'We were a bit lucky' - Alex Baudin holds yellow on arduous day at Dauphiné

The mammoth 234km stage – the longest at the Dauphiné since 2003 – featured some decidedly rugged terrain and it promised to be an unruly day for any team seeking to control the race.

Baudin was able to lean on the support of his EF Education-EasyPost squad throughout the day, however, and he confessed that the constitution of the day’s break also played in his favour.

Clément Braz Afonso (Groupama-FDJ United) was the biggest threat to Baudin’s lead in the ten-man move that spent the day off the front, but he was some five minutes off yellow, which meant the threat was always manageable. 

“I think we were a bit lucky today,” Baudin told FloBikes afterwards. “The closest one on GC was five minutes down, so we just gave them the gap we had on GC and then we just had to close it a little bit. With 70k to go, my teammates pushed a bit harder to be sure to be safe, and then it was ok.”

Baudin singled out Max Walker and Alastair MacKellar for particular praise for their efforts in ensuring the break’s lead never stretched beyond six minutes, while Ben Healy was among those to put their shoulders to the wheel in the finale.

“I’m really sorry for that,” Baudin smiled when told Walker and MacKellar had rolled home in the last two places on the stage after their exertions. 

“They did a really amazing job. Max and Alastair rode for 150k against 10 guys. It was just the two of them and it was honestly super impressive. Then the whole team had to work in the end to defend the jersey, so thanks to them.”

Baudin came home in the main peloton, 3:13 down on winner Anton Charmig (Uno-X Mobility), to retain the yellow jersey. He carries a lead of 32 seconds into Tuesday’s team time trial thanks to his solo victory on stage 1.

“It’s an honour to wear this jersey and defend it, it’s nice,” said Baudin, who said any help from the GC teams in cutting the break’s lead in the finale was purely incidental. Teams like Visma and Decathlon CMA CGM occupied the front of the bunch simply to avoid risk, not to help reel in the break.

“It’s just modern cycling. Everyone was stressed that someone would attack on the climb but in the end nothing happened. Most of the time it’s like this, so it was all for nothing. But in the end, they kept the pace up for us.”

With a 28.3km team time trial around Perreux to come on Tuesday, the GC men were never likely to go on the offensive here. Baudin acknowledged that his team might pay a price for their efforts in policing the race on Monday.

“We’re going to try to keep the jersey of course,” Baudin said. “We’ve used up a lot of energy today but the yellow jersey will give us a boost tomorrow.”