Weekly Recap

Another week packed with action. I’m a little late getting this up, but enjoy nonetheless.

The one-day action for the week commenced in Spain with the Clasica Jaen, a 158km hilly, gravel-y day in Southern Spain. Wout van Aert, Sepp Kuss, Juan Ayuso were some of the big hitters on the start list. But my man, the big dog Oier Lazkano, got into the early breakaway of seven riders, and gained over five minutes on the peloton. They never saw him again. He surgically rode every other member of the break off of his wheel and soloed to the victory in epic fashion. Second went to Bastien Tronchon and third to Jan Tratnik. Wout had an unfortunate puncture and finished in last place.

I have been hyping Lazkano up to the moon for weeks now, and I feel more than vindicated by his display in Jaen. His power data for this race was the best I have ever seen. I did an analysis on my Twitter, but I’ll summarize it here in part too: He averaged 365 watts for the entire race 3 hours, 43 minutes. His Normalized Power was 407. He did over 4,800 KJ. His best efforts on the power curve can be found here.

He will be a threat in the major classics, perhaps even in the Monuments. I hope he wins one.

The penultimate stage of the Tour of Oman had a hilly finale, and Amaury Capiot surprisingly won a 45-man group sprint. The GC was unchanged heading into Green Mountain.

Green Mountain is a savage climb; 5.8 km over 10 percent average gradient with steeper ramps in there. The stage was shortened to just 72km, so we were in for a high watts per kilogram test Adam Yates and whoever could stay close to him. His teammate Finn Fisher-Black had the leader’s jersey, but I did not expect him (or anyone else) to hang with Yates. Jan Hirt of the Czech Republic and Quick Step was hammering the pace for most of the climb before Yates just obliterated him in the final few hundred meters, winning by 11 seconds and setting a climbing record. Fisher-Black finished 6th, 44 seconds back, but salvaged a GC podium position. Yates took the title and Hirt took second.

My takeaways from this race are: Yates is even better than last year. Hirt is going to be valuable for Remco Evenepoel if he goes to the Tour de France. And Fisher-Black is strong, but not near the climbing level of the big dogs yet.

We will have to see how UAE will use Yates the Tour this year. With several other potential leaders and Pogacar on the team, but potentially tired from the Giro, there are a lot of different permutations.

In Portugal, the Tour of the Algarve was expected to be a Remco hunting ground.

Stage one was a sprint that went to Gerben Thijssen.

Stage two was an easy hilltop finish which was won by Daniel Martinez in a surprising sprint over Remco.

Stage three was another sprint, and this time Wout van Aert decided to participate and he won it.

Stage four was a hilly time trial. Remco did his duty here and won easily over Magnus Sheffield in a great performance. I think the level was quite high on this TT, so for Sheffield to get second in a comeback effort (he had a bad crash last year and basically saw Gino Mader die on a Swiss mountain… I cannot fathom the trauma) is a great sign. Remco took a big lead in the General Classification over Martinez.

The final stage was a tricky hilly one. With a large and reasonably strong breakaway two minutes up the road, Wout van Aert lit the race up from about 45k out and quickly bridged up to it, with Ben Healy in tow. The plan for Visma was likely to put pressure on Remco and protect the GC podium position of Jan Tratnik. At one point, Wout was in the virtual GC lead of the race. But Quick Step and INEOS and Bora all chased (riding annoyingly defensively), and the breakaway would be caught on the final ascent of the Malhao (2.5k @9.8 percent). Remco looked strong enough, but Martinez out-sprinted him again for his second stage win and took second on GC. Remco won the overall, and Tratnik rounded out the podium.

There are a lot of things to take from this race. Remco is flying as evidenced by his time trial, but his uphill sprint isn’t great right now. He’ll need to work on that for the Tour de France. Martinez is flying too, but there are questions about his consistency. He is apparently Bora’s leader for the Giro d’Italia this year, so he will need to be consistent for three weeks if he wants a good result. He should be really good in the Ardennes though. Tratnik is in the form of his life and should be lethal on the cobbles, especially in the overwhelmingly strongest team.

Healy was okay and risked it big time on the final stage to try to steal the overall win. I never fault somebody for going it, and he still hung on for fourth. He also seems to have improved his TT, or maybe he was competitive only because it was quite hilly. Either way, he should be EF’s leader in the Ardennes and a good stage-hunter in the Tour de France.

That being said, a lot of riders really disappointed. Pidcock was okay, but his TT was bad. He’s won on the Malhao finish before, and if he cannot do well on the finish that suits him perfectly, he just is not going to be competitive in many races. He really should be better with the hype he gets. Kuss also disappointed, finishing in 8th overall, but two minutes down. That’s a big margin to lose in just two hilltop finishes and a short TT! Sheffield lost his GC position and any chance of being competitve on the final stage by an ill-timed flat tire. I think he looks good for the Giro d’Italia and hopefully the Ardennes before that.

The Vuelta Andalucia was basically cancelled due to farmer protests. Instead of its excellent five-stage route, it was just one uphill 5km time trial. Maxim van Gils took a nice victory over Juan Ayuso. I can’t tell if Ayuso underperfomed or van Gils overperformed. I probably won’t read much into this truncated race. Basically, it’s just sad it did not happen in full.

That’s about it for the racing last week.

Next week (this week as I write this on Wednesday) is a big one, with the UAE Tour, the next WorldTour race, O Gran Camino (a four-stage race in Northern Spain) Jonas Vingegaard’s season debut, and the opening weekend of cobbled classics, as well as couple French 1.Pro races concurrent with Omloop and Kuurne. I’ll preview Omloop specifically shortly.

The season is getting into full swing, and I couldn’t be more excited.