Key Takeaways: Critérium du Dauphiné Final Weekend

Breaking down what the final weekend at the eight-stage Critérium du Dauphiné tells us about the upcoming Tour de France

At last weekend’s Critérium du Dauphiné, Primož Roglič racked up his first GC victory on his new BORA-hansgrohe team, with Visma-Lease a Bike’s ascendant American coming in second and Israel-Premier Tech’s Derek Gee putting in the ride of the week to come out of the stage racing woodwork to finish third. With the Dauphiné, due to being set in the Rhône-Alpes region of the French Alps, serving as an effective dress rehearsal for the Tour de France, Roglič’s win, in theory, should serve as a leading indicator for success at the Tour in a few weeks’ time, but, in practice, his multiple crashes, and final stage wobble, which set up a thrilling pursuit in the final kilometers and allowed Jorgenson get within just eight seconds of the race win, raised just as many questions as his eventual win answered.

Check out the five Key Takeaways below to understand what Roglič’s up-and-down performance, Jorgenson and Gee’s rapid rise, and Remco Evenepoel’s continuing climbing struggles tell us about what to expect at the upcoming Tour de France.

Final GC Top Ten
1) Primož Roglič (BORA-hansgrohe) +0
2) Matteo Jorgenson (Visma-LAB) +8
3) Derek Gee (Israel-Premier Tech) +36
4) Carlos Rodríguez (Ineos) +1’00
5) Laurens De Plus (Ineos) +2’04
6) Aleksandr Vlasov (BORA-hansgrohe) +2’06
7) Remco Evenepoel (Soudal-QuickStep) +2’25
8) Giulio Ciccone (Lidl-Trek) +2’54
9) Oier Lazkano (Movistar) +2’54
10) Mikel Landa (Soudal Quick-Step) +4’13

Stage 7-8 Notebook

Stage 7
8.5km-to-go: Heading into the incredibly steep final climb, and with Marc Soler 4+ minutes up the road, Roglič’s Bora-Hansgrohe team gets to the front and sets a hard pace.

7km: Evenepoel, unable to handle Bora’s hard pace, drops off the pace after on a particularly steep section.

650m: After sitting on the front setting a hard for kilometers that brings multiple attacks to heel, Bora’s Aleksandr Vlasov is finally overtaken when Santiago Buitrago and Oier Lazkano move up to the front.

300m: Lazkano, likely the biggest rider left in the group, attacks and is closely followed by Jorgenson. Roglič, in yellow, sits further back.

250m: As Lazkano fades, Roglič leverages his positioning further back to build up speed so that by the time he reaches the front, he is able to get by Jorgenson and open a gap on the others before they can respond.

Finish: Once he has position on the front, Roglič is nearly impossible to pass in the tight, weaving line to the finish line with Jorgenson right on his wheel and the others on a two-second gap.

Stage Top Three
1) Primož Roglič (BORA-hansgrohe) +0
2) Matteo Jorgenson (Visma-LAB) +0
3) Giulio Ciccone (Lidl-Trek) +2

Stage 8
6km-to-go: On another steep final climb, Ineos ambushes Bora by having Laurens de Plus, sitting in 7th overall, come to the front and take over from Bora while setting an incredibly hard pace.

5.3km: Shortly after, Carlos Rodríguez, sitting in 5th, attacks off De Plus’ pace. He is immediately marked by Jorgenson, but Roglič, the race leader, is slower to react.

5.1km: A group including Jorgenson, De Plus, and Derek Gee rides up to Rodríguez, but it is clear something isn’t right with Roglič, as he isn’t able to make the bridge and begins losing small chunks of time.

4.5km-3.9km: Gee, sensing an opportunity to overtake Roglič and Jorgenson to win the race, begins riding all out on the front, while only Jorgenson and Rodríguez can hold his wheel.

1.5km-500m: With Roglič falling further and further back, Jorgenson eventually gets to the front to increase the pace, dropping Gee and getting to within a few seconds of the virtual overall lead.

400m: Knowing every second will count, Jorgenson rides as hard as possible on the front, not worrying about Rodríguez getting a draft in his wheel. This is a somewhat calculated risk since he is assuming he will gain more than the four-second time bonus differential between the first and second place with this strategy.

Finish: Rodríguez comes by to win the stage while Jorgenson, who is just hanging on for dear life at this point, takes second and the six-second time bonus. After a nerve-racking wait, Roglič comes over the line 48 seconds later to save his race lead by just eight seconds, highlighting the importance of winning the two stages prior and taking the time bonuses on offer.

Stage Top Three
1) Carlos Rodríguez (Ineos) +0
2) Matteo Jorgenson (Visma-LAB) +0
3) Derek Gee (Israel-Premier Tech) +15

Five Key Takeaways

1) Primož Roglič & Bora May Have Won the Dauphíne, But His Level Isn’t Nearly High Enough to Beat the Best at The Tour: The veteran Tour de France contender won his second Critérium du Dauphiné overall in the last three years with elite performances in the time trial and two out of the three summit finishes while his stacked Bora team operated seamlessly in his service. At the same time, he crashed twice over the course of the week, failed to drop rivals with little-to-no combined Grand Tour GC success, and was distanced on the final summit finish before (impressively) digging deep to salvage his overall title. What do we take from this?

• While the crashes make it difficult to discern his ability to consistently produce enough raw power to keep up with the sport’s best GC contenders due to the near-absurd frequency of his hitting the deck, judging his climbing and time-trialing abilities post-crash is likely the most accurate way to project how he will form at the Tour since it is hard-to-believe he won’t have crashed at least once by the time the race hits the Pyrenees, Alps and the final time trial takes place on Stage 21 in Nice.

  • With this in mind, the biggest takeaway is that even before his wobble on Sunday, while his climbing was strong enough to win this Dauphine, if we isolate his climbing performances and compare them to Tadej Pogačar at the Giro and Jonas Vingegaard at last year’s Tour, they weren’t strong enough to challenge the best GC riders on their top form.

    • Roglic vs Pogačar Recent Climbing Performances

      Roglič Dauphíne Stage 7 Final Climb:
      Time: 31:50
      Est. Power: 396 watts & 6.1w/kg

      Pogačar Monte Grappa Stage 20 Giro d’Italia

      Time: 45:00
      Est. Power: 418 watts & 6.4 w/kg

• The truth of the matter is that in order to win the Tour de France in the age of Vingegaard and Pogačar, a rider has to have an FTP (functional threshold power, aka how hard you can ride for an hour) at or very near, 7 watts per kilogram, and, as this Dauphiné reminded us, Roglič doesn’t have the same high-octane engine, especially over the course of three weeks.

  • However, this all goes out the window due to his impressive consistency and ultra-competitive mindset if Roglič finds himself as the race’s top favorite if certain things fall into place.

    • Vingegaard’s recent injuries keeping him from his best when the Tour rolls around in a few weeks’ time, and Pogačar crashing and/or the Giro fatigue catching up to him would be enough for Roglič to find himself competing, and likely winning, against a more Dauphiné-level of competition.

2) Matteo Jorgenson Did Enough to Earn Tour Leadership Status on Visma-Lease a Bike: The 24-year-old American continued to re-define what he should be considered capable of after an amazing ride to take a close second behind Roglič, likely cementing his status as Visma’s backup GC leader, alongside Jonas Vingegaard, at the upcoming Tour. Considering the crunched nature of Jonas’ tour preparation, this could very likely turn out to be a major role, and with Jorgenson’s extremely balanced rider profile, a high eventual GC finish at the Tour now seems possible for the up-and-coming star.

• Jorgenson’s extreme versatility, which allowed him to win a WorldTour cobbled Classic, a major stage race (Paris-Nice), and podium at the most challenging Alpine one-week race on the calendar in the same season, means that he is uniquely qualified to tackle the Tour de France, which prioritizes big watts to navigate crosswinds, time trials, and the controlled, lined-out mountain stages.

  • While an overall win is likely well out of reach, a top five, or even podium finish, should be well within Jorgenson’s capabilities based on his recent results.

    • And, with multiple key riders on his Visma-Lease a Bike team currently struggling with injuries (in addition to Wout van Aert and Jonas Vingegaard going down in hard crashes this Spring, Dylan van Baarle and Steven Kruijswijk crashed out of the Dauphíne with broken bones and will miss the Tour), and last year’s Vuelta a España winner Sepp Kuss leaving the race due to illness/poor form, the Grand Tour superteam will be relying on him to continue his dream season.

3) Derek Gee Revived IPT’s GC Ambition Over the Course of Three Days: The ride of the week might just have come from the relatively unknown 26-year-old. After winning his first European professional race on Stage 3 with a well-timed and powerful attack, the powerful Canadian put in three completely unexpected elite climbing performances on three extremely hard mountain stages. These performances breathed sudden life into Israel-Premier Tech’s long-dormant Grand Tour GC ambitions in the blink of an eye and will have them entering the Tour de France with a laser focus on getting the best possible result in the overall classification.

• The most promising part of Gee’s sudden emergence as an all-around threat is that due to his extreme rawness, there is still no telling of his ultimate ceiling. It would be safe to assume that with some more focus and work on things like his time trial position and pre-race preparation, he could be a GC force.

  • The emergence of Gee comes at just the right town for IPT, which one has to imagine is looking to move on from Chris Froome and a good chunk of the rest of their veteran-heavy roster.

4) Carlos Rodríguez Proved Yet Again That He Is Greatly Underrated, But It Won’t Be Nearly Enough to Settle Ineos’ Brewing Leadership Battle: Off the back of unusually aggressive racing from his Ineos team, the 23-year-old parlayed great legs to win yet another final stage of a week-long race and ride into fourth place overall and appears to be heading into the Tour de France, where he placed 5th in 2023, in great form.

• However, outside of these positives, Rodríguez still finished off the podium behind Derek Gee, who had never finished inside the top 20 places in a world stage race and wasn’t able to take advantage of having two riders inside the top five to seriously challenge the other GC contenders.

  • With last year’s Tour leadership conflict between Rodríguez and Pidcock currently being aired on Netflix’s Tour de France Unchained and more potential leaders being added to the mix with former Tour winners Geraint Thomas and Egan Bernal brewing added into Ineos’ Tour mix, this result from Rodríguez didn’t do nearly enough to quell potential unrest and cement his status as the team’s undisputed leader.

• Interestingly, despite having no finishing kick, Rodríguez has now won four WorldTour races in just the last year, more than Alberto Bettiol has in his entire career, which is a testament to his ability to read a race and recognize and exploit when another rider has an aligned incentive.

5) The Continuation of Remco Evenepoel’s Long-Running Climbing Troubles Means He Can’t Currently Be Considered a Legitimate Tour de France GC Favorite: Despite suffering a broken collarbone earlier this season after a heavy crash at Basque Country, Evenepoel produced a scorching time trial performance on Stage 4 that saw him look close to career-best after taking back 19 seconds on runner-up Josh Tarling in just the last ten kilometers of the course. Unfortunately, after that, he crashed on Stage 5 and turned back into a pumpkin on Stages 6, 7, and 8 while producing three sub-standard climbing performances for a rider looking to target the overall classification at the Tour de France.

• While it would be easy to point at his recovery from his Basque Country crash and his Stage 5 spill as reasons for his struggles through the weekend’s climbing stages, it still doesn’t explain away the ever-growing trend of his struggles on alpine mountain stages with multiple Cat 1/HC ascents.

  • This trend suggests that despite his incredible ability in time trials, slightly less demanding mountain stages, and Ardennes-esque shorter climbs, he will struggle to perform well enough in the Pyrenees and Alps at the Tour de France to compete for the final podium.

• And, even if the argument could be made that this Dauphíne all went according to plan since he is still building back form from his crash and subsequent recovery, recent Tour de France history is particularly ruthless regarding riders struggling in the mountains in June.

  • In essence, the evidence is fairly demonstrative that to be on form to challenge at the Tour, you can’t be off the pace in your June build-up race.