As always when a Grand Tour includes off-road sections, opinions are divided about the gravel-filled ninth stage of the Tour de France in Troyes.
The race has visited the cobbles of Paris-Roubaix in the past, and has also featured gravel roads on the Plateau des Glières. However, Sunday’s stage was the biggest day of gravel roads in the race so far.
In total, the peloton covered 32.3km of ‘chemins blancs’, spread over the 199km of the stage. The day, won by Anthony Turgis, did not produce any major GC movement, but there were still strong opinions about the gravel from both riders and team staff.
Points classification leader and two-time stage winner Biniam Girmay was among the riders who animated the race. The Eritrean classics star was part of a group that chased down the leading group as he tried to score more points for the green jersey and challenge for the stage.
He would finish the day in ninth place, extending his points lead by six points as he and Mathieu van der Poel failed to catch Turgis’ group. Despite a solid result, he was not very positive about the gravel roads, saying the stage looked very different than it did on paper.
“Today was different than it was on the profile,” Girmay said. “We expected it to be a gravel race on paper, but we had really steep climbs. The sectors are also different than a few months ago in the reconnaissance.
“We expected to arrive with 40-50 men, but I think it surprised me, especially after the first two sectors when we reached the intermediate sprint. There was a real climbing wall there.
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“Today I was in an awkward position,” he added. “I thought ‘OK, maybe I can survive’, but on every sector and every last kilometre I felt super bad. But I just wanted to score as many points as possible. We couldn’t bring back the first group, but at least we took some points before the rest day.”
Race leader Tadej Pogačar was one of the voices speaking out in favour of the gravel, the Slovenian of course, with titles at Strade Bianche and Jaén Paraiso Interior to his name. He said after the stage that the reason for his multiple attacks throughout the day was: “Just that I like riding on the gravel, I think. It’s in my nature, I think.”
Another voice against the gravel was Pogačar’s teammate, yellow jersey rival Remco Evenepoel. Belgian Classics specialist Yves Lampaert is no stranger to these types of races, even if he’s ridden on the Flemish cobbles more often than the gravel roads.
He echoed Girmay’s comments and said The newspapaer, after the stage that the race profile did not show the very steep climbs that the peloton experienced, while also noting that the gravel was much looser than the star-shaped from Strade Bianche.
“The approach to the sectors was like climbing the Koppenberg. It was so steep,” Lampaert said. “That’s why you start every sector with sore legs. I put out a lot of watts and still didn’t get into the sector – that says it all. It was a classic, really.
“The sectors were a bit close together and there was too much gravel. At Strade Bianche the gravel was much more compacted and there you have the wheel tracks of cars to drive in. Here it was loose gravel. You are dependent on luck – not to have an accident or to be behind someone who can’t control their bike. It was a bit too much for me today.”
Klaas Lodewyck, one of the team leaders who accompanied Evenepoel and Lampaert at Soudal-QuickStep during this Tour, was also surprised by the condition of the gravel.
“The last six sectors were just filled gravel,” he said.[The organisers] made it artificial. I think that’s a shame and treacherous, because the guys who explored it – almost everyone – were going to get a big surprise.”
Team boss Patrick Lefevere has previously voiced the strongest objections to the inclusion of such roads in Grand Tours, and criticized them again in a newspaper column last week. The Belgian’s opinion is largely shared by Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe team manager Rolf Aldag, who spoke after the stage.
“I still don’t like it in a Grand Tour. I love watching it, but unfortunately I’m not in the spectator seat, I’m part of the race,” Aldag said. “There’s a lot of investment in teams, and you don’t want to leave anything to pure luck or something. If Remco slips and breaks his collarbone in sector 8 or something, would you still like to watch it? Or would you say: ‘Maybe better not.’
“It didn’t happen next to Alexander Vlasov, who crashed very hard, but it could have happened in any other stage. So that’s why I think you have to leave it to the experts to do their race. Why not do that race in the future, if you feel like it, with experts, like you do in Paris-Roubaix or Strade Bianche?”
However, Aldag admitted that the race – which saw the leading group battle for the stage win, with yellow jersey contenders Remco Evenepoel and Tadej Pogačar attacking back into the peloton – was entertaining.
“I have to say that from a spectator’s perspective, what Tadej does there, how Visma reacts, it’s quite impressive. There’s no doubt that it’s entertaining. So I understand why people say they love it.”
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