First hilly one-day race of the World Tour calendar this season, and also the first WT race in Italian soil. With last year’s winner (and 3-times winner, only rider to win multiple times the race) Fabian Cancellara retired, 2014 winner Michal Kwiatkowski is the big favourite to win the race. Other favourites should be Rui Costa, Sonny Colbrelli, Michael Valgren or Enrico Gasparotto
Mikel Landa will continue his build-up for Giro d’Italia, and we will aim for a top10 finish today. He will have as team-mates Marc Soler, Stefan Denifl, Vicente Garcia de Mateos, Alexander Foliforov, Guillaume Martin and Adrien Costa.
We have a rainy day today, and that together with the several dirt roads, might bring lot of fun (and crashes, mostly that).
In the first dirt roads descent, we have the first big crash of the day. Basically, all our team is down or affected, with Mikel, Adrien and Alexander in the ground. Also, Kwiatkowski, Teuns, Bettiol, Gasparotto or M.A. Lopez have crashed.
We quickly recovered our places in the group, so nothing was lost there.
The race was boring until the last 20 km, when in one of the last dirt roads, Guillaume and Alexander put a high rhythm to try to break the group for Mikel.
Exiting one of those dirt roads, while turning in a 90 degree corner, Ben Swift crashed, taking with him lots of riders, as he was around tenth place in the bunch.
That meant that, behind the 10-men breakaway who were still in front, a 6-rider group was formed. Those riders were Alexander, Mikel, Bonifazio, Colbrelli, Teuns and Valgren
The bunch was too far to catch us, so the race will be decided between these 16 rider
We caught the break thanks to an attack by Teuns, so now we were on the first group with 6 km to go, and only the final climb to Siena
And now we are in the final km. Barhain has two riders, so they will be the team to watch. Mikel was well-placed for that final km
With the final km being in uphill cobbles, Colbrelli was the clear favourite. Mikel was trying everything he could to stay on the Italian’s wheel, but he exploded with 200 metres to go, and he was overtaken by Teuns and Valgren, as Mikel went onto finishing forth today
Sonny Colbrelli wins Strade Bianche. Impressive job by the Italian, clearly a deserved winner.
Dylan Teuns was second, really close to Colbrelli, and Michael Valgren third
Welcome to 2017 Paris-Nice, one of the most prestigious one-week stage races. 8 days of racing in which should be one of the first real battles between the GT riders. The last 2 winners are here, with Richie Porte leading BMC and Geraint Thomas making a three-way leadership in Sky with Wout Poels and Sergio Henao. Also, last year’s runner-up and two-times winner of the race, Alberto Contador, will be leading Trek. He will be helped by Mollema and Pantano, bringing here a really strong team for mountains.
Other importants riders for GC are Tom Dumoulin, who has the TT in his favour, and has brought here Wilco Kelderman and Warren Barguil. Julian Alaphilippe and Dan Martin will lead Quick-Step, making one of the strongest pairs in the race. Thibaut Pinot leads FDJ in home soil, and he hopes to get a big result here. Ion Izagirre is here for Barhain-Merida, and as Dumoulin, he will have the TT to get some seconds before the mountains.
Rigoberto Uran, Pierre Latour, Andrew Talansky, Jakob Fuglsang, Leopold Konig, Robert Gesink and Dani Moreno might be also fighting for a top10 place.
We have here a solid sprinting field, with Alexander Kristoff, Mark Cavendish, Andre Greipel, Elia Viviani, Nacer Bouhanni, Arnaud Demare, Dylan Groenewegen and Sam Bennett
We have a top5 sponsor goal, and for that, we have brought here Tejay van Garderen with that hope. He will be joined by Lilian Calmejane, Alexey Lutsenko, Guillaume Martin, Nils Politt, Julen Amezqueta, Alexis Gougeard and Phil Bauhaus. David Gaudu was meant to be Tejay’s lieutenant, but he hasn’t recovered yet from his fibula fracture.
The race starts with 3 flat stages, although the first one is not completely flat, before the TT who finish in Mount Brouilly. After anoter flat stage, the hilly stages come with the Fayence one. Some gaps could be done there, but the queen stage is the Col du Coilloule one. That stage should shake up the GC completely and bring us a solid leader before the Nice stage, where those who want to improve their GC place should attack
Flattish stage, but with that little uphill in the last km, not all pure sprinters will fight for the win today, and riders as Demare or Alaphilippe could do it great today.
Before the first climb of the day, we had a big crash in he bunch. Over 100 riders found themselves in the ground, with most of the sprinters involved, and also Dan Martin of the GC guys. From us, only Lilian and Guillaume crashed.
Several riders were forced to abandon, like Craddock, Valgren, Van Poppel or Preidler
Inside last 30 km, another big crash. This time none of our riders were involved, and it resulted in a 40-men group in which he had all our riders.
We end up quicker if we say who is on the leading group instead talking about the fallens.
We have here Kelderman, Uran, Izagirre, Thomas, Poels, Greipel, Pinot, Contador, Porte and Cavendish, apart from our riders.
At the end, Mark Cavendish was the strongest today and won easily ahead of Andre Greipel and Lilian Calmejane
The losers today are: Rolland, Gesink (1’03), Dumoulin, Wellens, Dennis, Kangert, Wellens (3’12), Fuglsang, Frank, Alaphilippe, Barguil (4’02) and Latour (5’52). Also we had several riders who had to abandon the race, including Mollema, Van Poppel, Valgren, Pelucchi or Valls.
Only 23 riders arrived in the same time as the winner today (all of them in the spoiler in the GC standings)
After yesterday’s caos with all the crashes, today should be a calmer day, with another chance for the sprinters. Cavendish proved himself yesterday as the strongest, so today all eyes will be on him.
So the stage was rather boring, with the exception of a little zone where we had lateral wind, and some teams tried to pull harder to see if the bunch would brake.
Alexey and Lilian tried to place Phil in the best possible place, so he could sit on someone else wheel in the last 2 km
Phil saw DD coming by his left for Cavendish, with Trentin on the Brit’s wheel, and he jumped on their wheel in that moment.
Neither Alexey or Lilian realised that Phil wasn’t on their wheels until Lilian launched his sprint and did see Phil in Trentin’s wheel in the other side of the road.
Cavendish wins by the second day in a row easily ahead of Greipel and Trentin.
Actually, Lilian finished ahead of Phil, who didn’t have the legs to jump outside Trentin’s wheel, so two top5 for us today.
Also, great to see that none of the riders who still are in the race looks to be injured, as all riders finished in the peloton today.
Another flat stage before the TT. Cavendish looks ready to win a third stage in a row.
Julen entered the early breakaway, which had 11 riders, so the peloton had to react quickly if they wanted to fight for the win in a sprint. This created a beautiful pursuit between the breakaway and the bunch in the first 100 km of the stage
At the end, the peloton had more riders who were able to pull when others were already done, so eventually the peloton caught the breakaway.
After this, Alexis attacked and formed a 4-men breakaway, with Chavanel, Gautier and Oliveira. In the last climb of the day, Alexey attacked with Lilian on his wheel, opening a big gap with the peloton when they reached the summit. In that moment, they caught Alexisand the other members of the breakaway
In the descent, Guillaume, Julen and Phil were involved in a huge crash around mid-peloton. With most of the peloton in the back-half of the group after the climb, lot of fast men were involved in the crash
Sadly, Guillaume was forced to abandon. We’ll find soon what injuries does he have, and how much time he will be out of racing
Alexey is doing an incredible job to keep Lilian’s hopes alive. They still have like 25 seconds with 5 km to go. It’s not enough, but Lilian will give it all to keep that distance
Oh, this is going to be so close for Lilian…
Kristoff and Cavendish look to be Lilian’s only rivals for the win
YES!! What a win!!
This is clearly the most beautiful win that the team has got this season. Thanks Lilian!
@sutty Lilian has reached his beast-mode recently. I hope he can make it last at least until Ardennes
Tirreno-Adriatico (2.WT)
Preview
Welcome to the preview of one of the most prestigious one-week races in the world. As the race clashes with Paris-Nice, the best riders of the world are shared between the two races, so basically those who are not racing in France, are racing here.
The race starts with a 22-km TTT, where Quick-Step, Sky or BMC should be the favourites. Then we have a uphill finish in Pomarance, which should end in a favourites sprint, with other guys as Sagan or GvA involved. After that we have the first sprint of the race, before the hardest finish of the race, Monte Terminillo. After this the GC should be pretty much defined, but the fifth stage, with end in Fermo, could do some damage to the less-punchy climbers. After another possible sprint stage, the race ends with a 10-km TT in San Benedetto del Tronto
The favourite to win the GC is Chris Froome (Sky); the Brit, who hasn’t raced here since 2013, doesn’t have to strongest team in the mountains, but he has with him a strong team for the inagural TTT, where lots of seconds can be gained.
Another big favourite is 2015 winner Nairo Quintana, who wants to win by the second time the race, and has Alejandro Valverde as team-mate, so Movistar will have a double-weapon to fight against Froome.
Two-time winner Vincenzo Nibali is also here. He doesn’t have good support, with no climbers and only Boaro as a good TT rider. The other Italian hope to win the race is Fabio Aru, who has a strong team around him, with Cataldo, Moser, Bilbao or M.A.Lopez as team-mates here.
Other top 5-10 contenders should be Primoz Roglic, Simon Spilak, Louis Meintjes, Rui Costa, Damiano Caruso, Emanuel Buchmann or Domenico Pozzovivo.
In the sprinters field, most of the top sprinters are in France, so here we “only” have the two-times World Champion Peter Sagan, Fernando Gaviria, Sonny Colbrelli, John Degenkolb, Caleb Ewan, Edvald Boasson Hagen, Sacha Modolo and Magnus Cort Nielsen.
Other important riders who are in the race but aren’t climbers or sprinters are the reigning champion Greg van Avermaet, Philippe Gilbert, Fabio Felline, Zdenek Stybar and Jonathan Castroviejo
The team comes here with the goal to win a stage, and that’s not looking easy for us with the team we brought here: Emanuel Buchmann and Alexander Foliforov; Magnus Cort Nielsen for the sprints, who will be helped by Heinrich Haussler and Tyler Farrar. Two guys for the flat, in Taylor Phinney and Jelle Wallays, and a free element with Vicente Garcia de Mateos.
The race starts with a 22-km TTT. It’s only the second time in the season that the team rides a TTT, so we don’t expect a great result here
Team Sky started the TTT really strong, putting 21 seconds on Quick-Step, but they faded in the last kilometres, which allowed the Belgian team to win the TTT by a 10 seconds margin. Fernando Gaviria will be the first leader as he was the first rider of Quick-Step to cross the line.
We started as the worst team in the intermediate check point, almost a minute down on Sky, although at the end we finished second to last, 49 seconds worse than Quick-Step. Not a good start for us
Today is the TT, who will finish with the climb to Mount Brouilly. The key will be to have enough energies in the climb if you want to win the stage, but with riders as Tom Dumoulin, Richie Porte, Ion Izagirre, Geraint Thomas or Rohan Dennis, the chances for Tejay to win today are very slim.
With some favourites and good timetrialist start early due to the first stage crashes, early times were made by those riders. Stef Clement was the leader for most time of the TT, until Tanel Kangert made a time that eventually would give him the second place in the stage. Not even Tom Dumoulin was able to beat the Estonian until the GC riders who remained in the GC battle started their races.
Kelderman lost more than half a minute, Poels was just behind the 30 second barrier, and Uran lost around 20 seconds. Then it was Contador’s turn, and he didn’t dissapoint. He did the same time as Kangert, but a few tenths slower, so the Estonian remained as the leader.
The next one to cross the line was Tejay, who started slow in the flat, in order to be able to go full gas in the climb. His time was good to finish seventh in the stage, 13 seconds slower than the eventual winner.
Neither Porte, Thomas or Izagirre were able to beat Kangert/Contador’s time, but all were faster than Tejay. And finally, the French TT champion, Thibaut Pinot, who after the check point was way behind the other favourites, did a superb climb in order to win the stage
Thibaut Pinot is also the new race leader, but the gaps are really small, so nothing is decided yet, with 6 riders in 13 seconds
A hard long stage that will test everyone’s endurance is on the menu for today in Italy. The favourites should be riders as Valverde, Gilbert, Sagan or Van Avermaet, who can climb good enough to use their speed to sprint for the win. For us, it will be a survival fight with Emanuel and Alexander.
The stage was really boring and nothing happened until the final climb of the day, Pomarance, where Valverde attacked from the base. That part was actually the hardest, so it was not a bad idea, if not by the fact that the riders weren’t wasted, so he did not went anywhere.
At the end, it was like a flat stage in terms of gap, as except for a few riders who were dropped in the early climbs after working in the flat, no one was dropped from the group in Pomarance, and Philippe Gilbert did the best sprint to win the stage and take the GC lead
The final flat stage of the race. As always, Cavendish is the big favourite, although there are lots of good sprinters here who can take the win from him. And we can’t discount a breakaway win today, as the route is not completely flat.
And that’s what happened. A big group went in the breakaway, with 8 riders, who had over 2 minutes with 12 km to go. Some of them like Chavanel, Oliveira or Bozic
Mads Wurtz Schmidt proved to be the strongest in the breakaway to take his first ever WT win, ahead of Chavanel and Bozic
Now the "easy" stages are over, and Tejay will have to fight for the GC win in the last 3 mountain stages
@Croatia, @sutty Tejay's on good shape, good placed in GC,
what could go wrong now?
Tirreno-Adriatico
Stage 3
“Flat” stage today in Tirreno. Yes, “flat”. As you can in the profile is not a day for pure sprinters, and the likes of Sagan, Colbrelli or Boasson Hagen should enjoy the route, with the uphill finish
We don’t have a real goal for this stage, so we’ll see what happens today.
Vicente joined the breakaway with other 4 riders. They were not dangerous for the bunch, so they were allowed to have 6 minutes at some point before the only climb of the day
A crash in the descent of that climb made Magnus abandon the race. This race is being terrible for us.
Vicente’s group was caught before the last 5 km, and the bunch was ready for the sprint finish. Heinrich had caught Sagan’s wheel. Great move for him.
And the win today is for John Degenkolb. His team has led him out perfectly, and the German hasn’t disappointed his team-mates. Ewan and Colbrelli complete the podium, with Heinrich closing the top10
@dominox It's Tejay... but you can see here if something went wrong
Paris-Nice
Stage 6
First mountain stage, although not the hardest one. The GC guys will be tested in that brutal finish in Fayence after a hard day in the saddle.
The day started normally with a breakaway of 7 riders, the most important and dangerous being Tony Martin, but when the climbs aproached, Tejay suffered two crashes in a row.
Almost all our team crashed in either crashes, and while trying to recompose the team around Tejay, he was already 4 minutes down on the leader’s group. Others were even less luckier than Tejay, as riders like Dan Martin or Greipel were forced to abandon the race due his injuries.
From here, it was a hopeless fight of Tejay to bridge the gap to the favourites. Meanwhile, Tony Martin was able to stay away and win the stage. Superb perfomance from the Katusha rider.
Richie Porte was the strongest of the favourites, finishing second in the stage a few second ahead of the group with Henao, Contador, Pinot and other GC guys. This meant that the Aussie was the new leader of the race
Almost 4 minutes had passed since Porte crossed the line, and Tejay was finally arriving to Fayence
Terrible day for him, which sees him slide-out of top10. Still two mountain stages left, especially tomorrow's one, with end in Col de la Couilloile, but GC hopes for Tejay have vanished...
