Key Takeaways: Figueira, Provence, Clásica Jaén & Oman
Breaking down the key highlights and takeaways from an extremely busy, and surprisingly exciting, weekend of racing
With a mind-melting sixteen UCI-level pro races taking place over the last four days, it has been an incredibly busy, and exciting, start to the European portion of the 2024 road racing season (the unofficial BTP moto of ‘we watch pro cycling so you don’t have to’ has never felt more accurate). I’ve pulled out a few things that stuck out to me the most from the past weekend to get you most of the major takeaways and highlights from this recent surge of racing before the new and slightly more high-profile tranche of early-season racing kicks off tomorrow with the Ruta del Sol and Volta Algarve.
Figueira Champions Classic
50km-to-go: After dutifully following the wheels of his teammates on the front of the extremely long race, Remco Evenepoel is clearly setting up for a long-range attack heading into a key climb. Behind, Isaac del Toro, who had just previously been cleaning his glasses while sitting last wheel, is being quickly moved up by his UAE team, who must sense an attack coming.
49km-to-go: When they hit the steepest part of the climb, Evenepoel launches and immediately gets separation after no other rider even attempts to respond.
48.5km: With Evenepoel riding clear, Del Toro, who has moved up close to the front, can’t respond, partly due to being fatigued from the major effort of moving up to the front, and being blocked by on the narrow road (as well as Evenepoel’s QuickStep teammate, who is smartly taking his team peeling off the front as he slows his pace).
48km: Del Toro eventually fights his way out of traffic and launches an extremely strong move to get within touching distance of Evenepoel, but he can’t quite close the gap due to the large delta he has to make up on Evenepoel, who is riding at an extremely high pace.
47.5km: After Del Toro can’t make contact, he starts losing time to Evenepoel, who is chugging along at an extremely strong clip and has plenty left in the tank to easily make it through the final hour of racing solo. However, had Del Toro been in a position to directly follow Evenepoel’s attack, things might have been more complicated.
Top Three:
1) Remco Evenepoel (Soudal-QuickStep) +0
2) Vito Braet (Intermarché-Wanty) +1’48
3) Simone Velasco (Astana) +1’48
Key Takeaways:
1) Remco Evenepoel has picked up exactly where he left off in 2023
Just like we saw in 2023, if Remco Evenepoel gets even the slightest gap when he attacks, he will be incredibly difficult to reel in due to his lethal combination of a supremely aerodynamic position and high sustained power.
And, from a pure fitness perspective, judging from his hour+ solo effort to stick the win (where he put nearly two minutes into the chasing group), we can assume that he is coming into the 2024 season at an incredibly high level.
While I’m sure his Tour de France rivals have noted his long-range attack ability, it remains to be seen how this move holds up at the Tour de France, where the firepower in the group behind will make it significantly harder to ride clear like he did on Saturday, and last year’s Vuelta a España.
2) Isaac del Toro’s positioning costs him again
This attack should remind every rival that if you spot Remco a meter, you might as well give him a mile, and that the only way to counter him is to stay directly on his wheel.
This is why it was somewhat surprising to see Del Toro and his UAE team sitting so far back in the pack while Soudal-QuickStep and Evenepoel were present at the front on the run-in to the critical climb.
In addition to the Willunga Hill stage of the Tour Down Under, this is the second time in his young career that Del Toro’s lack of positioning experience has shown through.
While it is understandable that a 20-year-old first-year professional would make these errors, I have been surprised at the lack of guidance and assistance from his UAE teammates on the road.
Considering UAE, despite its massive amount of raw talent, has consistently looked slightly directionless and out-of-sorts when it comes to on-road decisions, this is something to keep an eye on as Del Toro progresses.
Tour de la Provence
Stage 2
3km-to-go: After Arkea-B&B Hotels blows up race-leader Mads Pedersen’s Lidl-Trek team with a well-coordinated ambush in the hilliest section of the course, Pedersen makes an extremely bold decision to take massive pulls at the front of the reduced group, which, in theory, leaves him open to more attacks, to reel in the solo escapee, Marco Frigo, who is threatening to ride clear for the stage win and overall lead.
500m: Pedersen, still on the front, successfully mows down the lone Frigo, but, in theory, should have no chance in the sprint finish due to all the work he has done on the front.
200m: With Pedersen still on the front, Tyler Stites, the American on the tiny Project Echelon team, opens up the sprint and appears to have successfully gotten the jump on the race leader.
Finish: But, flash forward a few moments, and Pedersen has methodically dismantled Stites, along with every other challenger, in the slow-speed, high-fatigue sprint. The only rider who can remotely challenge Pedersen is Cofidis’ Axel Zingle, who ended up finishing in second place overall.
Overall GC Top Three:
1) Mads Pedersen (Lidl-Trek) +0
2) Axel Zingle (Cofidis) +29
3) Raúl Garciá Pierna (Arkéa-B&B Hotels) +29
Key Takeaways:
1) Mads Pedersen has taken things up another level in 2024
The 28-year-old sprinter/all-around strongman is a former World Champion and has been consistently improving over the last few seasons, but he appears to have come into 2024 at a completely elevated level.
In addition to leading the WorldTour 2024 win rankings with six victories, Pedersen’s sheer strength and poise stuck out at Provence, where he got his second GC victory of 2024 despite being isolated and vulnerable at key points throughout the race.
Pulling back a breakaway with a group on your wheel before outsprinting that group is something you’d expect to see in a junior race, not something you’d expect to see against other World talent.
Also, his impressive time trialing, particularly his 56km/hr ride with a massive 60-tooth front chainring during the prologue of Provence, indicates that he has incredible fitness heading into the Spring Classics.
The only question is if Pedersen has come into the season too fit, but it is impossible to know if this is the best he will be or if he has another level to ascend to before the biggest Spring races.
2) Israel-Premier Tech continues to make the most of these early-season stage races
In yet another early season stage race, the second-division team has come out swinging and, as a result, won a stage and racked up valuable UCI points.
Outside of impressive results across the board, like young riders Riley Sheehan and Riley Pickrell challenging for stage wins, Tom van Asbroeck upset the favorites, especially Sam Bennett, who still appears to be well off his best, by winning a bunch sprint on Stage 3.
These results, and savvy tradecraft, like sprinting for multiple places inside the top ten, have the team sitting in a surprisingly good 5th place in the UCI Team points rankings, and poised to re-enter the WorldTour when the new promotion/relegation cycle ends.
Honorable mention:
US-based third-division team Project Echelon, which has a minuscule budget relative to the rest of the teams in the race, netted really impressive performances considering this, and Tyler Stites's 4th place finish on Stage 2, which is likely the team’s best-ever European result.
Clásica Jaén Paraíso Interior
14km-to-go: With Visma’s Wout van Aert out of contention due to a flat tire, UAE is setting a hard pace in pursuit of Movistar’s Oier Lazkano, who is a little over 40-seconds off the front.
13km: However, UAE’s numerical advantage is instantly eliminated when Kuss attacks on the steepest section of the gravel road, which drops key UAE riders like Juan Ayuso, and pulls his teammate Jan Trantnik clear with Bastien Tronchon (Decathlon-AG2R), and Tim Wellens (the only remaining UAE rider).
3km: While the four-rider group should have the advantage over the solo Lazkano, they lack the raw firepower and coordination to make a dent into his lead, which has only gone down by 10 seconds over the last 10km. Visma is in a tough spot since, due to having a numerical advantage over Wellens and Tronchon, the two others are rightly reluctant to pull through, while Visma also lacks the flat-land strength to overcome Lazkano’s superior power.
Top Three:
1) Oier Lazkano (Movistar) +0
2) Bastien Tronchon (Decathlon-AG2R) +28
3) Jan Tratnik (Visma-Lease a Bike) +28
Key Takeaways:
1) Oier Lazanko should be a rider to watch this Spring
The 24-year-old Spanish National Champion flashed immense potential in 2023, but he appears to have come out in 2024 on an even higher level.
Holding off a strong chase group from an early breakaway on such a difficult course is no easy feat, and signals he should be deemed a rider to watch for races like Strade-Bianche and Milano-Sanremo.
Also, his ability to hold off this chase group yet again highlights just how much ‘second group syndrome’, which sees a group refuse to work together to chase a single rider out front, has embedded in the psyche of the sport and tells us to expect more solo winners at the most significant races again in 2024 (solo riders won every 2023 Monument).
2) Ineos continues to misses out on the winning move
Like Saturday’s Vuelta Murcia, Ineos failed to get a rider in the winning move despite doing a significant amount of work controlling the peloton throughout the day and having multiple talented riders in the race.
This is far from damning, but it is a troubling trend that suggests disorganization behind the scenes and could indicate that the off-season backroom drama, which saw both Principal Dave Brailsford and Deputy Principal Rod Ellingworth depart team management after multiple off-seasons where they lost talented riders and staff while failing to replace them, has affected the team’s pre-season preparations.
Tour of Oman
Stage 2
Finish: Finn Fisher-Black wins the uphill finish (which had no video coverage due to a storm), with young American Luke Lamperti coming in behind in second. This is obviously good for Fisher-Black’s GC ambitions, but he sits up early to celebrate and coasts over the finish line, which is an incredibly strange decision at a stage race that was decided by a single second in 2023.
Stage 3
Finish: The strange decisions continue the following day when Soudal-QuickStep’s Paul Magnier (who is only 19) wins the stage ahead of his teammate Lamperti, which means Lamperti gets six, instead of ten, bonus seconds. Lamperti takes the race lead but is tied on time with Fisher-Black.
Stage 4
Intermediate Sprint Point: With Lamperti struggling on the mid-stage climb, Fisher-Black takes the intermediate sprint at the top, which sees him get three time bonus seconds and the race lead.
Top Three Heading Into Tomorrow’s Final Stage (5)
1) Finn Fisher-Black (UAE) +0
2) Luke Lamperti (Soudal-QuickStep) +3
3) Diego Ulissi (UAE) +9
Key Takeaways:
1) The sport’s youth invasion continues to flash both immense talent and slight inexperience
So far at Oman, the top two riders in the GC, Finn Fisher-Black and Luke Lamperti, are 22 and 21 years old, while one of the stage winners is a teenager, 19-year-old Paul Magnier.
Yet again, this underlines just how much young talent there is in the sport and how drastically it has shifted towards youth over experience.
However, at the risk of sounding like an old man yelling at clouds, these riders' youth, inexperience, and apparent lack of direction from team management sometimes show through in their racing decisions.
For example, even with fellow young American Matteo Jorgenson winning the overall of this race by a single second in 2023, despite not being considered a favorite on the tough final uphill finish, Lamperti and Soudal-QuickStep decided to have Magnier take the win, and time bonus seconds, on Stage 3.
Perhaps Soudal-QuickStep and Lamperti simply don’t believe he can stay with the leaders on tomorrow’s Green Mountain summit finish (6km at 10.1% average grade), but even if he isn’t technically a climber, a rider with an engine like Lamperti should never be considered non-competitive on a single-climb finish, especially this early in the season.
Also, Fisher-Black’s decision to sit up and coast over the line on Stage 2 likely cost him a second, or two, in the GC. Considering he is currently leading the race by only three seconds and has only 15 seconds over climbing specialists like Adam Yates heading into a tough uphill finish, this could potentially be a massive mistake.
It is entirely possible that Fisher-Black didn’t consider himself a GC threat back on Stage 2, and simply wanted to enjoy his second win of the week, but, again, this is where I would expect team management and veteran riders to have an influence and ability to prepare and coach younger riders on what to do in specific situations like these.
The fact that UAE, just like the Del Toro positioning mistakes, is consistently on the wrong end of these small decisions is significant when we consider the challenge and extremely complex intra-team dynamics awaiting them at this summer’s Tour de France.
Note on How to View Races in 2024:
Since the GCN+ streaming service was shuttered over the winter, it has been incredibly chaotic and confusing to figure out how to watch this flurry of races.
While the European market has shifted relatively seamlessly to the Discovery+ service, and Canada is fairly well-served by the FloBikes app, US-based viewers must navigate multiple services to make up for what they had with GCN+.
After a shaky start, the Max streaming service appears to have its cycling vertical up and running under its B/R Sports sub-service and carries almost everything that GCN+ carried last year (aka nearly every non-ASO, Flanders Classic, or World Championship event).
Also, they have thankfully added a ‘replay’ feature to the cycling events
The major downside is that while B/R Sports is currently included in the cost of the app, it will soon be offered as a $10 per month add-on service, meaning a single month of ad-free Max will cost roughly the same as a year of ad-free GCN+.
FloBikes is still offering Flanders Classics races, plus (maybe?) the World Championship events and a few smaller events.
A VPN-enabled user in the US has the option of using FloBikes to access Flo’s extension race calendar.
Like years past, ASO events like the Tour de France and La Vuelta a Espaňa are still on the Peacock streaming service.
The major change with the demise of GCN+ is proving to be that while, in the past, a US-based viewer could simply subscribe to GCN+, plus a VPN service to access the entire calendar, it is proving far more difficult to find a similar backdoor in 2024.
While it is possible to subscribe to a European version of Discovery+, it is far more challenging than with GCN+.
I'm just happy Max added the replay option... although their interface leaves a bit to be desired. Sometimes I see a line with Cycling Races, sometimes not on one of my TVs. If I know what race I want to see, I can usually find it via the huge Search. I'll be happy with that.