The Vuelta a España goes to Andorra today and pleasant weather awaits, 26°C and sunshine. As a ski resort in the Pyrenees it’s an obvious destination for a race with climbs and hotels but there’s a wider ecosystem for much of the pro peloton here. The micro-state has become home to plenty and this is creating a self-fulfilling phenomenon attracting more riders and in turn physios, nutritionists, mechanics, financial advisors and more.

Long before today’s nation states, Andorra was one among many counties, kingdoms, provinces and other divisions of land. The oddity is that it has persisted while all the rest have been folded into what we know as France and Spain today. Being an enclave in the mountains has helped, there few resources to claim and it has not been strategic either, there are easier passages across the Pyrenees to the west and east. Another factor was that in 1278 it became a shared entity with the Count of Foix (in France today) and the Bishop of La Seu d’Urgell (in Spain) appointed as co-princes of the state and the borders set then have barely been changed; today the Bishop of La Seu d’Urgell is still the co-head of state, only now alongside the French President. In the 1990s locals got more of a say with their own parliament.

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The Pyrenees were long exploited by smugglers, moving contraband or more recently trying to dodge tariffs and duties. Andorra got into this arbitrage by more legitimate means. Local tobacco cultivation which continues to this day made it a place for smokers from Spain and France to stock up, then low taxes made it a budget destination. Smokers could enjoy a day trip for skiing or thermal baths and return with bulk purchases of cigarettes. This expanded into a wider retail offer for washing machines, TVs and other big ticket items – bikes too – sold at unbeatable prices because they were tax-free, coupled with the incentive of low duties on fuel meaning the drive from large population centres like Barcelona, Toulouse, Zaragoza or Pau wasn’t as costly either. Some of this retail took a hit because of the internet. Consumers were able to shop around for low prices, benefit from warehousing efficiency and have goods delivered to them. But to this day the VAT rate is 4.5%, while it is 21% in Spain and 20% in France. A box of cigarettes is about €40 compared to €140 in France.

Alas one cycling angle is, or hopefully was, that Andorra’s easygoing retailing apparently extended to pharmaceuticals, including the over-the-counter sale of recombinant-EPO. Just walk in, pay and walk out apparently but this is hard to substantiate today; it could equally have been the result of a crooked pharmacist. Either way it was apparently a destination around the turn of the century for some looking to fill up their fridges with vials of EPO, and save on VAT while doing so.

Onto the more substantial and bona fide angle and Andorra has become a tax haven for riders. In 2006 Joaquim “Purito” Rodriguez moved to the principality. He’s a Catalan by birth so it was close by. He seemed to become an evangelist who attracted others. Or at least the tax rate did the talking. Today many riders are attracted by this, a flat 10% rate applies to income above €40,000. For comparison earn over €60,000 in Spain and the rate is 45% which explains why Girona isn’t the draw it used to be; over the border in France it’s about 33%. The VAT rate matters too as riders billing for services only need add 4.5%.

Another draw is residency. Work visas can be hard to get for non-Europeans but Andorra will grant a VIP residency visa to a cyclist brandishing a pro contract and willing to lodge a €50,000 bond for two years. This simplicity is a big draw for some, perhaps as much or more than the tax rate as getting a visa can be time consuming.

Housing is another attraction. You can rent a three bedroom apartment – one room for bikes and a home gym – for under €2,000 a month. If you have to ask how much this might cost in Monaco then you probably can’t afford it; but €20,000 per month is normal. Or see why many a Monaco pro opts to rent a studio and their home gym is the balcony.

Low taxes, easy visas and housing. The downside to all this is being sequestered in the middle of the mountains. A sprinter just can’t find many flat roads to train on but even a climber doesn’t have it easy either. The Pyrenees are damp, and with the lowest altitude in the principality at 900m it is cold for three out of the four seasons. So whatever the tax saving, the practical difficulties are legion with airport connections further away. Plus it has the dull feel of a retail outlet and ski resort. The solution to this for many is to actually live in Girona while keeping residency in Andorra where being present for 90 days is sufficient. Plus nobody seems to be counting.

If you know of plenty of cyclists who are resident in Andorra, it’s also become home to many others. Indeed the wintry weather is less of a problem for winter sports athletes of course, but those who do motor sports, trail running or or take part in indoor sports have made it home. Plus a growing “influencer”, Youtuber and gamer streaming quotient who just need a cosy apartment rather than the outdoors, indeed the Andorran government is making a big push in e-sports. All this though means there’s a wider ecosystem. Physios, masseurs, nutritionists for athletes, accountants, banking and legal advice for others. There’s an economy growing up around the service of the pro cyclists and others.

Building on this the principality wants to establish itself as as sports and well-being destination with facilities for rehab, hotels with altitude rooms – sleep at 1,500m but adjust the dial to simulate 2,700m – and more.

Conclusion
Once just a drab high altitude retail outlet, Andorra’s become home for many pro cyclists although plenty will say it’s still a drab place. Yes plenty are attracted by the tax rate but housing and visa requirements underpin this, Monaco’s rental rates reserve it for an elite. It’s a regular bidder for the Vuelta and Tour, able to supply hotel accommodation for the convoy but increasingly able to afford it. If the Vuelta was here last year and is back today, there’s every chance it features next year or soon again in the Tour too.

The post High Altitude, Low Taxes first appeared on The Inner Ring.

If you want to save a click, Pogačar.

The Route
“A mountainous Vuelta” is hardly news but the race ratchets up every year and this edition has 58,000m of vertical gain, more than the Giro and Tour. Much of this achieved on a daily basis rather than set-piece high mountain stages.

There are time bonuses of 10-6-4 seconds at the stage finishes. Plus 6-4-2 seconds at the intermediate sprint and also for several mountain passes marked “B” for bonus on the stage profiles.

The Contenders

Tadej Pogačar (UAE) is the obvious favourite to the point where the GC race feels as if it will have all the thrill of tracking a parcel delivery online. We’ll see if Pogačar can take the lead by Andorra and then watch the logistics of the red jersey as it travels around Spain before the scheduled delivery in Granada on 13 September. There’s always the possibility of the package being dropped or lost en ruta but it’s hard to find weakness in Pogačar here. One concern is his lack of preparation, since 1995 and the Vuelta’s switch to the end of summer, the Tour-Vuelta double has only been won once (Froome, 2017). Plenty in the peloton will hope he comes in hot and quickly takes a dominant lead, the better to ensure he can back off in the third week to aim for the Worlds and this leaves opportunities for everyone else. This includes his team mates with last year’s runner-up João Almeida, last year’s mountains winner Jay Vine and 20 year old Pablo Torres. As easy as it sounds for him, there’s a touch of pressure as he’ll want to tick off this win in order to ensure he doesn’t have to come back again and to complete the grand tour triple in the same season as Vingegaard.

The harder part is picking among the other podium contenders. Primož Roglič (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe) has the record of four Vuelta wins but his record of results in recent races suggests the 36 year old is fizzling out, he’d surely sign today for a podium finish and a stage win along the way, this is a lot to ask for but he can pull it off. His team bring sprinter Jordi Meeus and also puncheur Finn Fisher-Black, with first-year pro Luke Tuckwell worth watching after his impressive Romandie and Aura Tour rides.

Richard Carapaz (EF) is suited to the race but his team are downplaying his chances saying they don’t have much of a squad to support him but the likes of James Shaw, Markel Beloki and Georg Steinhauser can play big roles here with the latter hired in part by UAE for next season to do this role.

Felix Gall (Decathlon-CMA CGM) got a podium in the Giro, gifted with a stratospheric Vo2 Max he’s improved his race craft to become a less volatile rider able to and will aim to do his race again but as good as the Giro was it showed his limits and two time trial stages are a challenge. Matthew Riccitello and Léo Bisiaux ride in support and with Gall set to leave, we’ll see the two younger climbers given opportunities too.

Oscar Onley (Netcompany-Ineos) got a win in the Vuelta a Burgos, a triumph after crashing out of the Aura Tour in July and he could still improve in form since. The challenge for him is the big set-piece mountain stages with longer summit finishes but in-between then he’s a handy rider for sharper summit finishes. Carlos Rodriguez is worth watching too, if only to hope he can find form after seeming to fade over the last two seasons.

Mattias Skjelmose (Lidl-Trek) was his team’s best rider at the Tour despite losing time on the opening day and working for Ayuso so some consistency and he could do well but backing up after the Tour is hard, especially as his team is built more around Mads Pedersen and Thibaut Nys.

Enric Mas (Movistar) has never finished lower than sixth in his last six Vueltas so would you bet on him finishing inside the top seven this time? He achieves this by riding his own race to the point where it looked like he forgot how to win during the last Giro so he surely won’t trouble Pogačar. Cian Uijtdebroeks starts with a need to reach Granada just for the short-term goal of finishing a grand tour for the first time since 2023’s Vuelta, but also the longer game of building for 2027 by finishing the season.

	Pogačar
	–
	–
	Carapaz, Onley
	Gall, Roglič, Almeida

Vuelta a porvenir
If the names above must feel stoic about their chances of the win against Pogačar, they at least can hope to crowd out the rest of the field. The Vuelta has long been used to give neo-pros the experience of a first grand tour – Pogačar among many – but the hard route compounded by UAE’s pace-setting makes it a tough introduction, there are few obvious “rest days” where the bunch will trundle towards a bunch sprint.

To add to names above like Torres, Tuckwell and Bisiaux, look out for former Avenir winner and youngest rider in the race Jakob Omrzel (Bahrain), Jarno Widar (Lotto-Intermarché), Jørgen Nordhagen (Visma-LAB), Juan Guillermo Martinez (Picnic-PostNL), Darren van Bekkum (XDS-Astana) and new neo-pro Juan Felipe Rodriguez (EF). In a field where a third of the field are eligible for the white jersey there are plenty more names.

Tapas cycling
If the peloton might complain about the relentless route, TV viewers on their sofas have it better. Plenty of stages look lively, many have a climb in the final 30 minutes to spice up the finish so there’s often something to watch to the point where instead of suggesting several stages as must-watch days like a Tour or Giro preview features, it can pay to tune into most days but do this by nibbling on the day’s finish rather than feasting on hours of live.

TV broadcast
It’s on RTVE/tdp for locals and VPN users, Eurosport across much of Europe, Peacock in the US, Flo in Canada, SBS in Australia and the race website lists more broadcasters here. The opening and final stage finish around 7.30pm CEST, all the other days are forecast for 5.20pm CEST.

The post Vuelta a España Preview first appeared on The Inner Ring.

Watching the Femmes at the Tour de France? Do you know what all the team sponsorsdo? If you’ve ever wondered if Suez has something to do with water, or what Laboral Kutxa or VolkerWessels are about, here are some answers.

Visma-Lease A Bike is obvious as it’s the sister team to the men’s World Tour squad, with Norwegian IT services and payroll software specialist company Visma sponsoring alongside Lease A Bike, a company that offers bike leasing services to other companies and their employees that belongs to PON, a Dutch conglomerate that has a big footprint in cycling owning brands like Cervelo, Cannondale and Schwinn.

FDJ United-Suez sees the French state lottery provider and now Europe’s second biggest gambling company alongside Suez which is a French company that has two main activities, waste management and water services, so think of fleets of garbage trucks and recycling plants, as well as reservoirs, piping and sewage. Beyond the two headline names the jersey is notable for more blue chip names like Gan insurance and CB which is France’s answer to Visa payments. Team manager Stéphane Delcourt could teach his French peers in the men’s World Tour some lessons.

Canyon-SRAM is a factory team with German bike brand Canyon alongside US component manufacturer SRAM. The team has just dropped Zondacrypto mid-season after the Polish company vanished taking some people’s savings and has just signed a German retail brokerage platform Scaleable Capital inviting the obvious question of if they’ll scale up investment.

UAE Team l’IMAD is the Gulf state we know from the men’s team. IMAD is the sovereign wealth fund that used to be called ADQ hence the mid-season name change for the team, the fund has been chaired by Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed, the UAE’s national security adviser, pictured with his trademark shades above. As well as spy chief he’s behind many corporate activities and the women’s team shares some of the same backers and links as the men’s team for example Analog is an IT company owned by G42 which has also been chaired by TBZ.

Team SD Worx-Protime has Belgian corporate services company SD Worx which claims to be “Europe’s leading HR, pay and time partner”, so playing a similar role to Visma. Protime is a brand belonging to SD Worx, its a corporate HR service to track and time workers to measure when they are in the office and logging time spent on a workstation.

Movistar is the Spanish telecoms operate Telefonica and its mobile brand and not just with Marlen Reusser today but arguably a team with a consistently better women’s team than the men but because of international recruitment, having hired Annemiek van Vleuten in the past while seeing home talent Paula Blasi go abroad. She has been strongly linked to the Spanish squad but things seem increasingly open at the moment.

Lidl-Trek is the German discount supermarket alongside the US bike brand and a big budget outfit keen to be cited among the top tier teams for both the men and women. The team is owned by Lidl which is interesting because the retailer’s premise is low prices and no frills but here they are spending probably €60 million a year on sport, still small compared to €140 billion in annual revenues but a big frill.

AG Insurance-Soudal is the sister team of the men’s Soudal-Quickstep outfit but think of a step-sister because it has had its own independent history before joining up with the men’s team and while the kit is similar and they share a bike sponsor, it’s a Belgian entity while the men’s squad is run out of Luxembourg. AG does consumer insurance, like car, travel and accident cover while Soudal is adhesives and other chemicals for construction and DIY.

EF Education-Oatly sees Swedish-Swiss language education company EF Education alongside Oatly, an “oat drink” – don’t say milk – company that was also started in Sweden but has since floated on the New York Stock Exchange.

Fenix-PremierTech is led by Italian company Arpa with its Fenix brand, it’s a plastic surface product offering “interior solutions”, think wall or worktop coverings that offer colour and are easy to wipe. The Belgian squad is is the sister team of the Alpecin-PremierTech men’s team but notable because of the different title sponsor for each. They share PremierTech, the Canadian horticultural company that started out selling peat but now offers agriscience products and machinery to plant seedlings and package crops.

Human Powered Health is a US healthcare company that specialises helping to promote athletic health, offering nutritional advice and VO2 max testing for example and a subsidiary of Optum which is itself part of UnitedHealth group, the American health and insurance giant.

Liv Jayco Alula sees Giant’s women’s brand Liv in lights alongside Australian caravan and camping car maker Jayco and Saudi tourist project Al Ula. Like the men’s team, it’s been a pet project of Gerry Ryan who started out backing women’s cycling in the 1990s by personally funding individual athletes to train for the Olympics. His long run as a patron of the team, men and women, could be coming to an end.

Team Picnic-PostNL is a copy-paste of the men’s text, Picnic is a Dutch food retailer start-up that does home delivery, an online grocer and supermarket that is now expanding into France. PostNL is the Dutch postal service. Alas just like the men’s World Tour team it’s also struggling, no wins this season and overtaken by several second tier teams on the UCI rankings.

St Michel-Preference Home-Auber 93 is closing its men’s team to focus on the women. St Michel is an industrial bakery company making madeleines and biscuits which can be found for sale all over France, from supermarkets to railway vending machines. Preference Home is a house building company operating in the Paris area. Auber 93 is the town of Aubervilliers and Seine-Saint-Denis department, long a working class area just to the north-east of Paris where the team has its HQ. It has had a joint men’s team at Continental level but this is stopping to focus on the women’s project.

Cofidis is the French consumer credit company, it started out offering credit to people shopping from mail order catalogues and outgrew the parent business. Just like the men’s team, it has a roster of riders from other European markets it operates in, like Poland, Czechia and Italy. While several teams have men’s and women’s squads, Cofidis is notable as the only sponsor also funding a paracyling team too.

Laboral Kutxa-Fundacion Euskadi is the sister team to the Euskatel-Euskadi men’s team only with Laboral Kuxta they have a credit union as a sponsor of the women’s team, kutxa is Basque for a caja in Spanish. Like other women’s teams, it only has a minority of local cyclists with only a few Basques on the books.

VolkerWessels is a Dutch construction company building everything from housing in the Netherlands to railway infrastructure projects in the UK and reportedly the country’s second largest builder. It’s part owned by the Wessels family with workers also having a share of equity. Construction is not an advanced business but the kit looks like it was designed twenty years ago.

Uno-X is the Norwegian retail company Reitan and its service station business, offering fuel and charging points across Norway and Denmark. While the men’s team is 100% Norwegian and Danish, the women’s team is more international.

Lotto Intermarché Ladies is the full name, the “ladies” suffix does feel like something out of a Bronte novel that could be revised. Lotto is the Belgian state lottery and so by extension the Belgian government with a mission to support women’s cycling in Flanders and Wallonia alike although the roster looks very Flemish. Meanwhile Intermarché is a French supermarket giant that operates across Europe from Portugal to Poland via franchise that buy centrally from the company which itself sources and produces a lot of goods, it has extensive agricultural holdings and Europe’s largest fishing fleet.

Ma Petite Entreprise is French for “My Small Business” and a crowd-funded team backed by small businesses. There are different membership tiers, from individual supporters paying €120 a year to sponsors ranging between “access” entry point of €750 a year to the “pro” tier of €15,000, and there are over 642 of these corporate sponsors. It’s a novel project as an alternative model to the title sponsor system that every other team relies on and interesting because of this.

Mayenne Monbana My Pie sees the Mayenne department of France as the lead choice. With local government in France under pressure to make cuts you can see this may not be an essential service but there’s a logic to it with local politicians wanting to reach people in France to sell their area as a dynamic and active place to relocate. Monbana is a chocolate company located in the Mayenne. My Pie is a French company selling pies, founded by two entrepreneurs who discovered the New Zealand and Australian staple of pies when on a trip “Down Under” and decided to import the idea to France. Getting the French to eat new food may not sound easy but meaty sauce inside a buttery pastry is an easy sell and the business seems to be growing well.

• Men’s Pro Team sponsors explained

The post Women’s Pro Team Sponsors Explained first appeared on The Inner Ring.

A post-Tour look at the team standings to see who is up and who is down.

Two changes at the top. First the UAE team is still in the lead but they’ve pulled out a big lead after “only” having less than two thousand points on RedBull going into the Tour, now they’re over five thousand clear and with Pogačar racing the Vuelta likely to pull further ahead. The other movement is Lidl-Trek overtaking XDS-Astana, the German team enjoyed a successful team while the Kazakh squad found it hard to get a look in.

The grey line on the chart represents the border between 18th and 19th place. Notionally this is the relegation point at the end of the 2026-2027-2028 cycle. It’s far away, and also conditional on there being 18 teams in the World Tour. Pinarello-Q36.5 already look like a competitive World Tour team and signing the likes of Mauro Schmid only bolsters this. Movistar and Lotto-Intermarché might be where they’re expected to be but it’s not a comfortable place.

Thanks to a good Tour EF went into the Tour below the grey line, now they’re well above it with Richard Carapaz scoring over 1,300 points. Cofidis are just above the line but Tudor are close, the Swiss team had a discreet Tour de France but have signed Arnaud De Lie who ought to score big for them next year, the team need this. Marc Hirschi for example only has 308 points this season.

A poor Tour for Groupama-FDJ, around 300 points of which two thirds came from Clément Russo’s stealthy top-10s. They will be worried about relegation, especially as they’re still highly reliant on Romain Grégoire. He’s extended his contract with the team which helps but injury or illness could be ruinous for the team. Valentin Madouas is leaving and you can understand why, he’s only got 120 points this season when he’s been second in the Olympics and the Ronde alike and notionally one of the leaders; the same for David Gaudu with 98 points this season with talk of a breakdown in relations and the team wanting to unload him but he’s got a valid and lucrative contract so in no hurry to leave. Having seen Stefan Küng leave and now Madouas there ought to be some budget for some scorers. House sprinter Paul Penhoët is leaving too.

Picnic-PostNL are in a catastrophic position. Only one win this season is poor but it’s the absence from podiums, placings and other results that is proving so damaging. They’re really missing Max Poole, their stage racing talent, but only three riders in Pavel Bittner, Frits Biesterbos and Bjorn Koerdt have a points score in triple digits, with Bittner the top scorer on 580 points. They’re 4,339 short of Cofidis, to avoid relegation they’re going to need to score at a rate like Soudal-Quickstep just to get back on terms. Fabio Jakobsen could be leaving the team in the coming days

One year rankings 
Everything else being equal* the best three ProTeams this season get automatic invites to the biggest races for next year, so Pinarello-Q36.5, Cofidis and Tudor clear for this award but there’s still time for the Unibet Rockets to close the gap but they can bank on a wildcard invite.

To be eligible for a grand tour a ProTeam has to be inside the Top-30 at the end of the season so plenty of familiar names including Bardiani which has climbed up. But the rule means the likes of Euskaltel-Euskadi and Modern Adventure Cycling are out of the picture now so new Euskaltel signing Mikel Landa may not have the romantic farewell at the Vuelta.

As written before the top-30 rule is based of the rankings at the end of the year which will include teams like Kern Pharma and TotalEnergies and only the first has said it’s stopping and the second is probably going to stop too but no announcement yet so if they won’t exist next year it doesn’t make sense to include them.

* an open question with an uncertain future for several teams, see July’s Race for Survival post

The post UCI Team Rankings first appeared on The Inner Ring.

Years ago “revenue sharing” was all the rage with team managers making public calls for the major race organisers to pay them money. Only even if a race owner felt inclined, when you looked at the data the sums available were small.

Today the calls remain but the sums have changed so time to look again with updated numbers. Especially as it’s been floated by no less than the New York Times, as the screengrab above shows.

The premise of the NYT article (paywall) is that the Amaury family that owns Amaury Sport Organisation (ASO) is “thoroughly resistant to change”, mentioning the FIFA World Cup which “is expected to pull in $13 billion, double the sum of 2022’s tournament. It started with more teams and matches; interrupting games with “hydration breaks” that increased the number of television commercials; and enacting “dynamic pricing,” which sent ticket prices soaring” and the suggestion the Tour de France and pro cycling should embrace similar practices

The article also says “The family doesn’t share any of the television rights revenue, reportedly worth more than $170 million a year. That starves the sport of capital that could expand the fan base and leaves cycling in a precarious spot.”

The $170 million comes with a hyperlink to sportspro.com which in turn links to bfmtv.com which uses a €150 million number (roughly $170 million). Only BFM itself says this is an informed estimate, and crucially this is total revenue, as in TV income and hosting fees, the publicity caravan, merchandising and more and cites a number of €150-200m. It’s not the TV rights, but we’re not here to fact check the NYT.

Still let’s take the $170 million. Let’s also assume ASO has no costs, ie no offices, no staff, no suppliers, no tax, and hotels give away rooms in July so that $170 million of revenue is still there, untouched. Now compound that wrong assumption by another where ASO pays out half of this money to teams, a pot of $85 million. Divided between 23 participating teams that’s $3.7 million per team. Nice but it doesn’t get teams out of the “precarious spot”.

Rather than use fourth-hand estimates, ASO does publish annual accounts. 2024, the latest available, show total revenue of €415 million, costs of €284 million and a profit of €131 million, you can see this highlighted in the screengrab above from the accounts filed with the French government.

The government page also helpfully lists the numbers over the years and even plots them in a chart. You can see above how revenue and profits have been growing chez ASO. (For any sticklers, one image has gross revenue of €415m, the other uses net revenue of €375m).

ASO is famous as the Tour de France organiser but promotes other cycling races, you can see the portfolio in the screengrab from the Tour de France website. It also does the Dakar motorsport rally, the Paris marathon, the Etape du Tour ride and more. It was also the organiser for some of the Paris Olympics, handling the cycling, triathlon and open water swimming events, apparently the first time a private company was brought into run part of the games.

Let’s make some more wrong assumptions. Assume the €130 million annual profits all come from the men’s Tour de France. Now imagine half of these profits are paid to 23 teams and it’s €2.8 million per team. Nice again, but even less game-changing and we’re still relying on wild assumptions.

We might as well go full reductio ad absurdum and assume all of ASO’s profits must be paid out to men’s cycling teams: they’d get €5.7 million each.

The average World Tour for 2026 is €33.1 million ($38.7m). So €5.7 million is 17% of the average team budget which could help, but it still doesn’t change the brittle model where teams rely on funding from title sponsors.

If Movistar, Cofidis or EF decided to halt sponsorship today and the structures could not find a replacement in time, €5.7 million would not keep a team afloat it, it doesn’t make the sponsorship model less precarious. Above all, remember to use this amount we’ve used wild assumptions.

If you’re bogged down in numbers by now, let’s step back as the concept sounds bold. Teams owned by nation states, billionaires and multinational corporates want money from company that turns over €415 million? It sounds like reverse redistribution.

The Tour organisers could equally turn around and ask teams for money instead, why not charge a start fee knowing that teams depend on participation, and the money could be re-invested in added safety? Or indeed point out that teams make money because of the Tour de France, if the race did not exist or their teams could not ride then team managers would have smaller budgets to reflect the reduced audience. Audacious? Yes but it’s more rational than assuming all of ASO’s profits come from the Tour, that all of this should be donated to the teams and it would make a meaningful difference.

Conclusion
Revenue sharing is one of those zombie arguments that won’t die. Whether an American newspaper or a social media post, there’s an enduring the sense that ASO should share profits, but often with little follow-up on the actual numbers or distribution because the moment you go from “ok” to “how much?” is when you can see it’s not as obvious as it sounds. Even if ASO decided to donate all its profits to men’s pro cycling teams it wouldn’t alter their brittle sponsorship model.

What’s probably behind the sentiment is the monopoly ASO has on the sport, the way the Tour de France is the dominant event and how this matters for sponsorship but also for control over the sport. It’s less the money, more the position.

The post Revenue Sharing Re-Revisited first appeared on The Inner Ring.

Tadej Pogačar attacked on the Tourmalet with 5km to go before summit and 43km left in Stage 6. In the picture above Jonas Vingegaard is out of the picture but only just, some 30 seconds behind at the top of the pass. But on the descent and then the valley road up to Gavarnie he multiplies this advantage by five to take back the yellow jersey and leave his rivals in no doubt they can’t dent him or his team.

The race started in Barcelona with a 19km team time trial, which with foresight was a selection trap for several teams who picked riders for the opening day but with less thought for what was to come. The “Paris-Nice rules” format probably needs a new label but saw Visma-LAB win with Jonas Vingegaard coming home first to take yellow, as good as their and his Tour would get.

Sunday’s stage told us plenty with Tadej Pogačar helping set up Isaac del Toro for the win and seeming more delighted with this than if he’d just won himself. He’d win the next day, for all the talk of riders not wanting the weight of the yellow jersey, Pogačar seemed privately determined to defrock Jonas Vingegaard, there’s a hint of spice to their rivalry that goes unsaid.

After a stage to Foix that saw Mads Pedersen score beaucoup points and put Torstein Træen in yellow we got a classic day in the Pyrenees. UAE set the pace all day and did another team time trial up the Tourmalet with a tailwind to launch Pogačar who set a record time on the climb, with chasers like Vinegaard at 30 seconds over the top and then Paul Seixas leading the others at 1m22s, still beating the old record too. Half a minute’s gain in 15 minutes of climbing was strong but it was the remaining 44 minutes of the stage that saw Pogačar extend his lead by over two minutes to finish 2m38 clear of Vingegaard and nearly three minutes on the next eight with the rest of the field scattered to the winds. If Pogačar won here, the selection made among the others was as crucial for the following three weeks.

The Tour had to use the Pyrenees given the start in Barcelona but what if the stage had been softened? Then Pogačar would have used the stage to Le Lioran instead, maybe the suspense lasted longer and gap would have been smaller but the psychological blow to rivals would have been as big. If Le Lioran was the next GC appointment when Pogačar attacked nobody even bothered to get out of the saddle and respond. When Pogačar attacked on the Col du Haag the others just chased and like the Tourmalet it was after the climb that Pogačar gained most time.

Fast forward the GC race to Paris and here are the GC standings of the top-7 overall plus the broken lines of Vingegaard and Lipowitz, loyal readers should know how the chart works by now and it’s pleasing to see many other outlets using the same format. Stage 6 sees everyone fall away from Pogačar after his Tourmalet coup. Stage 10 sees the black line of Del Toro dip after he was distanced on the road to Le Lioran, likewise Lenny Martinez lost time and was 9th overall but if not seen as a GC contender, still among the few who’d reached Gavarnie just behind Vingegaard.

A good Tour ought to see lines rising and falling but here the story is how they all fall away in unison, the order of the weekend in Barcelona is sustained for a long time. Evenepoel’s storming time trial performance barely registers on the y-axis. Those calling for more time trial kilometres should be satisfied next year – you read it here first – but you could double the distance on the day, and have three of these TT stages and it might take Evenepoel closer to Pogačar. But only so much and then the Slovenian could respond in the mountains rather than play chaperone to Del Toro.

Vingegaard’s Tour can be seen ending on Stage 15 after his crash on a roundabout. The team’s tactics were one contributing factor to their downfall, racing hard on the roads to the foot of the final climb which just suited Pogačar and let his UAE colleagues sit back. Mineralogists use Moh’s scale, an index to compare and sort rocks found in the field. Quartz will always scratch gypsum and never the reverse, a diamond will scratch quartz, and so on. In the Tour Pogačar seemed unbeatable and the tactic of trying to wear him down seemed to be like using up a lot of softer rocks hoping to eventually wear down a diamond. Perhaps pushing in the hope of finding a fault was the only tactic left, Visma don’t have a co-leader; but Red Bull did and couldn’t deploy this tactic either. The chart shows Florian Lipowitz’s exit, the stage after he’d lost time at the Plateau de Solaison and where two leaders had proved a difficult strategy to execute.

Vingegaard’s exit probably changed the race. We saw this on the stage to Le Lioran where he did not try to match Pogačar’s winning move but did shape what happened behind, leading the chase. He’d have likely done more in the Alps including the day he left where his pacing probably wouldn’t have allowed Pogačar do go at Del Toro’s rate and this could have affected the GC, some stage results, and possibly the mountains competition if Visma kept trying to wear down UAE.

The biggest GC move on the chart is Lenny Martinez who got in the breakaway on Stage 19 and if he cratered his chances of winning the stage by playing (too much) poker he got up on GC and held on the following day to finish 5th overall. This year he was supposed to go for GC in one week races and hone these skills, all while having free reign for stage-hunting and the mountains competition but because he never sat up to lose time and so stayed in the GC race, and benefitted from Ayuso and Skjelmose falling away. One thing he didn’t benefit from much was his team, often invisible.

Other competitions were more lively. The points competition came alive later in the race. Tim Merlier avoided intermediate sprints to save himself for the stage finishes and with three wins this paid off. Jasper Philipsen’s quest for a stage win looked difficult on the outside and apparently unbearable on the inside with talk of long silences at the dinner table but he delivered a win in Voiron and was within a handful of points of taking the green jersey with plenty on offer in Paris. Only for Mads Pedersen to go on the rampage and win the competition in the Alps.

The mountains competition was competitive throughout the race. It gave Caja Rural something on home soil on the opening weekend (and more than several other teams would get out of July) and while Tadej Pogačar took the polka-dots thanks to crossing the Tourmalet, Richard Carapaz and Valentin Paret-Peintre set about scoring points and duelling for the jersey and Carapaz came out on top thanks to a relentless three days in the Alps.

The white jersey and podium went down to the last mountain pass too with Decathlon-CMA CGM trying an all or nothing gamble to dislodge Isaac del Toro. The fact that Paul Seixas was fourth overall and within touching distance of the podium at the foot of the Col de Sarenne felt ordinary in the moment but go back to, say, March and this was the fever dream of a French fan. Two years ago he spent July doing the junior Ain Bugey Valromey Tour where four out of five days were under 100km. It slipped out this week he’d crashed before the TTT – which explains the bandages, they weren’t just there from June – and he was mildly ill in the first week and the whispers around his team say that his watts were higher in April than this July. That aside, note the progress he’s made in the last 12 months and if you think he can find a fraction more still, you can see why Netcompany-Ineos are flirting with him and his agent, and his current team are in the market for Ben O’Connor, Laurens De Plus, Pavel Sivakov and more to build a project around him.

Speed was a theme for an edition that set the record average speed of 43.227km/h. Søren Wærenskjold’s sprint win in Nevers set a new stage record of 50.910km/h, breaking the record from 1999 which had enjoyed a tailwind, and more, while this time the wind barely below. The next day was almost as fast at 49km/h and the day after was ridden at 50km/h despite the Ballon d’Alsace in the way; stage-winner Mauro Schmid fitted a 58T chainring, a set of wisdom teeth for the pace. Many times if the peloton was on flat road it was doing over 50km/h. But unlike previous editions there were few crashes and speed as a safety topic was not a big deal.

One factor in the speed is having most of the top names in the action. Breakaway days don’t see some wildcard riders go clear but you have Mathieu van der Poel, Mads Pedersen, Tom Pidcock and others making the moves. Some of the most entertaining stages were the mid-mountain days, like the stages to Ussel, Belfort and Voiron.

The flipside to this exclusivity is the exclusion, the lack of opportunity. Wærenskjold’s win was almost the revelation as, excepting Olav Kooij who has hardly raced this season, he was the lowest-ranked rider on the UCI rankings to win a stage; the average number of pro wins for a stage winner in the race was 69; boosted by Pogačar but without him the number is 50. This is a trend and so makes it hard for riders, and whole teams, to hope of a breakthrough win. The romance of sport needs to allow for this.

Talking of droughts, this was a dry Tour, taking place across parched landscapes and not just the habitual southern transition stages. Luke Durbridge mentioned that many riders were complaining their shoes smelled from of pouring water over themselves all day but that was a small problem compared the public safety issue of crowds waiting hours in the heat and the outbreak of wildfires which required emergency services to be diverted from Tour duties. Environmental issues came closer to the Tour and the race will have to respond. Despite some polemical headlines, the organisers are conscious of this, current broadcast contracts stipulate timings so any move to a morning slot is off the question now but up for review later on.

Another polemic saw anti-doping became a story but this time it was the testers who faced questions instead of the riders, in part because those tested shrugged balefully and got on with the racing even if sections of the media did not. Normally tests that return negative are never reported on but we have had press releases in the past on how the anti-doping procedures including a line that all tests came back negative.

The final stage in Paris was a thriller, the Rue Lepic performing alchemy as the peloton went in together and out at the top came a golden selection each time with the last distillation giving us just Pogačar and Van der Poel. The longer approach to the finish heightened the drama with Pogačar grimacing, seemingly prepared to lose to Van der Poel as long as they could stay away. Freezing the times overall before the finish line feels wrong on sporting terms and if it did rain at lunchtime, most of the circuit had dried in time. For all its thrills even in the dry the circuit does have a frantic aspect coming off Montmartre.

The Verdict
Standing on the top step of the podium put Pogačar alongside Jacques Anquetil, Eddy Merckx, Bernard Hinault and Miguel Indurain more than the two men flanking him on Sunday evening. He was unrivalled this year and if he took five stages he could easily have had more, possibly eight if his team had avoided illness.

Evenepoel rode a measured race, his only temperamental expression was reserved for team mate Lipowitz. But how to win, or is a podium sufficient? Still 26 years old the answer might be “wait” but he saw a 22 year old Del Toro on the other step.

Any suspense from the overall classification melted like an ice cream in July’s enduring heatwave, what looked likely before the race became inevitable within the first week and this vintage isn’t going to be held up as a classic. There was plenty left to enjoy, if Pogačar gobbled up riders like Pacman at times, the stage in the Vosges lively, the same for the Alpe d’Huez finish. There was also a lot going on among the other GC contenders, the race-without-Pogačar was lively.

In 1930 the Giro organisers paid Alfredo Binda not to take part. As tempting as it may be for fans to crowdfund the start fee for Pogačar to add next July’s Tour of Austria to his palmarès, it would quickly leave many frustrated that the best rider was not there. Pogačar included, who seems to crave the contest more than cash.

On many other days the quality of the racing high and often action that began and the start and lasted to the finish line and there was satisfaction in seeing the subsidiary jersey contests all battling until the last weekend. And then there was Paris.

Quand finit le Tour de France, j’ai une espèce de dépression qui ne nécessite pas que j’aille dans une zone de repos, mais je sens qu’il manque quelque chose : une grande partie de l’enchantement paradisiaque de mon été vient de se terminer
– Salvador Dali

That’s Dali lamenting on the post-Tour blues. But he didn’t have the Tour Femmes starting this weekend.

The post The Moment The Tour de France Was Won first appeared on The Inner Ring.

A final stage and abbreviated to Paris only but this won’t alter the sport. A prestigious stage win awaits and potentially a duel between Tadej Pogačar and Mathieu van der Poel.

Stage 20 Review: if a “grand tour is an exercise in hierarchy” to quote Antoine Blondin, or a Bayesian simulator to use science, then how much can the last mountain stage tell us? Even a day with 5,450m of vertical gain and 70 points for anyone capable of passing the marked mountain points first was probably going to confirm rather than reveal.

Still, There’s plenty to be said for replicating results on a day when many struggled to hoist themselves out of bed and even scaling a bridge over an autoroute was sapping. Richard Carapaz proved he could even improve on the performances of recent days made him the rider of the day, going from a one point lead in the mountains competition to a 56 point unassailable and incontestable win in the mountains competition.

Similarly Mads Pedersen hauled himself over the Alps, attacking at one point to bridge across to the breakaway and then take maximum points at the intermediate sprint to secure the green jersey, an immense ride. The Tour has it’s Supercombatif prize and it’s surely between Carapaz and Pedersen, probably Carapaz but there are good arguments to litigate either way.

The day’s breakaway was reduced to Carapaz, Sep Kuss and Jai Hindley on the lower slopes of the Col de la Sarenne. Another day, another trio starting the climb to Alpe d’Huez with three and half minutes’ lead. But this time Pogačar wasn’t in pursuit mode.

The higher slopes of the Sarenne had no crowds, the road closed to spectators. It was pleasant to see the mountain like this, and no bad advert too for cyclists wanting to explore this road. But also a premonition of what awaits us after the Tour when the sport reverts to sparse crowds and silence.

Kuss led over the Sarenne, but only just. Carapaz had the American in sight and was closing. Then Kuss crashed twice and the second time he was lucky there was netting on the exit of the bend, while Carapaz sped past. Despite the dirt on his kit from falling Kuss looked the fresher climber and could have reversed matters. Only Carapaz is among the cast of riders who can be impossible to bring back if they get five metres.

Behind Decathlon-CMA CGM had tried to ratchet up the pace in an all-or-nothing move to dislodge Isaac del Toro off third place overall only it came to nothing with Seixas unable to sustain the move and cracking, while Del Toro had the luxury help of Tadej Pogačar. Pogačar could have won the stage if he wished but played butler, a high altitude Jeeves.

Evenepoel attacked on the final run to Alpe d’Huez, symbolic perhaps but notable as he’d survived 5,000m of vertical gain, each stomp on the pedals in the final kilometres a serving to every media outlet in Belgium who’d declared he was not a grand tour contender.

As Pogačar and Del Toro came into the finish together they were photo-bombed by Lenny Martinez who secured his fifth place overall, albeit 13 minutes down but he’ll take plenty from the consistent performance and how he was one of the few to hold firm in the third week, all while having turned 23 during this year’s Tour.

The Route: “On n’est pas a Thoiry, ici“. Well almost, there’s a presentation in Thoiry for the crowds and host politicians but then the riders are bussed to Paris. It’s 89km and laps of the Champs-Elysées before moving to the 15km long Champs-Elysées – Montmartre circuit. The stage is reduced from 133km because of a police shortage with the emergency services mobilised to help with public safety, notably in the Cap Ferret/Arcachon area. In pure cycling terms nobody is missing out on the early parade and we might see a lap or two reserved for this before the racing begins.

If the Champs-Elysées-Montmartre circuit already feels familiar there’s still a difference as after the descent of Montmatre, the course takes the riders to the Place de l’Etoile/Arc de Triomphe and then to the Champs-Elysées. Last year the descent led to the Place de la Concorde. The meaning here is that there’s 10km to the finish from the top of Montmartre when there was 6km last year so more chance for teams to organise a chase.

The Contenders: the circuit has a feel of a spring classic with the repeat cobbled climbs and if it’s only 89km everyone is tired and so it doesn’t need 200km to make the difference.

Mathieu van der Poel (Alpecin-PremierTech) is the obvious pick, the punch to jump away on the climb, the ability to win the sprint and he’s had this stage in mind for a long time. Jasper Philipsen is a second card to play in the sprint.

Tadej Pogačar (UAE) got beaten here last year, one of the rare moments he lost a bike race in a straight contest. He’s been talking about this stage too and this makes life harder for the sprinters as his moves will distance them. He’ll get extra stimulation from going up against Van der Poel, his arch rival for the classics.

Mads Pedersen (Lidl-Trek) ought to be tired but so far he’s been a force of nature in this Tour.

Olav Kooij (Decathlon-CMA CGM) and Biniam Girmay (NSN) can hope for a sprint and an opportunity.

Jayco pair Michael Matthews and Mauro Schmid have a chance. Netcompany-Ineos still have chance of salvation and Filippo Ganna might be their best bet. There’s no French stage winner so far and Romain Grégoire (Groupama-FDJ) has a chance but he’s looked fried.

	Van der Poel
	Pogačar, Philipsen
	Kooij, Matthews, Girmay, Schmid, Kanter

Weather: sunny and 24°C.

TV: KM0 is at 5.55pm and the finish is forecast for 7.30pm CEST.

The post Tour de France Stage 21 Preview first appeared on The Inner Ring.

The last day in the Alps and a ferocious stage with hardly a metre of flat road.

If you want to watch it live, note the early finish.

Pacman: a group of 42 riders were away with Lidl-Trek pulling for Mads Pedersen who’d made the move and managed to get over the big Col du Noyer. Among the group was Lenny Martinez, 7th overall at the start of the day. Valentin Paret-Peintre won the sprint on the climb to take a virtual lead in the mountains competition.

Several riders from EF, Ineos, Visma towed the breakaway as fast as they could for their climbers which was a boost for Martinez. Having worked to pull the move clear for Pedersen, once past the intermediate point Lidl-Trek, Pedersen included, dropped back to pull the yellow jersey group which shrank drastically on the modest Col d’Ornon, a clue to the pace and fatigue, to try and recover time on Martinez.

The breakaway started Alpe d’Huez with about three and half minutes on yellow jersey group and soon Martinez, Richard Carapaz and Sep Kuss left the others behind. Only they quickly started to attack each other, notably Carapaz who was frustrated by Martinez who was either baggage or bluffing. It was a bluff, and Carapaz made five moves, increasingly frustrated as he could not get away. At one point through the village of Huez the trio stopped pedalling as they looked at each other.

Meanwhile Pogačar had set off solo, it was like watching an Australian-style handicap race where the best rider has to set off minutes behind the rest. In yellow, he was gobbling up riders from the breakaway like Pacman. Extrapolating his time gain per kilometre suggested the breakaway would be caught but you didn’t need mental arithmetic to work this out as the lead trio marked each other and buried their chances.

In the finish Carapaz and Martinez were able to latch onto Pogačar but he kicked one last time before the finishing straight and cracked Carapaz. Martinez was on the wheel of the Ecuadorian again and he probably took a pleasure in not moving and thereby ensuring Martinez could not win. Another stage for Pogačar. Easy to bank, to take for granted, to read as inevitable but this time with the Alpe record too.

Among the GC contenders Remco Evenepoel came in two and half minutes down, taking 12 seconds on Isaac del Toro and 16 on Mattias Skjelmose and Paul Seixas. The relative loser was Juan Ayuso who lost almost four minutes to his GC rivals, slipping two places on GC. Martinez is up to fifth now and his Bahraini team management swept away all talk of a loss thanks to this overall gain.

In the mountains competition Richard Carapaz leads by one point over Tadej Pogačar and seven points over Valentin Paret-Peintre. Carapaz has 91 points and there’s the possibility to win 70 points on Stage 20 so all to race for. Pedersen now has 52 points lead on Jasper Philipsen, not arithmetically secure but much more comfortable now.

One sour note was Einer Rubio leaving the race after the UAE team car slammed on the brakes going up Alpe d’Huez, seemingly when a spectator was in front of the vehicle and the Colombian crashed into the back, sustaining heavy facial injuries and, unable to continue, needing 20 stitches. The upper part of the Col de Sarenne for the next stage is due to be closed to the crowds.

The Route: 170km and 5,450m of vertical gain, a huge day in the mountains. The profiles speak for themselves.

The Finish: the Col de Sarenne is a backroad that leads to Alpe d’Huez and very different from the famous main climb. It’s irregular along the way with an early descent and a flat section through Clavans. The upper part in black on the profile has a series of hairpins that come in quick succession.

From the top there’s still 14.4km to go, first across a plateau-like section that’s awkward as anyone dropped before can flounder by themselves here.

Once in Alpe d’Huez there’s a descent out of the ski resort and then the route picks up the final part of the traditional climb with 3.5km to go, some last ramps before crossing the resort to the same finish line as the previous stage.

The Contenders: Tadej Pogačar (UAE) has his Alpe d’Huez stage now, does he want another? Speaking after Stage 19 he hinted at this but also said he wants to help Isaac del Toro secure the white jersey and the podium.

Richard Carapaz (EF) has been on the rampage two days in a row which makes a third time hard especially given all the efforts he’s been making but by virtue of being in the polka-dot jersey he’s got to be among the movers from the start.

Valetin Paret-Peintre (Soudal-Quickstep) sat up on Stage 19. Did he fade from the efforts of pushing a big gear, or was it a case of reculer pour mieux sauter knowing how many points are on offer in this stage?

Lenny Martinez (Bahrain) was almost carried to the foot of Alpe d’Huez on a Sedan chair but stuffed up the finish. However his time gains have propelled him up the GC and so if he moves both Lidl-Trek and Decathlon-CMA CGM will want to chase. Still he is moving well.

Sepp Kuss (Visma-LAB) gets even more climbing to suit and no GC menace.

Netcompany-Ineos can still try, is Thymen Arensman the best bet or did Egan Bernal sit up yesterday to save energy. Both are climbing well but how to win against others look livelier.

Tom Pidcock (Pinarello-Q36.5) is 9th on GC and at 21 minutes and he could take eight minutes and not worry Lidl-Trek or Decathlon but he’s just been struggling on the climbs in recent days.

	Kuss, Carapaz
	Pogačar, VP-P, Martinez
	Pidcock, Arensman, Bernal, Del Toro

Weather: sunshine at times and 27°C in the valleys but with clouds building and a good chance of rain at times.

TV: KM0 is at 11.30am and the finish is forecast for 4.10pm CEST. The start of the Télégraphe comes around 1.40pm and the top of the Galibier will be around 3.00pm and the Sarenne begins around 3.35pm.

The post Tour de France Stage 20 Preview first appeared on The Inner Ring.

Alpe d’Huez awaits, the classic climb but this time with a more gentle approach. Can UAE keep a lid on things so that Tadej Pogačar gets a prestige win for his palmarès?

Festival des Cannes: one of the enjoyable aspects of stage races is seeing multiple races happening at the same time. One saw Mads Pedersen going in the breakaway he managed to make moves all the way to the intermediate sprint in Corps after 129km to take a valuable 25 points.

Early on Richard Carapaz and Valentin Paret-Peintre were in a different contest as they battled for the mountains points, the Frenchman picking off each sprint with a sprint that belied his waif-like build.

Later a solid move got clear but Carapaz missed it. His EF team mates Alex Baudin and Ben Healy set about correcting this and helped tow a willing counter move across to the front.

After Pedersen won the intermediate sprint Felix Engelhardt and Matteo Jorgenson floated away and then Tobias Halland Johannessen got across. Once they’d got a few metres things changed and you could see their backs hunched and elbows going in as they accelerated. Raul Garcia Pierna moved taking Mauro Schmid with him. This allowed Engelhardt to pull harder for his team mate Schmid, prising open the gap before he could do no more. Netcompany-Ineos had missed the move but while Thymen Arensman tried to chase Richard Carapaz darted past with a big counter-attack, taking Paret-Peintre with him. This left six clear with 45km to go and Ineos chasing.

Coming to the finish Garcia Pierna had been dropped but got back and looked like the weakest of the six. At times they were spread across the road to Orcières-Merlette, nobody wanting to lead, looking at each other like poker players around a table trying to second-guess who held which cards and scrutinising rivals for the slightest tell in body language.

Jorgenson looked the most likely to attack and was the first to move. He prompted a counter-attack from Richard Carapaz and Paret-Peintre dived on the Ecuadorian’s wheel. Carapaz went again and this time nobody could follow. Paret-Peintre cracked in finishing fourth missed on the points to take the polka-dot jersey for real rather than leasing it.

It’s a victory for a rider with an artistic and rebellious streak. He attacked on the Puy Mary in an attempt to slip the UAE yoke on Stage 10. And he’s not done yet.

Elsewhere Brandon McNulty abandoned the stage, another UAE rider to fall ill after Adam Yates and Tim Wellens was among those dropped early. Any team talk of Yates’s illness being an isolated affair looked questionable. Tadej Pogačar seems fine but no rivals tried a move on the final climb to test. Also a final plotline in that UAE were spared some duties when the likes of Pinarello-Q36.5, Tudor and Total chased to protect the GC standings of Tom Pidcock, Yannis Voisard and Jordan Jegat.

The Route: 128km and 3,500m of vertical gain. It’s uphill from the start out of Gap on the Col Bayard. This road’s often featured for arrivals in Gap as the climb to take before the white knuckle “Rochette” descent back into Gap. The Bayard is a big wide road.

The Col du Noyer is not, a start amid fields and woodland and then a wild feel. It’s 7.5km at 8.5% with the final 2km with 10% sections between the hairpins.

The route then crosses back across the landscapes taken on the previous stage via the Route Napoleon.

The Col d’Ornon is a quiet backroad and a gentle climb. The descent is more remarkable, rarely steep either but with more hairpins and some moments where the road is cut into the cliff. It’s “technical”, cycling’s euphemism for a dangerous descent.

The Finish: Alpe d’Huez is a tough climb, over 13km at over 8% is hard by any measures and an amphitheatre with its raucous crowds. The start is the hardest part, the ramps have double-digit gradients. It’s famous for the 21 hairpins and they count, a rider can pick their line through these bends to suit and allow someone with energy to spare to accelerate. The slope kicks up for the ramp that leads into the ski resort and from there after the slope eases. There’s a left turn onto the finish line on the Avenue du Rif Nel.

The Contenders: having given Richard Carapaz (EF) three chainrings for the previous stage and writing that even if he won he’d be tipped again, he is. Watching him race to the finish he didn’t ease up when he’ll need plenty to be be able to go again today. Ben Healy helped set him up and isn’t the same force as last year but has a chance too.

Tadej Pogačar (UAE) will want the stage win but given several team mates are ill this poses questions above his team’s ability to control the stage, and that’s before we ponder if he’s immune to this. So he’s not the shoe-in he ought to have been for this stage. It’ll be hard to engineer a stage win for team mate Isaac del Toro as this could let in Remco Evenepoel (Soudal-Quickstep) again.

Netcompany-Ineos missed the winning move yesterday and later shut down the chase but does Thymen Arensman have anything to spare? Valentin Paret-Peintre (Soudal-Quickstep) faded on the previous stage but if he can recover this stage will be less intense for him, especially if he gets a colleague in the breakaway with him.

Riders who fit the bill and were not riding as hard on the previous stage include Sepp Kuss and Davide Piganzoli (Visma-LAB), Ilan Van Wilder (Soudal-Quickstep), Harald Tejada (XDS-Astana) and Einer Rubio (Movistar).

Finally Tom Pidcock (Pinarello-Q36.5) sits eighth overall but has still been making moves and he won the last time the race came to the Alpe in 2022.

	–
	Carapaz, Arensman, Pogačar, VP-P, Kuss
	Evenpoel, Jorgenson, Rubio, Healy, Tejada, Piganzoli, Pidcock

Weather: sunny and 29°C.

TV: KM0 is at 2.15pm and the finish is forecast for 5.35pm CEST. The intermediate sprint at the foot of the Col d’Ornon should be reached around 4.25pm and the climb to Alpe d’Huez begins around 5.00pm.

The post Tour de France Stage 19 Preview first appeared on The Inner Ring.

Alps or Pyrenees? The two mountain ranges are often juxtaposed by the Tour de France. Do you prefer one over the other?

If you do, chances are it’s the Pyrenees. Many cyclists cite the wilder feel, the older buildings, the roads that feel more irregular to climb, while the Alps have big ski resorts, crowded valleys and busy roads. It’s true in the sense yes the Alps have have big ski resorts, crowded valleys and busy roads but so do the Pyrenees. I’ll see your Maurienne ski resorts and raise you with Andorra.

Just like the Pyrenees, the Alps have plenty of wilder corners with roads that weren’t built by bulldozers to pave access to a ski resort in the 1970s too. Only the Tour is often a poor prism to refract this back to TV audiences and this televisual psychogeography can distort the views.

This weekend’s stage to Alpe d’Huez is interesting as the main climb has As-Seen-On-TV celebrity but the Col de Sarenne gets some limelight, in part to persuade visiting cyclists to stay and try more roads in the area. If the Sarenne is rewarding for the scenery and solitude it still begins on the busy Col du Lautaret main road by the industrial Chambon dam.

There are plenty of quiet valleys in the Alps that offer tourists plenty of rural charm, cyclists get empty, irregular climbs… and residents struggle to access public services just like the Pyrenean clichés too. But these parts don’t host the race often, if at all. As a result they don’t seem to exist among the mythology of cycling locations.

Today’s stage passes many of these quieter corners. It rides into the Vercors, a spectacular part of the Alps, or pre-Alps if you’re a stickler for geology but only via a main road up and then back down rather than any of the spectacular cliff-hugging roads but it could still look good on TV. The Vercors has at least featured in the Tour but rarely. It is a quiet place, no mass tourism ski resorts and plenty of roads that started out as smuggling trails or forestry paths and then gradually got tarmacked. Once the race quits the Vercors it’ll take the training roads of Paul Magnier.

Nearby is another corner of the Alps called the Trièves which offers wide open spaces in the mountains and little in the way of mass tourism nor industry although it does now have a relatively new autoroute. Motorists have to pay but they get their money’s worth with the views along the way.

Later in the stage is the Champsaur, another corner of the Alps often passed by in the Tour. But illustrative as the race finishes in Orcières-Merlette, the name of the ski resort. Merlette, with its apartment tower blocks, is the aberration. But because the Tour visits it’s easy to remember this rather than all the side roads and smaller passes and nearby wilderness not seen on TV.

Indeed rather than juxtapose, if the Tour doesn’t show off all the Alps, it doesn’t do the Pyrenees justice either. It sticks to familiar haunts like the Tourmalet, Aspin and Soulor passes. Gavarnie was a novelty this year it’s just a turning away at the foot of the Tourmalet. So a similar selection bias is evident as the wilder parts of the Pyrenees don’t and even can’t host the race very often. This year’s stage to Les Angles touched on a relatively unexplored part of the eastern Pyrenees for the Tour but the race did not stay to range more. Similarly western parts in the Basque Country are even more unknown to the Tour despite having some of the hardest climbs in France, something that ought to be a draw for the organisers. But these areas are relatively remote.

Logistics play a big part. Alpe d’Huez can host 23 teams with their 28 bed allocation and supply parking to the fleet of vehicles every team brings. So can the city of Pau but it means the Tour struggles to reach smaller places.

One nerdy point on how Tour stages are hosted these days is that increasingly it’s a regional effort. Rather than one host town taking on all the costs, departments and regions are sharing the burden. This means a small and relatively poor town could get to host the race if there’s something to gain for the wider region. So the Col de Méhatché, aka Artazamundi, could feature one day if the Pyrenees-Atlantiques council wanted to promote what many forums say is hardest tarmacked road pass in France.

And yes there’s more beyond France for the Alps and Pyrenees alike but that’s beyond a postcard from the Tour de France. But it does speak to the relative size of these mountain ranges, the Alps by virtue of being bigger in France alone offer a lot that goes unseen.

Today’s intermediate sprint in Corps comes a relatively flat part of the stage. But turn left and there’s the Col de l’Homme and beyond to the Notre Dame de la Salette sanctuary, perhaps too sacred for the profanity of sports event and never seen on TV at the Tour… but rewarding for travellers.

The post Postcard from the Champsaur first appeared on The Inner Ring.