points has been tweaked to favour even more the pure sprinters… There seems to be only 1 Intermediate Sprint per stage.
The scale for small GPM points remains as ridiculous as before: only 1 point for 1 rider on 4th category climbs, and 2 and points for the first 2 riders on 3rd category climbs…
There are no other secondary or tertiary classification to animate stage or give smaller teams an achievable goal.
Riders
The cream of the mutant crust will be present, probably for the only time this year.
Stages
Stage 1, Saturday 1, Team Time Trial
20 km, D+ 220 m
A very short TTT in the streets of Barcelona, with some climbing near and at the end (your usual Montjuic). Together with the new rules, it means that it is designed to bring the leaders to the front as soon as day 1.
Stage 2
169 km, D+ 2000 m
A stage for punchers, again finishing in Barcelona’s Montjuic, pretty much like the final stage of the Tour of Catalunya even though the circuit is a little bit different
Stage 3
196 km, D+ 3900 m
Arrival in a ski resort in French Catalunya. Is this a mountain stage or a puncher stage? Or simply a very good day for breakaways?
I’m looking forward to the first stage. Interesting to see if its going to make a difference already and how its going to play out between the teams
It seems designed to create differences, so I guess there will be a few. What could happen to minimise them is one stronger leader with a weaker team vs the opposite; perhaps the Pogatchar-UAE vs Vingegaard-Visma will be along this line. But the flat section is relatively short (for a TTT), so I don’t know whether significant advantage can be gained there by a strong team.
I don’t expect much from Seixas/Decathlon, given what they showed on the Dauphiné.
It could be interesting to see what happens at Bora, performance-wise, but also circus-wise 😀
We can note that the organisers had the ‘brilliant’ idea of scheduling the last/favourite teams/leaders at the same time as the WC first 1/8th match of the day 🙄 As if they couldn’t have made it just 20 minutes earlier…
It should be a win for INEOS and everything after that is open. Maybe…
Ineos
Bora
Visma/uae/decathlon
?