A bit more would be nice
The Dauphiné and its lustre
I’ve been neck deep in stats for TNT again. It’s Dauphiné time. I’m sure everyone is sick of all the mentions of how shite the new name is. Because it is, it’s really shite. I did the professional thing and gave the document that I submitted the name ‘Stats - Tour Auvergne - Rhône-Alpes - Stage 1’ but throughout the document when I was referring to the race itself, I couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t call it that name in any kind of genuine referential way. Even putting it into this paragraph right here, I couldn’t remember it and had to go to the internet to get it and paste the name in.
I ended up typing ‘this race’ a lot but still ended up just calling it the Dauphiné.
One of the stats that stood out while I was prepping for Stage 1 was that EF Education had never won a stage of this race (see, just like that… ). This is the 18th time they’ve ridden it and they’ve actually won it overall twice, in 2014 with Andrew Talansky and in 2020 with Dani Martinez. Both brilliant editions of the race where the eventual winner snaffled the race lead on the final day from under the noses of much bigger names, but neither rider actually won a stage along the way. And neither had anyone else from that team, ever - until today.
It’s nice when that happens. Preparing stats and facts ahead of time can be a bit of a mixture of stuff that has happened and stuff that might happen. When I present a nice fact which is relevant to something that might happen and then that something happens and Alex Baudin goes off and wins the first ever stage for the team - well, that’s a very tidy scenario which I enjoy. Jose Been was on the English commentary and, having just had it on in the background there, I don’t think she mentioned it. I hope it was used by some of the other language commentators.
One of the other things that stood out for me was that none of the final podium from last year’s Tour de France are taking part. Pog is off to Switzerland next week to continue his mission to complete cycling, Remco Evenepoel has been doing fuck all since Liége and Florian Lipowitz is approaching the Tour de France via the Tour of Slovenia.
This doesn’t happen very often. In the past 30 years, it’s only the fourth time. The 2024 edition didn’t have any of the previous year’s Tour podium either - Jonas Vingegaard, Tadej Pogacar or Adam Yates. And then it also happened in 2006 because Lance Armstrong had retired, Basso was going for the Giro/Tour double and Jan Ullrich was actually looking like a supreme bike rider again having won the Tour de Suisse. And it happened in the 2001 edition when Armstrong, Ullrich and Joseba Beloki were all doing other things.
It’s quite the change from last year’s race where we had Pog, Vinge and Evenepoel all going at it at the Dauphiné. It brings to mind again this ‘truism’ that gets pushed at us that we need all the best riders in all the best races all the time.
The Inner Ring posted this on Blue Sky earlier this week:
This whole project seems like it is one that will never die. It will just endlessly change names without anything ever happening. The goal, still, seems to be create a new set of generic races and make all the best riders ride them. The implicit assertion seems to be that the best riders do not race each other enough the way things are now.
I get invited to a pre-race meeting with all the TNT commentators before the bigger races - the Grand Tours - where plans are laid out and tactics are discussed for how different aspects of the live coverage are going to work for this particular race. I don’t really need to be there, but it’s nice to be invited and I go along when I can out of curiosity.
Last year this meeting happened about a week before the Tour de France. There was a special guest. Mr. Richard Plugge of Visma Lease-a-Bike and, more pertinently, of the One Cycling project.
