With the Tour de France done a look at the UCI World Tour promotion and relegation standings. If you want to save a click then stage wins for Astana and Arkéa-B&B Hotels didn’t make a difference. In fact they lost ground in July We’re now approaching the opening of the transfer season when new hires ... Read more The post World Tour Promotion-Relegation Update first appeared on The Inner Ring ..read more

The winning moment? If Tadej Pogačar took the yellow jersey after just Stage 4, hopes of a contest were rekindled on Stage 11 Le Lioran when Jonas Vingegaard won. They were calmed on the first day in the Pyrenees to the Pla d’Adet, then extinguished the next day on the climb the Plateau de Beille. If not the winning moment this second day in the Pyrenees set up a dominant victory. Pogačar’s imperious results will wow some and bore others and that’s fine, there are different ways to enjoy the sport. If the final result lacked suspense the daily battles to slip the UAE team’s stranglehold were ..read more

The suspense has gone out the window for the yellow jersey but it should be close for the stage win. High Five: Tadej Pogačar tried not to win, or at least his UAE team didn’t mow down the breakaway. Soudal-Quickstep did this instead, the idea was try and soften up Jonas Vingegaard. It was a rare move that couldn’t fail because if he toppled Vingegaard then second place overall awaited, if not then he was still in third place given nobody threatens his podium spot; João Almeida is eight minutes behind. He tried two moves and got caught and countered. Jonas Vingegaard was still keen to keep E ..read more

Paris-Nice? Familiar roads from March’s race but this will be hotter twice over, the temperature and the ferocity for the stage win. Isolated 2000: the high point of the Tour didn’t supply the height of drama. The stage started with Visma-LAB sending their best two helpers up the road in Matteo Jorgenson and Wilco Kelderman. A relay plan for Jonas Vingegaard who could leapfrog them to victory? If it was a plan, the challenge came in the execution as Vingegaard sat tight on the Bonette. Thoughts started to turn, will Vingegaard race the Vuelta, could he do the Giro next year instead of the Tou ..read more

This year’s Tour reaches new heights with the mighty Bonette, altitude and attitude combined. Don’t miss the early finish. A Man With A Plan: 28 riders went up the road, the first breakaway to get more than ten minutes this Tour. This gave them the luxury of being able to trade attacks for the next few hours, each trying to reshape too large a group. It was splendid to watch, sunshine, tactics and hours of helicopter shots of the Alpine landscapes, just the melancholy of knowing next week it’ll all be over. At times riders were dropped but came back, notably Matteo Vercher. Victor Campenaert ..read more

Another breakaway world championships day, the last chance for many riders and teams to take an elusive win. Superlatives: a super stage with a super battle for the win and a super surprise battle behind among the GC contenders, all on the roads to Super Dévoluy. It’s easy to use up the superlatives but it this was a fantastic day’s sport. The stage started with a bang as crosswinds split a nervous peloton and then wave after wave of attacks. Eventually quartet got clear with Tiesj Benoot, Romain Grégoire, Bob Jungels and Magnus Cort and they never had much more than a minute’s lead. The int ..read more

Having looked at why there are no attacks on some of the sprint stages, a trend rather than a quirk, there’s still value in the good old doomed breakaway according to Le Télégramme. The newspaper cites Cofidis public relations staff have said that having Anthony Perez up the road in a long breakaway got them more media value than Victor Lafay’s stage win last year because Lafay only attacked in the final kilometre. Arkéa also claim they’re a well-known brand in France now thanks to the publicity from the Tour in recent years from all the breakaways. You can reach this calculation if you measu ..read more

The last chance for the sprinters. When the route came out last year this one had the “watch out if there are crosswinds” label. It still applies in the conditional because the weather forecast looks uncertain. The Route: 188km and 1,200m of vertical gain as the race rides through arid countryside. A passage through Pézenas to evoke gonzo singer Boby Lapointe and past plenty of rosé wine vineyards. Look at the profile and there’s a climb to the intermediate sprint but it’s just a long drag up. The categorised climb is not just a côte but a col, a real mountain pass but tiny and on a regular r ..read more

A big day in the Pyrenees and a big day in France as it’s le 14 Juillet, France’s national day. Adet at a time: it looked like plan, UAE rode tempo all day with Nils Politt almost doing an hour on the front to keep the breakaway in range, Tim Wellens toiled too. On the final climb Ben Healy dropped David Gaudu to go solo and the last survivor from the breakaway but behind UAE accelerated. Adam Yates attacked and this had Visma chasing and then Tadej Pogačar himself attacked with 4.5km to go. This was a trenchant attack, nobody tried to follow. Jonas Vingegaard seemed to compose himself and th ..read more

The Tour heads into the Pyrenees for the weekend. Today is the sprint version, tomorrow the marathon. TGV (Tour à Grande Vitesse): a morning tour of the paddock and masks were back in fashion. First the Bahrain team on Wednesday, now more. It’s contagious. Spanish media said Juan Ayuso had Covid but with light symptoms, only he was quickly dropped and quit. A crosswind provoked the bunch like a stick jammed into a wasps’ nest. Victor Campenaerts launched the move and Mathieu van der Poel joined in. The race never stopped buzzing. The average speed was hovering around 50km/h for two hours. A ..read more