Lotte Kopecky won the women’s race. Will if be a Belgium sweep for 2024?
Post Tour de France that is. We’re talking about the race calendar where basically every race between the Tour and the end of the Vuelta is in a slightly different place than it normally would be. The consequence of messing with the calendar was that some races had more WT teams and WT riders and others, not so much. The Tour of Britain is Example #1.
Look at the start list. This year ToB has four WT teams, three PCT teams, ten Continental teams, and a British national team staffed with well, JAGs. Three of the Conti teams are developmental teams for WT teams.
Two of the WT teams, dsm and Bahrain, are bringing their B/C squads. INEOS is bringing a pretty good team headlined by Pidcock, Turner, Foss, Hayter, and a few Swifts. Seems smart, to bring some of the local headliners to your national Tour.
Then there’s Quick-Step with an interesting mix of kids (Gelder, Magnier, Syreck) with Moscon I guess to look after them. And oh yes, they are bringing
And for good measure, this guy
So, weird. Folks here playing FSA-DS who have these guys on their teams are happy even if the race is barely, and I mean barely, meeting the bar to be counted as a cat 5 race.
Let’s see what happens. Six stages, ends Sunday. No time trials. Bunch of little bumpy stages mixed with some close-to-Netherlands flat stages. The Vuelta this ain’t but it looks a bit better than before the last stage of Renewi. I kinda wish they had a TTT just to see what QS would do.
The stages take place well before the business ends of the Vuelta so you can watch this tomorrow and be in plenty of time for the Lagos de Covadonga finale. Enjoy!
