After a first week without the slightest brilliance, without taking the slightest breakaway or even less winning a stage victory, the riders of the Goupama-FDJ had announced it, watch your eyes friends, the time was at risk taking on this Tuesday of recovery, between Vulcania and Issoire. Bad luck, the first minutes of the race quickly made everyone disillusioned. In question, its leader, David Gaudu, in total loss under a stifling heat, while the leaders of the general – from whom he dreamed of taking a little time – made the show at the head of the race, Vingegaard and Pogacar even paying themselves the pleasure of setting off in the first breakaways, before finally coming back to line up in the peloton.
When the two men placed their first pedal strokes to follow the multiple attacks in front, from kilometer 5, we tore our hair in front of our TV when we saw the Landivisien crack under the bamboo blows of a thermometer quickly brushing the 35°. After barely thirty kilometers, the leader of Groupama-FDJ was nearly a minute and forty behind the peloton, forcing Valentin Madouas and his teammates to get up to catch up with the Breton caravan. Only Thibaut Pinot, who got off to a good start in the first breakaways, will receive permission to continue his effort, without that giving anything at the finish.
The heatstroke that hurts
“I simply had a stroke of heat, said the Finistère at the microphone of France TV after the race. It was a day of rest, it may not be forgiving, I’m not a big fan of rest days, I’m not a big fan of the heat and there I had both at once… ” . The leader of the French team, however, imagined a completely different scenario for this day of recovery. “Perhaps we wanted to do the trick that (Pello) Bilbao did today (stage winner and more than 3 minutes from the leaders overall), that is to say to try to escape and regain time. I’m sorry for the whole team today who had carte blanche to go ahead and in the end because of me, it didn’t happen, it’s my fault. On the other hand I thank them for totally saving my day. »
Thanks to the sacrifice of his team, David Gaudu will eventually find the peloton about 100 terminals from the finish, well helped it must be said by this same peloton which, after having rolled like hell for 50 terminals, ended up accepting the formation of the breakaway of the day and by slowing down the pace. “Afterwards, once it was over, I felt good. In the Col de la Croix Saint-Robert, I felt that things were turning round again, that my legs were unblocked. We get scared but in those moments we have to try to stay as calm as possible. And on arrival, we finish in front (in the peloton). The truth of the start of the stage is not always that of the finish”, he will philosophize at the microphone of RMC.
Long live the Alps
Nevertheless, if the Breton did not waste time on the first three of the general classification, arriving 2’53 ” behind Bilbao, but at the head of the peloton, Gaudu does not sweat great form . As for the confidence he exudes, or does not exude, we do not really feel a state of mind similar to that which was his last year, when he finished fourth in the Tour de France 2022. And on the side of Marc Madiot, if the words are reassuring – “You always have to have ambition, it’s not because there are difficult times that you have to lower your ambitions” – his face and his wrinkles on Tuesday evening said everything about the current atmosphere in the Groupama-FDJ team.
For his part, Gaudu repeats to anyone who will listen that he is “very, very motivated for the Alps”. It will take at least that to take several minutes from Jai Hindley, Pello Bilbao, Adam Yates and others. Unless the team ends up completely changing gear and takes the gamble of playing for a stage victory if they don’t run for the podium. Even if, for the moment, officially, the strategy has not changed and the blue train is entirely at the service of its young leader.