Key Takeaways: European Road Race Championships
Breaking down how a strange race was won, and what it means for the future one-day Classics plans of the Jumbo-Visma team, and the sport as a whole
Christophe Laporte, after executing a picture-perfect solo late race attack, held off a pair of surging Jumbo-Visma teammates, Wout van Aert and Olav Kooij, inside the final few meters to win the European Road Race Championships on Sunday in The Netherlands. Considering this race, which was contested on national teams, brought an intriguing thought experiment to life by pitting three riders from the sport’s top team (Jumbo-Visma) against each other and produced a surprising result, I wanted to break down how it happened and attempt to digest what it could mean for Jumbo’s 2024 one-day Classic Campaign*.
*The growing rumor that Jumbo could be merging with Soudal-QuickStep over the winter to create an even more powerful superteam in 2024 could throw any plans for next season into disarray (a post discussing this potential merger and the effects it would have on the sport will be coming for premium subscribers later this week).
European Championships Road Race Top Ten:
1) Christophe Laporte (France) +0
2) Wout van Aert (Belgium) +0
3) Olav Kooij (Netherlands) +0
4) Arnaud de Lie (Belgium) +1
5) Mike Teunissen (Netherlands) +9
6) Rasmus Tiller (Norway) +9
7) Mads Pedersen (Denmark) +13
8) John Degenkolb (Germany) +15
9) Andreas Kron (Denmark) +39
10) Florian Sénéchal (France) +41
European Championship Race Notebook:
29.2km-to-go: The Italian team is on the front, setting an extremely hard pace to set up an attack for Filippo Ganna on the upcoming climb. Notably, they are using their once formidable sprinter, Elia Viviani, to set the pace, confirming that they are more confident in Ganna winning out of a reduced group than Vivani.
28km: Once on the climb, Ganna accelerates and immediately begins shredding the field. He is closely marked by Wout van Aert, while Ganna’s teammate, Matteo Trentin, also in blue, floats backward in an attempt to latch onto the group that Ganna pulls clear.
26km: After riders in the front group launch multiple attacks up and over the climb, there is a slight slowing and re-grouping at the bottom of the descent. Christophe Laporte takes advantage of this lull with a well-timed attack.
23.5km: Laporte is eventually reeled in by an even more elite sub-group, which was formed after a crash involving Ganna. Italy, which just had two riders in the lead group, now has zero, while Belgium, due to an impressive bridge by Arnaud de Lie, now has two.
12.1km: After his French teammates set a hard pace on the next trip up the climb, Laporte attacks in the exact same stop as the previous lap, and, due to the exact same dynamics, he is successful. However, this time, due to another lap in the legs and less motivation and firepower present in the group behind, he is able to stay away solo.
1km: Laporte holds an 11-second lead heading into the final km, but, sensing the pace isn’t high enough in the group to reel him in, De Lie hits the front with Van Aert on his wheel.
500m: By the top of the cobbled climb, De Lie has decreased Laporte’s gap from 11 seconds down to just four.
150m: By the time Van Aert comes around De Lie, Laporte’s lead has been chopped down to around a single second. Olav Kooij, in third, comes around De Lie to follow Van Aert.
100m: Van Aert pulls even with Laporte, who appears to be fading fast. At this point, it appears as though Van Aert will come around his trade team teammate with ease.
Finish: However, once Van Aert pulls even with Laporte, he appears to run out of gas while the French rider accelerates slightly to hold off Van Aert and Kooij for the win. Even though they were racing for their national teams on the day, the result gives Jumbo-Visma a podium sweep.
Three Key Takeaways
1) Christophe Laporte won due to being the strongest rider at this race, which raises questions regarding Jumbo-Visma’s Classics Strategy
The veteran Frenchman gets an impressive victory with a combination of impressive patience, timing, and raw strength.
While rivals were attempting to force a move off the front, Laporte sat back and saved his attacks for the portion of the course, the flats following the descent, that he knew held the highest chance of producing a successful breakaway.
The fact he attacked at the same place on the course on two consecutive laps highlights just how much he believed in that particular zone.
In addition to his timing and race savvy, one of the most impressive things about this win was Laporte’s ability to accelerate after being caught to hold off Van Aert and Kooij.
This shows that while Laporte got clear solo, that his chances of victory might have actually been decreased by this move, and that he was likely the strongest rider in this race and would have won out of a reduced group in this uphill sprint no matter what had played out beforehand.
Having said that, there is an inherent advantage to being in front of the race heading into a high-speed, technical, and rolling final kilometer like the one this race featured, and Laporte was likely assisted by the fact that he went into the sprint in first position and that could ride the difficult final few hundred meters slower than his competitors.
2) Wout van Aert was once again beaten at a National Team event, but instead of being outfoxed, this time he simply lacked the necessary strength
After yet another good, but not quite good enough, race in his national team colors, the Belgian superstar racked up his 6th-second place medal while representing his nation at the European, World, and Olympic Championships on the road.
With eight total medals, he still has zero wins on the road at these championships.
But, unlike past national team races, where Van Aert has found himself marked out of races and without team support at key portions of the race, on Sunday, he had a dedicated teammate in De Lie, who chased down Laporte and placed him in the perfect position to win inside the final few hundred meters.
Despite this fantastic work from De Lie, Van Aert lacked the strength to get around his Jumbo teammate after he had made the catch.
This failure underlines the divergent seasons Van Aert and Laporte have had since Van Aert gifted Laporte the win back at Gent-Wevelgem in March. Since then, Van Aert has suffered through the worst season of his career (with his only victory since coming at the Tour of Britain), while Laporte has racked up four big wins.
Laporte’s season, particularly Sunday’s duel between him and Van Aert inside the final few hundred meters, makes me wonder if Laporte can argue for equal co-leadership at Jumbo at the 2024 Spring Classics.
Also, one has to wonder how De Lie, who threw down an absurdly strong uphill sprint to win the recent GP Quebec, would have fared against Laporte had Van Aert worked to reel him in while De Lie sat in the wheels to contest the sprint.
3) Jumbo-Visma’s podium sweep at the Vuelta & European Road Race Championships doesn’t necessarily foretell looming Jumbo-Visma Monument dominance
In light of their recent 2023 Grand Tour, and Vuelta a España podium, sweep, the fact that riders from the Jumbo-Visma trade team took 1st, 2nd, and 3rd on Sunday meant there was a lot of hand-wringing about how the Dutch superteam has consumed the sport.
While their current dominance is undeniable, it is important to point out that European Championships, which are contested by national, not trade, teams simply highlight just how deep the sport’s best team is, not necessarily foreshadow a dominance of one-day races in 2024 and beyond.
After all, the sport’s best team having a collection of the sport’s best riders isn’t exactly breaking news. And, without the sport’s other superstar one-day riders present, it was always going to be difficult for anyone to top Van Aert and Laporte on Sunday.
It is important to remember that while Sunday’s result shows us just how strong Jumbo’s one-day teams are, major one-day races are almost always won via head-to-head battles with the sport’s best riders.
At a regular trade team race, the top three riders wouldn’t have been free to contest the win, and likely would have been forced to consolidate behind a single rider, who, in turn, would have been forced to go head-to-head against another superstar one-day rider like Mathieu van der Poel, Tadej Pogačar and Remco Evenepoel for the win. While a numerical advantage can be a major help at lesser semi-classics, the biggest one-day races feature courses that are so hard that the finales almost always feature one top rider from each team competing against eachother.
This dynamic helps explain why, despite clearly having the best collection of talent in the sport, Jumbo has struggled to win one-day Monuments (they haven’t won a single one since the 2020 season).
Unlike the grand tours, their chosen leaders in one-day Monuments just haven’t been as strong as others when the winning moves are made at the end of these races.
Premium subscribers should watch for analysis regarding a potential Jumbo-Visma/Soudal-QuickStep merger coming later this week…
I eagerly await your take on the Jumbo potential merger. I value your insight.
I’m very interested to hear how this jumbo-qs merger makes any sense at all... also will BTP be previewing/covering gravel worlds? Can’t wait to see how the American team performs. Maybe Keegan can relegate Wout to yet another second place!