2024, 60th Tour de l'Avenir ***Spoilers***

blazing_saddles

Starts tomorrow and all stages have live coverage on Discovery plus. (2 hours)

Here be the profiles. I think folks might be interested to see what the final stage is:

Britain's Joseph Blackmore is among the favourites, although I am not too familiar with these young guns.

No_Ta_Doctor

That's an interesting final stage alright @blazing_saddles Whoever wins this is going to need some climbing legs, not much chance of tanking up the time difference on a 7km ITT

N0bodyOfTheGoat

Is Froome racing, to try and find his legs from '18? ;)

DeadCalm

U23 Cycling Zone's favourites...

https://x.com/U23CyclingZone/status/1824356246331228167

Ineos have August, Leonard, Shmidt and Øxenberg all riding. The latter three all seem to be somewhat out of leftfield. Maybe we'll get a hint of why they have been signed.

Of the Brits, as well as Blackmore, Joshua Golliker is one to look out for.

archieboy

Good ITT from both Blackmore and Brennan today.

blazing_saddles

Ineos did have an ITT win this weekend, after all. Michael Leonard won by 7 seconds from Blackmore. The next 24 riders were covered by 13 seconds.

DeadCalm

Over in the Vuelta, Soudal have T Rex jerseys and have given themselves daft dinosaur names. Meanwhile, in l'Avenir, we have a real T Rex in the break.

Webboo2

https://forum.bikeradar.com/discussion/comment/21091548#Comment_21091548

Michael Leonard riding for Canada sounds like he’s spent more time in the Home Counties rather than the Yukon.

No_Ta_Doctor

European u23 Champion Henrik Pedersen (no relation) takes the win from a three up sprint from the break. Also gets the leaders jersey.

DeadCalm

Ludovico Crescioli of Italy took yesterday's stage from a two man move that went in the final few kilometres after the break had been caught. His German co-attacker, who did all of the work to keep them away from the chasing pack, looked suitably dismayed as they crossed the line, giving the finger to the Italian.

Edit: Apparently, Crescioli told the German he could have the win if he kept riding and that he wasn't going to sprint. Ouch.

Pedersen, who will be going pro with Uno-X from next season, holds onto yellow although that is likely to change after today's stage which ought to be a GC test.

GB's reluctance to get involved in the chase (at all yesterday, too late the day before) has potentially cost Matthew Brennan a couple of stage wins and yellow. The young Brit, who will turn pro with VLAB next season, is comfortably the fastest sprinter in the bunch and has on both occasions won the sprint from the bunch behind the break.

Recent signings Peter Øxenberg and Artem Shmidt are not exactly showing why Ineos think they are ready for the World Tour. The "next Jonas Vingegaard" is 24:55 down already while "the American wonderkid" is at 17:49. August and Leonard remain in contention though.

gsk82

Being 25 minutes down in this race sounds very Jonas Vingegaard. Maybe he needs to be more confident 😏

DeadCalm

https://forum.bikeradar.com/discussion/comment/21091973#Comment_21091973

In fairness to Vingegaard, he was only seven seconds down on eventual winner Pogacar after the first 6 flatter stages. Oddly, it was only when the road went significantly uphill in the next 4 stages that his lack of confidence riding in the bunch showed itself, resulting in a deficit of over 41 minutes.

No_Ta_Doctor

https://forum.bikeradar.com/discussion/comment/21091991#Comment_21091991

The first three stages he didn't finish above 100th and was nearly 3 minutes down in GC

After 6 stages Denmark had four riders in the top five and Vingegaard was nearly a minute behind them in GC, one of those riders was Jonas Gregaard, who Vingegaard then rode for.

DeadCalm

https://forum.bikeradar.com/discussion/comment/21091995#Comment_21091995

Up to stage 6, he had finished in the peloton on all but stage 3 where he lost about 30 seconds to the main bunch. The almost 3 minutes down was distorted because the race was led by a winner from a breakaway who was a no-hoper in the mountains. JV was in touch with the competitors for GC until the road went uphill. At that point, he was a few seconds behind Pogacar and second placed Arensman and actually ahead of Gino Mader, Vlasov, Champoussin, Sosa, Almeida and Dunbar who would make up the eventual top 8.

blazing_saddles

That 2018 was something special in terms of the startlist.

Aside those DC lists, there was Foss, Gall, Bagioli, Bjerg, Hirschi, Van Moer, McNulty, Schelling, Leknessund, Geniets, Batistella, Covi and that’s just the top 51 the list goes on and on. A few top sprinters too. Max Kanter finished just 11 seconds behind the future, double Tour winner.

Half the WT race organisers would sell their grannies for such a stellar cast.

blazing_saddles

Looks as if most of today’s short but very sweet stage will get live coverage today.

Think that I will watch this instead of the Vuelta, which has another 2 man break. Zzzzzzzzz

No_Ta_Doctor

https://forum.bikeradar.com/discussion/comment/21091997#Comment_21091997

Yes but Gregaard was ahead of him.

DeadCalm

https://forum.bikeradar.com/discussion/comment/21092015#Comment_21092015

I was sad enough to follow this race on DirectVelo's live feed as only the final 2 stages had live TV coverage. The only team doing any work on the front in the mountains were the Colombians who were trying to make it hard for Sosa who was playing catch-up in the GC. The only work JV had to do was stay with Gregaard for as long as possible, something he singularly failed to do.

Anyway, this is all getting off my original point to gsk82, which is that so far Øxenberg is actually performing significantly worse than Vingegaard did.

DeadCalm

Carnage already. Yellow jersey already dropped.

DeadCalm

Clément Izquierdo (France) out alone leading 2 chasers (Colby Simmons and an Italian) being chased down by a Belgian led peloton. I think!

blazing_saddles

Caught by the Belgian led peloton. Just the solo leader, ahead by 40 seconds.

DeadCalm

I'd hazard a guess that the Frenchman is not going to win this stage.

DeadCalm

Apparently, AJ August has been dropped.

DeadCalm

Group of favourites:

Florian Samuel KAJAMINI, Ludovico CRESCIOLI (Italie), Joseph BLACKMORE (Grande-Bretagne), Simon DALBY (Danemark), Léo BISIAUX, Clément IZQUIERDO, Brieuc ROLLAND (France), Jarno WIDAR (Belgique), Tijmen GRAAT (Pays-Bas), Pablo TORRES ARIAS, Pau MARTI SORIANO (Espagne) Mats WENZEL (Luxembourg), Zeray Nahom ARAYA (Centre Mondial du Cyclisme) et Fernando Diego PESCADOR CASTRO (Colombie)

DeadCalm

Attack by Widar, followed by Bisiaux. 8.8km to go.

andyp

Joe Blackmore takes the stage from Widar and Torres. Those three were 20-odd seconds clear of Bisiaux and Graat.

Blackmore takes the overall lead.

DeadCalm

I whinged about Matthew Riccitello riding l'Avenir last year so this is hypocritical but, Yay!

Widar leads the youth and mountain classifications. Italy lead the team classification. Pedersen moves into the green jersey, one point ahead of Matthew Brennan and Gal Glivar. Ordinarily, Friday's stage would seem made for Brennan but I wonder if GB attention will be focused on GC.

andyp

That depends on how Blackmore does today on a steeper finishing climb. He said himself after yesterday's stage that Widar can handle the steeper climbs better than he can.

DeadCalm

https://forum.bikeradar.com/discussion/comment/21092164#Comment_21092164

Possibly. But I'd be surprised if Widar could get enough time to put Blackmore completely out of contention.

DeadCalm

Louis Sutton (GB) is the best placed of 12 riders with 3:35 on the peloton which is being led by the GB team. Sutton is in the virtual lead on GC.

DeadCalm

Somewhat surprisingly, Pablo Torres took yesterday's stage and now leads GC by 30 seconds from Widar by 31 seconds and Blackmore by just over a minute.

It all seems to be kicking off on today's stage though as far as I can tell from DirectVelo's live feed. No TV coverage yet, annoyingly.

https://www.directvelo.com/direct/5787/tour-de-lavenir-etape-5