Welcome to the Tour of the Battenkilll. Part of the famous PTHC cobbles double header with Rheden GP, which is also reflected in the starlist here. It is a little bit weaker of a field than you might expect on average but that does open up some really interesting opportunities for the big guns in Pedersen, Senechal and Wisniowski.
Let’s take a look at the route which as remained unchanged for a while with 218km of hilly cobbles which historically has favoured Wisniowski. The Pole has three wins in the last four outings here which is quite a crazy statistic all things considered.
Favourites:
As previously mentioned Pedersen is the biggest favourite here and he has a massively strong team to boot with Blume Levy and Bohli being considered outsiders in their own right. This should open up a strength in numbers approach for the Scandi side as they look to put a controlling damper on the race until the Dane’s final lash. Tinkoff duo of Senechal and Kamyshev does also propose a massively dangerous prospect for every threat for Grieg’s control if they’re able to space out attacks that could put Pedersen under pressure. Wisniowski does seem kind of left to his own devices with Assa Abloy not really having a strong support team around the fading star.
The outsider field is also really interesting with Vermeersch, Rutsch, Stallaert and Tiller having relatively free reign to propose their own gameplans on the race which should be incredibly interesting to follow, should they be able to combine forces for the right move it would be absolutely game changing and could lead to a surprise victory for one of the.
Would have been a pretty great opportunity here, but I decided to miss both Rheden and Battenkill for Roma Maxima. Guess it worked out, but still feels weird!
RIP Exxon Duke, David Veilleux, Double Feature, and Monster Energy
Kortsidakis and Boutopoulos will have to stand their own Ground here. Not impossible to get a top 10, but also not necessarily to be expected. I guess I should have put Altur here looking at the startlist.
