1mo ago

Race thread: 🇫🇷 Tour de France 2025 - Stage 12

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Stage 12 - Auch > Hautacam - Tour de France 2025

Thursday 17: 13:10–13:25 → 17:30–18:00

The first true mountain passes today.

The start is not as flat as often: they will use the hills of Gers instead of going along the valleys as the Tour de France always does. But just a bit: they will ride exclusively on the highway 🙄, so, long flat sections will still be present and the climbs will be smoother than on secondary roads; especially smooth as those hills are like factory roofs, and when going from East to West you always get the easy side.

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Another bad day for Visma, they seem quite disjointed this year. This is now the second time in this Tour they've had guys setting a pace on the front that is too hard for the rest of the team, and their "one-two" strategy is now completely dead because Jorgenson evaporated on this stage. UAE were supposed to be the weaker team with Almeida out and Sivakov clearly struggling, but their remaining riders look way more unified and focused on the road.
INEOS had some interesting tactics in this stage. Not sure if it was the smartest move in hindsight, but at least they had a go and tried something different. It made the stage more enjoyable to watch so I thank them for that. There is also a very interesting battle brewing for third place and the white jersey, with other guys like Lipowitz, Vauquelin and Onley challenging Evenepoel's assumed pre-race dominance of those titles.
- If Visma changes tactics from now on, it can be interesting for breakaways, as without Visma's accelerations, only UAE would be available to lead a chase and is also relatively weak (as a team). Well, “interesting” on stages which have not been marked by Pogatchar, where the UAE team will concentrate its efforts...
  About Evenepoel, it is a pity that other GC contenders do not bury him when they have a chance. They should know that he can be knocked out and throw the towel when he is on the ropes, but if on the contrary you give him a rest at this moment, he will come back.
So today we'll know if Vingegaard has a chance this tour, if he can follow Pog up Hautacam he'll stand a chance in the third week.
- And I guess today and tomorrow we will also find out to what extent Pogacar's injuries affect his performance. Considering it's just road rash/bruising and no serious damage, he shouldn't be vulnerable for too long so the other riders really need to take advantage of any weakness while they can.
It's a good thing for future breakaway candidates that Evenepoel managed to limit the damage and stay on the podium, not giving up on GC 😅
Coquard made it in time! He managed to break one finger of his right hand, while catching a bag before mid-course... No idea how one can hold the bar in climbs, or brake in descent like that...
Lenny Martinez lost the mountain jersey because he didn't contest the uncontested 4^th category of the day... (the point was taken by his teammate so that no one else could get it, but the calculation was bad).
Aw Healy looked so disappointed :/
Beside the top 2 favourites, we've witnessed today many unexpected weaknesses by climbers as soon as the slopes of the first pass began. Many of them somewhat recovered later, but still...
edit: wait, wait, wait: how did Raul Garcia Pierna (🇪🇸 Arkéa) manage to end up in 12^th position (before G.Martin🇫🇷* Jorgenson🇺🇸*and various climbers, in a bad day or not)? 👀 This seems to mean that basically only 10 riders from the peloton climbed better than him! On the Tour of Occitanie with a much weaker startlist, he was leading the GC before the first mountain stage but finished that stage after 80 riders and half an hour behind the winner... Perhaps there is a mistake in PCS classification?
- They change drug testing recently?
  
  After a bit of thinking, I reckon that it is more a case of having a grand maximum of 15 riders interested in GC and trying their best. So someone who isn't a strong rider but gives his best on a good day can relatively easily get in the top-20, sometimes top-15 when several GC riders are unwell and you had a little bit of advance thanks to a breakaway.
  The same happened on the first Time Trial. There were like, what... only 20, 25 riders actually giving their best. Many openly declared it was a rest day for them...
  It's starting to make me question what the point of a Grand Tour like the Tour of France is becoming, when we have a vast majority, perhaps up to 170 riders (!), which doesn't give a damn about making the best result.
  It used to be that at least young riders / first-time participants would try to do their best at GC, but I am not sure that it is very common any more. Even the new guys seem to just do their semi-skilled worker task as assigned by the boss in order to get their big pay check, and no more (they might even get punished if they do more, in a few teams). When I hear more and more often from people who went to see the race on the roadside that "hey, it was cool to see XXX climbing this hard climb in wheelie, he looked fine" about riders who were dropped earlier in the race, I feel that the spirit of GTs has been turned into a joke. Until, say, 25 years ago (random number of years), the last riders really struggled, they certainly weren't going to do wheelies, they were dropped because they were weaker and exhausted. They we got the top-teams trains, with riders specialised into working hard for 20 mn and then relaxing until the finish line; and now it is general.
  If it keeps deteriorating this way, some sort of a reform will become necessary. Starting with reducing delays. What does a GT mean, where is the endurance, where is the attrition, when a majority of riders only actively ride 40 km every 3^rd day and consider the rest as a... rest?
  
  It may be a bit like when Chiapucci started to outclinb everyone in the mid 90s, he was so overweight (for a pro cyclist) that we should have caught on.
TdF is done. It was fun 12 days. :)
- I mean, not really 🫠 I hope the Italian fall classics will be more fun.

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