Bringing the heat: Van der Poel ignites stage 9 - Domestique Debrief

Sunday saw another glittering day in the sun for the Tour de France peloton as the race moved south. Temperatures soared to over 30 degrees, and there was wear and tear in evidence, with João Almeida abandoning the race and other riders suffering from earlier accidents. With the rising heat and the gathering fatigue, the impact of riding a Grand Tour on the body will become more apparent as we move further through the three weeks, but with another brisk day in the saddle, the average speed just in excess of 50km/h and the riders rolling in ahead of schedule, the pace shows no signs of slowing. 

“That sort of thing didn’t used to happen.’

So said Tour de France route director Thierry Gouvenou, in a revealing and honest interview with Eurosport early on yesterday’s stage. He was talking about the pronounced lack of action that summarised the previous day, and led many fans to criticise the race and riders for making it ‘boring.’

Bence Czigelmajer reflected on the need for such calm stages in yesterday’s Debrief, and in a race that’s seen such high speeds and intensity, the point is sound. It’s worth bearing in mind that, should yesterday’s stage have fallen on a Wednesday, for example, when much of the Tour’s audience would have been at work, it may not have come in for so much criticism. The fact that the flat stages have fallen on a weekend is partly logistical and partly topographical – as Gouvenou noted, they had to get to the Massif Central – and there simply aren't any hills between there and Brittany. 

It didn’t stop Gouvenou from coming down harshly on the riders.  “In the past, you had teams that were invited to the race; now, nearly all of them are pre-selected. There’s no action in these kinds of stages, and we regret that. It’s disheartening to watch a peloton roll along without a single attack.”

The question over whether sport is there purely to entertain sits at the heart of the debate. Having coverage from flag drop to finish line is a double-edged sword for race organisers at times, it seems – is cycling really meant to be entertaining for every moment of every stage? By its nature, it has quiet moments and periods of recovery in-built, to allow for such exceptional feats of endurance. However, there’s a happy medium, which wasn’t present on stage 8. “I think the sprinters’ teams are shooting themselves in the foot,” Gouvenou stated, before pronouncing: “in the long run, there may no longer be any stages designed for the sprinters.” It’s an ominous sign of where life is headed for the sprint specialist.

Mathieu van der Poel is a law unto himself. A couple of days ago, we were speculating about whether he would go for the green jersey, following Jasper Philipsen’s departure, and we’ve already seen him active in a breakaway, but stage 9 was another level. Attacking from the flag drop, Van der Poel remained out front until 750m from the finish line, chased down by the hungry pack agonisingly close to the line after a stage-long escape waged alongside his teammate Jonas Rickaert. 

According to the team car, the pair had hoped to be joined by more riders, though you wouldn’t have known it to watch them speed away and rack up a substantial lead just a few kilometres into the stage. The flying Dutchman later claimed it was a joke, and that he’d gone on the attack to try and help bring about Rickaert’s dream of standing on the Tour de France podium. 

The dream came true, with Rickaert picking up the day’s combativity prize, and fans were treated to the kind of last-gasp, breathless peloton versus breakaway battle that is one of the pinnacles of entertainment in pro cycling. Chapeau to Van der Poel, for adding yet another memorable, somewhat illogical push for glory to his considerable legacy, one to rank alongside his famous ‘I was cold’ attack at the 2021 edition of Tirreno-Adriatico. Who knows what Van der Poel will do next – probably not even him. And that’s how we like it.

The weekend's route design has come under fire as mentioned earlier, but it's worth noting it was built with crosswinds in mind, and a combination of somewhat questionable tactics from the sprint teams and the threat of echelons, added to Alpecin’s breakaway efforts to make Sunday’s stage a far more palatable experience than Saturday’s. 

With Lidl-Trek pressured into doing much of the early chasing, it was very late in the day that the chase began in earnest, and with GC teams – namely Visma | Lease a Bike – riding hard to protect their leaders and to potentially try and cause splits in the bunch, the gap began to plummet. It was only late on that the rest of the sprint teams threw themselves into the fray in an attempt to bring back the unrelenting charge of van der Poel, at which point his teammates leapt into action to run interference. They were effective for a while, taking the steam out of Lidl-Trek’s sails and forcing other teams to jump in and try to save the day.

There’s a broader argument to be had about teams with sprinters throwing in their lot with the likes of Lidl-Trek and Soudal-QuickStep only to have at best a chance of third place, against Milan and Merlier, versus sending a rider or two up the road to give the breakaway a greater chance of survival. After all, if a single pair of riders can almost make it to the finish line, perhaps with more riders on board, the break could have made it all the way. On the other hand, a bigger group might not have been given such a long leash, and van der Poel, well, he’s van der Poel. He almost beat an entire charging peloton alone in the final 5km. Still, it’s food for thought, with just a few flat stages remaining on this year’s race.

Not many things are faster than Jonathan Milan – but after today’s thrilling head-to-head, we can confirm that Tim Merlier is definitely one of them. The two have faced off at the pointy end of a bunch sprint six times so far this season, with Milan winning just one of those. In Grand Tours, the stats tell an emphatic tale: the score stands at 4-0 to Merlier, following their battle at last year’s Giro d’Italia. 

Milan is incredibly powerful, and positions himself extremely well – even in the absence of a final lead-out rider, on both of the past two stages – but Tim Merlier’s timing and flat speed is enough to see him out-gun the Italian in both of the clear opportunities he’s had at the Tour so far. And all this, despite Lidl-Trek going all out in the chase, all day – the team will be left licking their wounds and regrouping ahead of the next round, safe in the knowledge that in the green jersey competition at least, Milan has Merlier well beaten, as it stands, so their efforts have not been for nought.

It’s been a long and complicated couple of seasons for Lotto’s Arnaud De Lie. Since his three third-place finishes at last year’s Tour de France, the sprinter has battled injury and illness, and seems to have suffered more than his fair share of bad luck. Since his single-stage win at the Étoile de Bessèges in early February – on a day marked by over half the peloton departing the race amidst safety issues – De Lie has failed to hit the mark, not recording any further victories this season. 

The 23-year-old made a slow start to this year’s Tour, but was able to finish in the top 5 on stage 8, and elevate himself even further yesterday onto the podium, equalling his best performances at the race. It’s fantastic to see the young Belgian on an upward trajectory and piecing together good days on the bike once again, allowing him the opportunity to unleash his immense power; seeing him only fall short behind the two dominant sprinters among the peloton, on yesterday's stage. Could he improve upon this and challenge them for the win later in the race? Going by recent evidence, it looks possible.

While XDS-Astana won the first half of the season in terms of making gains on their nearest rivals in the battle for UCI points, as teams draw nearer to the end of the three-year cycle of WorldTour license renewal, it’s Picnic-PostNL who are leading the charge here at the Tour de France. 

With 525 points accrued at stage finishes courtesy of strong performances by Oscar Onley and both the team’s sprinters, Pavel Bittner and Tobias Lund Andresen, the team have more than doubled the hauls of their nearest relegation rivals. Next best of the beleaguered teams are Arkéa-B&B Hotels, who have also used strength in depth to claim a healthy 245 points, while their compatriots Cofidis are down and more than likely out, with just 30 points at stage finishes to show for their Tour so far. 

Though the influence of the sprinters will diminish as the race heads for higher ground, Onley will hope to continue to accrue points on his GC charge, and his team may be feeling somewhat more optimistic about their chances of survival.