The racing in France has been absolutely on fire lately with the Route d'Occitanie and the recent Tour de l'Ain, so this week it's the Dauphiné's turn and moving to the Alps after the Pyrinees and the Jura. After the race was reduced to 5 stages we were left with 5 stages for... the climbers! Ok and the puncheurs too, but this is a week fully dedicated for the climbers and mostly the Tour de France contenders, and the main Tour blocks.
The Route
The race opens up with the longest stage covering a massive 221 Kilometers in lenght and a whole lot of climbing but luckily it won't be GC defining yet for sure, the Col du Beal is the biggest challenge of the day but comes in very early on the stage so the stage will be decided on some slightly easier gradients of Saint-Christo-en-Jarez, on the outskirts of Saint-Étienne.
Stage 2 is already on the doors of the Alps, the riders will go from the longest to the shortest stage but this is one where raids or surprise attacks aren't possible. The stage rolls along in a transition, the Côte Maillet (5.9Km at 7.9%) will warm up the riders for what's to come just outside of Grenoble when the peloton will tackle the Col de Porte.
This final climb is 16.6Km long at an average of 6.2% but it's quite deceiving as there's a very significant descending section in the first part of the climb, the first section is at 10% for over 2Km and the final 11.5Km are at 8%. It's a HARD climb!
Stage 3 is a very interesting with an almost pan-flat first half of the stage but then then second half is absolutely brutal. With 52Km to the finish summits the massibe Col de la Madeleine which is a very consistent climb at very high gradients, no rest throughout the whole 18 Kilometers of it.
It's already hard but if it weren't enough the riders will have to go down to then go up again to the finish in Saint Martin de Belleville. Now you may not recognize this name, but you will be familiar with them as these are the first 15 Kilometers of the climb up to Val Thorens.
Stage 4 is the first one of the "weekend in Megève" stages and to be honest I don't know which one is harder, but for sure this one has it's hardest spot nearer to the finish. There's over 4600 meters of climbing packed into merely 150 Kilometers and the profile shows it very well, the start is absolutely brutal with 4 categorized climbs in Col de Plain Bois, Croix Fry, Aravis and the Côte d'Héry-sur-Ligine. With only 70Km of riding the riders already have all of these in the pocket before descending and moving onto the next climb.
The Montée de Bisanne has it's summit with 34Km to go and is 12.7Km at 7.7%, a very constant climb where attacks are to be expected and after there's a small descent that will lead into the slight rise to Megève.
And the final stage is a loop around the Alpine city once again, the Côte de Domancy starts off the day already with hard gradients and I'd expect raids to happen in the brutal Romme/Colombiere combination. Between these three climbs there's 19Km at over 8% of gradient. JUST in these.
Then follows the Col des Aravis again after the previous day, then some more climbing and descending into Domancy once again, and then the final climb to Megève but differently, now with around 14Km of climbing, slightly but a suiting finnish to the race.
Weather for the Week
It's going to be a very hot week in the Alps. There's some risk of a rainy or stormy day, forecast right now says it will happen in some nights but the days will be hot around the 30's, it can make for a rough race for those who dislike the heat and also can harm the consistency of others.
GC Contenders
With 0 stages for the sprinters and few options for the puncheurs there pretty much is no reason to mention anyone but the climbers. And this is pretty much a Tour de France preview if you think of it because most of the GC contenders who are racing here will be contesting the Grand Boucle.
So the main topic is without a doubt the massive battle between Jumbo and Ineos. Not that one of their riders will win, but collectively and in terms of importance for the big goal in some weeks. We've had the first battle over the week in the Jura mountains and Jumbo came out on top. With no time-trials it's fair to say that INEOS will be happy, however even in terms of climbing the "killer wasps" are really to sting the British team, Primoz Roglic is absolutely a crushing stage-racer at this point with no weakness and he is supported by a team that is to say the least frightening, with Steven Kruijswijk, Tom Dumoulin, Sepp Kuss and Wout van Aert inbetween his domestiques. I put it like this but of course the two Dutchmen can end up being the leaders, legs and sense of opportunity will likely dictate it but the Slovenian will for sure be looking to deal another psychological blow to Egan Bernal who is leading Ineos. You might be thinking INEOS were clearly below Jumbo some days ago but they're bringing in their secret Soviet nuclear weapon. By that I mean Pavel Sivakov, second in Occitanie and looking mega strong, INEOS themselves are bringing a scary strong team including Froome and Thomas who are still looking for better form, Castroviejo/Kwiatkowski/van Baarle fill up the rest of the squad.
And as Richie Porte said, it's those two and everyone else, but who is everyone else? Well Porte for a start, he's had trouble in the last few years but he's looking quite good this year and he likes the Dauphiné quite a lot. Some more riders I'll pick them up from Milano-Sanremo, two riders looking in great form who are firstly Tadej Pogacar one of the hype beasts who are set to try and defeat the two main teams, and I must say he may have the legs to do so here and the other is Julian Alaphilippe, not a climber but he's got the form and can get yellow on the first day, also Tiesj Benoot was there and sometimes he rides very strong in the mountains, so he's always an outsider to consider.
Then there's a huge list of very strong riders, candidates for the podium starting with those who weren't racing in Ain like Mikel Landa and the Bahrain squad with Bilbao/Caruso and Dylan Teuns to back him up, there's Miguel Angel Lopez coming in for Astana with a very suiting race but perhaps not the best of form, there's Emanuel Buchmann who's coming back to racing after the UAE Tour and we don't know in what form he comes in, he comes alongside Grossschartner and Muhlberger, Romain Bardet who crashed on Occitanie alongside Pierre Latour and also Benoit Cosnefroy who could target stage 1. Thibaut Pinot is coming back and certainly with big expectations after the legs he's shown last year, but perhaps he's saving his expectations for later in August, then also Nairo Quintana who was there in Tour de l'Ain showing good legs and keeping up with Roglic and Bernal as did Guillaume Martin, with only mountain stages Martin is fully in his terrain and will love the race as long as he keeps his consistency, he just doesn't have a team so he'll likely opt to follow wheels for most of the time, and in this field consider Adam Yates too as a very important figure as when he has good legs he is capable of taking on the very best climbers.
This is such a massive list, it isn't easy to call these just mere outsiders but the truth is there is so much quality in the field that I can't consider them as main favourites. EF have Sergio Higuita who is capable of very big things and will have a good chance to prove his value within the Tour contenders, he has Rigoberto Uran, Tanel Kangert, Daniel Martinez and Hugh Carthy who are all capable of great results on their own, however we need to see what strategy they opt for. Movistar are bringing their trident in Valverde, Soler and Enric Mas, Israel are bringing Daniel Martin, CCC have Fausto Masnada and Victor de la Parte and finally I'll give a worthy mention to Pierre Rolland who's returned to his winning ways last week in the Tour de Savoie Mont Blanc, both in terms of stages and GC.
Prediction Time
⭐ Dumoulin, Porte, Buchmann, Sivakov, Landa, A.Yates, Higuita
I'm not man enough to say there's anyone stronger than Primoz Roglic at the time I write this. Even though there's no time-trialing involved, just a pure mountain stage-race, he is virtually unbeatable at his best and has no weak spots at all. Now do I wanna be proven wrong? Yes, yes I do. Bernal will with no doubt put him under pressure, and there's tons of other riders including INEOS who can ally against Jumbo and I really do expect that. Most importantly than my opinion is that I think we're in for an incredible race, so buckle up and enjoy!
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