Watching the peloton - Professional Road Racing thread 2026

[stompandgo]

Onley out, no surprise after the awful crash at Alp Rhone, was lucky apparently he wasn't badly - life changingly - injured in that ravine. It means Ineos won't have a leadership dilemma like Bora, though not a reason they'd like. Onley is having a nightmare of a season from 4th TdF last July to now. To add to it all, Kevin Vauquelin has been sick this week and is not confirmed to start, leaving potentially Arensman as only GC contender and Ganna for stage hunting I guess. Not a great way to back up their start of season promise to "get back on the podium" and impress the new sponsors and their distracted by Man Utd boss, Sir Petro chemical Oligarch. If Vauquelin starts he may have the first week to get up to speed, remarkable how they can recover in the race.

Godon has a shot at some stages.

 

[stompandgo]

Cyclingflash ranks the top three GC as Tadej, Remco, and Jonas in that order. That, and the pseudo-TTT first stage ought to fire up Visma.

The TTT in the first stage will be run as a TTT, but each rider will be scored separately. This essentially makes the race a 20km leadout train, with each team setting up their GC contender for the climb in the last 800m. They say that Visma is the likely winner, but I'm not so sure. If there's a stage for Remco, this is it.