Critérium du Dauphiné 2023, June 4 - 11

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Not bad rides by O'Connor and Hindley re the Tour. Yates was good, Vingegaard on another level, Gaudu has to improve a lot before the Tour. Haig was okay
yeah, Haig looks quite good indeed after the setback in the Giro. But he'll probably need a break soon.

Going by the interviews, Groupama doesn't seem to be too worried about Gaudu. Sounds like they went really deep during the training camp, so this is more of a "recovery week". But still, a bit of an improvement this weekend wouldn't hurt of course..
 
Torstein Træen absolutely flying at the tender age of 27!

Looking forward to having to google how to do an attached 'ae' character a lot during The Tour.
Great to see him at an even higher level this year, seems steady improving year by year.

He was a surprise when he got a top 10 in Tour of Colombia back in 2020 before the pandemic and he had some nice results in climbing races that autumn winning a MTF in Malopolska. 2021 he was a bit under the radar but was top 10 in both Tour of Norway and Artic Race and climbed to 5th in Tour de Alsace on a hard parcour.

Last year he started very nice with a top 10 in Catalunya and decent climbing in Tour of the Alps before it got discovered that he had testicular cancer. Luckily it was very early stage and they could solve it with a surgery and quick treatment and he was back racing only 4 months later. He had a good late autumn with 7th in Cro race and 3rd in Langkawi.

This season has been decent, but not superb until now. This is the first year where he’s trying trying proper altitude training and it seems to be paying off well. I have high hopes for him in the Tour de France. I think he can be one of those guys heading into the breakaways in Alps several times and ending up fighting for stage victories and climbing into the top 15 in the GC. He does lack a bit of a punch and he’s not good at going over the red zone and recovering so it will be hard to win, but who knows.

He was one of the 11 riders on the first Uno-X conti team back in 2017, so he’s been there for the whole journey (him, Resell and Abrahamsen from the original team is still riding now). I think that’s pretty cool.
 
Agreed.

It was so clear that:

1. Only Vingo was trying
2. They let him win
3. No other rider targeted this race. Only Vingo.
4. Everyone else had bad prep and/or an injury to recover from
5. Etc…

Oh, wait, what? Wrong rider?

;):rolleyes::cool:
What would be scary is if Vingegaard wasn't actually targeting a win here.

Honestly, given how many of these guys have podiumed or Top 5'd a GT or are pegged as future talents like Lenny Mart, I expected at least one stellar performance out of the bunch, maybe not the overall but at least one surprise today or yesterday. But he's been just toying with the field here.
 
Vingegaard is very impressive & he isn't even trying to hide anything. He's just assuming his position as favorite for the Tour & going for it.

He turned the Dauphiné into his own little version of how Pogacar won the Tour of Slovenia in recent years, which is quite something (aka the gaps versus the rest).

What’s wrong with Mas?

It's not the Vuelta.
 
yeah, Haig looks quite good indeed after the setback in the Giro. But he'll probably need a break soon.

Going by the interviews, Groupama doesn't seem to be too worried about Gaudu. Sounds like they went really deep during the training camp, so this is more of a "recovery week". But still, a bit of an improvement this weekend wouldn't hurt of course..
Sure, lets race Dauphine to get a good old recovery week.

Lmao @ Gaudu and FDJ
 
Vingegaard is very impressive & he isn't even trying to hide anything. He's just assuming his position as favorite for the Tour & going for it.

He turned the Dauphiné into his own little version of how Pogacar won the Tour of Slovenia in recent years, which is quite something (aka the gaps versus the rest).



It's not the Vuelta.
Watching the stage he really only went hard (for him) in that 4.5km to get a gap. Yates didn't bite on the jump and maintained that 16 second gap....right up to every grade that went above 8% where Jonas appeared to just maintain his spin and add another 16 seconds to his lead over Mr. Yates. Impressive was the O'Connor and Hindley efforts to not lose too much more time.
IMO Vingegaard has more upside if he felt he needed a bigger gap. It'll be interesting to see who can improve before the big hills in the Tour.
Very fun ride for Jonas.
 
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The TDF is a 2 horse race. The rest will just fight for third as long as the top 2 donot have any mishaps. Besides the rest donot look to be in top form. Gaudu, Carapaz et all are simply not in the same league as before.
Carapaz was his usual aggressive self but his weak TT and short lived mountain efforts displayed a big lack of form depth. Gaudu wasn't in the picture enough for a personal conclusion; does anyone follow him enough to know his upside? He seems to flourish in le Tour.
 
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How does it compare to his times at last years TDF?
I believe it was a bit better here than SPDBF in the Tour last year looking at 15-20 minute efforts (obviously they are different climbs and race conditions), though how much better depends on the extent to which you believe altitude effects things, lot of varying opinions I know on here. He says he still has room to improve form and seems like the honest type to be fair, if he is right it's my opinion that Pogacar is ****ed, in the high mountains at least and especially with his interrupted preperation. Remember the Fignon 84 posts in 2021, well something a bit like that. I hope I'm wrong.

Though I still maintain Hindley and Yates' gap to him is closer here if they work together as soon as Jonas attacks. He still wins by a decent margin obviously.
 
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