Watching the peloton - Professional Road Racing thread 2026

Rás Cnoic said:
As Jeremy highlighted above, great line up for the renamed the Dauphine ( Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes - shame to have such a well known big race with new name) Startlist now full up, very juicy indeed! For this practice race for the Tour.

Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes

Startlist for Tour Auvergne - Rhône-Alpes 2026

Competing teams and riders for Tour Auvergne - Rhône-Alpes 2026. Top competitors are Isaac del Toro, Paul Seixas and João Almeida.
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It looks to be a battle between the best domestiques, second tier sprinters, and Seixas.
 
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stompandgo said:
Congrats to Ben Oliver and the Modern Adventure team for winning the Tour de Wollonie. He came from behind in the final sprint, got by DeLie and took the final stage for the GC win. Next up for MAP is the Tour of Slovenia, another 5 day ProTeam race.
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Saw Sam Bennett was back on the bike in the Heylen Vastgoed Heistse Pijl one day race (try saying that with a mouth full of milk!) he finished near the back but I'm glad to see him racing. They found a heart issue last autumn so his future was/is in doubt. Too early to say if he'll keep going but at least he's trying. He's now with Q36.5 but obviously hasn't been racing.
 
Tomorrow's Stage 9, the last in the 2026 womens Giro, should be quite interesting.

Stage 8 left GC leader van der Breggen only 50 sec ahead of 2nd place Vollering. And Vollering had clearly intended to work on that gap during the 32 km lopped off the end of Stage 8 due to an ice fall hazard.

Afterward, Vollering said that her team will be rethinking Stage 9 now. She was visibly disappointed at the lost opportunity and even hung some crepe around her pink jersey prospects now. But she didn't rule out "trying something" tomorrow.

Vollering and van der Breggen both looked VERY strong on the steep 18 km Finestre climb. The finish also left both gasping long and hard.

Question now: What will they have left for what's promising to be an epic GC battle in tomorrow's brutal final stage? We shall see.


The Vollering interview at 4:43 above makes it sound like she only learned of the Stage 8 truncation in the thick of the Finistere climb, only 6 km from the NEW finish line!
 
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Rás Cnoic said:
Saw Sam Bennett was back on the bike in the Heylen Vastgoed Heistse Pijl one day race (try saying that with a mouth full of milk!) he finished near the back but I'm glad to see him racing. They found a heart issue last autumn so his future was/is in doubt. Too early to say if he'll keep going but at least he's trying. He's now with Q36.5 but obviously hasn't been racing.
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Heart issues are common in racing cyclists. I know plenty of them that have had ablations to control heart rate.
 
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Jeremy McCreary said:
Tomorrow's Stage 9, the last in the 2026 womens Giro, should be quite interesting.

Stage 8 left GC leader van der Breggen only 50 sec ahead of 2nd place Vollering. And Vollering had clearly intended to work on that gap during the 32 km lopped off the end of Stage 8 due to an ice fall hazard.

Afterward, Vollering said that her team will be rethinking Stage 9 now. She was visibly disappointed at the lost opportunity and even hung some crepe around her pink jersey prospects now. But she didn't rule out "trying something" tomorrow.

Vollering and van der Breggen both looked VERY strong on the steep 18 km Finistere climb. The finish also left both gasping long and hard.

Question now: What will they have left for what's promising to be an epic GC battle in tomorrow's brutal final stage? We shall see.


The Vollering interview at 4:43 above makes it sound like she only learned of the Stage 8 truncation in the thick of the Finistere climb, only 6 km from the NEW finish line!
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The good money has to be on van der Bruggen but my heart is with Demi. I hope she pulls a Jonas and her team beats up VDB enough to close the gap.
 
stompandgo said:
The good money has to be on van der Bruggen but my heart is with Demi. I hope she pulls a Jonas and her team beats up VDB enough to close the gap.
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Two of the best ever, it's hard to root against either one. Vollering is a little more engaging, but I'll lean towards VDB just for combating Vollering's dominance this year.

Fun fact: VDB(65) and Vollering(64) have combined for 129 pro wins. 39yr old Marianne Vos has twice that many with 258 career victories. Wiebes has 126 career victories already at the age of 27.
 
stompandgo said:
My favorite women's race of all time was when Kristin Faulkner snookered Vos and Kopecky to win the Olympic road race gold medal by 50 seconds.
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I remember that. The one I remember though is when Austrian Anna Kiesenhofer flummoxed the entire Dutch dream team and snuck in first. They blamed it on lack of coms in an Olympic race. Tough.
 
The Giro stage 9 is shaping up to a great finale with 50k to go. Niedermaier has looked way too good the last few days for Vollering and AVB to mess around playing games with each other instead of just catching the breakaway.

I'll have to go back later and see how Niedermaier managed to slip away.
 
Good breakaway win by Alex Baudin EEF at the Dauphine/Avergne-Rhone-Alps. Seixas and other favs fell asleep on run in and lost 12 secs to Only, Plapp, Vauquelin, Ben Tullet and a few others.

Joao Almeida must be sick, finished nearly last. Must have been awful for him. Likewise matt Riccitello DNF didn't see what happened him but the commentators said the pace all day was ferocious, no let up. Ben Healy freshly back from injury went out the back as did Tobius Johannessen on last climb, though both managed to finish with the Seixas group by the end.
 
Stage 9 of the women's 2026 Giro did NOT disappoint. What a ride by Vollering! She put almost 3 minutes into Van Der Breggen on a stage that on the day before she described as "not a stage to gain a minute on". And a fine sprint by Longo Borghini at the end.

This year's Giros — mens and womens — were both fun to watch. Great racing, fabulous scenery, generally good commentary by TnT. The scenery in the mens stage through the Dolomites was absolutely stunning!

Better yet, no need to go cold turkey on racing with the Dauphine starting today!
 
Well so far the Avergne-Rhone is a race of breakaways. Decathlon not controlling things, no signs yet of Seixas attacking on 2 hilly days. Looked a bit isolated yesterday, today's long stage I'll have to see highlights, only caught the final 7km, peloton fnished 3 mins back, Baudin EFF retains Yellow. Danish domestique from Uno X wins stage with sheer delight, last victory was 4 years ago, fantastic.
 
Jeremy McCreary said:
Breakaways had a lot of success in both Giros, too. Is this normal?
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yesss... kinda, in grand tours certainly, they either get caught or they don't. There was that stage where sprint teams were pissed off about motos helping draft the breakaway or something. But I'd say by law of averages, the breakaways get caught. Its that gamble that makes a flat dull stage more exciting - will they get caught by this steam train behind them? On rolling stages or bad weather the breakawy has a better shot. In the Giro there were a few stages with a massive mountain halfay through the stage which totally disrupted the sprint teams and so gave the escapees a bigger chance.

Here, given everyone is watching to see if Seixas grabs hold of the race, he hasn't so far and with few sprinters (its all mountains) in the line up, hence no determined chase and breaks have capitalised.
 
I hope Jeremy you are putting all this new found road racing expertise to good use by boring the pants of your friends & family at the Bbqs!!
 
Rás Cnoic said:
I hope Jeremy you are putting all this new found road racing expertise to good use by boring the pants of your friends & family at the Bbqs!!
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Absolutely! Boring the pants off people with things only I'm interested in happens to be one of my centers of excellence. Ebikes, cycling, pro racing, science, math, ships, LEGO, pelicans — the list goes on and on. Just ask my wife.
 
Demi Vollering set out to win the just-completed 2026 womens Giro. And that's exactly what she did — putting 3 minutes into then-leader Van der Breggen in just the last 40 km of the final stage.

Matt Stephens had an interesting day with her 10 months ago...

 
Rás Cnoic said:
yesss... kinda, in grand tours certainly, they either get caught or they don't. There was that stage where sprint teams were pissed off about motos helping draft the breakaway or something. But I'd say by law of averages, the breakaways get caught. Its that gamble that makes a flat dull stage more exciting - will they get caught by this steam train behind them? On rolling stages or bad weather the breakawy has a better shot. In the Giro there were a few stages with a massive mountain halfay through the stage which totally disrupted the sprint teams and so gave the escapees a bigger chance.

Here, given everyone is watching to see if Seixas grabs hold of the race, he hasn't so far and with few sprinters (its all mountains) in the line up, hence no determined chase and breaks have capitalised.
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I'll start watching tomorrow. Seixas may be sitting back as long as he is in the GC hunt. This race is basically a TdF tuneup, so winning may not the the only goal.

Breakaways win when the peloton either doesn't care or misjudges the strength of the break. The break is always at the mercy of the peloton. In amateur rcing, where capability gaps are much larger than UWT races, a bunch of strong guys on the right teams can get away and stay away, even without a chase. If you have no hope of catching them, why bother.
 
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