Red Bull-BORA strike in Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes: Seixas and Del Toro put Jorgenson, Lidl-Trek and others on the back foot

Maxim Van Gils (Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe) has won a furious sixth stage of the Tour Auvergne - Rhône-Alpes, while his teammate Luke Tuckwell moved into the yellow jersey. Van Gils proved the strongest from a huge breakaway of no fewer than 60 (!) riders, while Paul Seixas (Decathlon CMA CGM) and Isaac del Toro (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) rode away from the other general classification contenders behind.

After five days of racing, the climbing finally arrived in the Tour Auvergne - Rhône-Alpes. The peloton had to do it without Wout van Aert, however. The Belgian from Visma | Lease a Bike had won Thursday’s fifth stage, but one day later he was forced to say goodbye before the start. The elbow he injured in a crash on the time trial bike before the race was still causing too much discomfort.

That was a major blow for the Dutch team, but the race had to go on. For the first time this week, the climbing was going to become genuinely serious, and that immediately produced a barrage of attacks from the start in Saint-Vulbas. Once the dust had settled, the peloton had split into two large pieces. Around 60 riders had made it into the front section.

There were no absolute top favorites in that group, but there were certainly dangerous names. Luke Tuckwell (Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe) was the biggest threat overall at 1:03 from yellow, while climbers such as teammate Maxim Van Gils, Tobias Halland Johannessen (Uno-X Mobility), Pablo Torres (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) and Georg Steinhauser (EF Education-EasyPost) were also present.

Decathlon CMA CGM was the only team without a rider in the move and therefore had to chase in support of leader Paul Seixas. They accepted that responsibility, while the stage was also marred by crashes both at the front and further back.

Joshua Tarling (Netcompany INEOS) and Kevin Geniets (Groupama-FDJ) crashed out from the front group and abandoned, while Dillon Corkery (Picnic PostNL) left the race from behind. Santiago Buitrago (Bahrain Victorious) also hit the deck, while Senna Remijn (Alpecin-Premier Tech) had to leave the race for a reason that was still unclear.

The advantage of the remaining 55 riders — a few had been dropped on the Col du Granier — eventually rose to a maximum of five minutes. Behind them, Daan Hoole and Stefan Bissegger went to work for Decathlon, with Netcompany INEOS and EF Education-EasyPost also contributing. Yet they barely managed to chip anything away. At the foot of the penultimate climb, the gap was still four and a half minutes.

The Côte d’Héry-sur-Ugine, at 11.6 kilometers and 4.9 percent, was not an extremely hard climb on paper. After several hours of racing through the Alps at an average speed of 47 (!) kilometers per hour, however, it became a very different story. The breakaway immediately exploded as soon as the road began to rise, mainly because the pace at the front was so high. The gap even went back up toward five minutes, while the peloton was certainly not standing still either.

In the bunch, the team leaders themselves were already getting involved. Valentin Paret-Peintre (Soudal Quick-Step) and Carlos Rodríguez (Netcompany INEOS) were among those taking responsibility. In total, they took around 20 seconds out of the break before the final climb to Crest-Voland began: 5.9 kilometers at an average of 7.5 percent. By then, it was already becoming clear that Tuckwell was on course to take over the yellow jersey.

EF Education-EasyPost, which saw Alex Baudin lose yellow, still had Steinhauser in the front group, and he immediately went on the attack. Van Gils, Johannessen and Pablo Torres — the UAE top talent returning from a long knee injury — then came across and went over the top. Tuckwell also managed to join them, setting himself up both for the leader’s jersey and for Van Gils’ sprint. The Belgian finished it off rather comfortably.

Back in the peloton, the pressure also went on immediately, and that was the end of yellow jersey Baudin’s hopes. Seixas then hit the front himself, and only Jorgenson and Del Toro were initially able to respond. The Lidl-Trek duo of Mattias Skjelmose and Juan Ayuso, as well as the Netcompany INEOS riders Oscar Onley and Kévin Vauquelin, had no answer.

Jorgenson also had to go all-in just to hold the wheel, and eventually even he cracked under Seixas’ brutal tempo. Del Toro, by contrast, stayed closest to the Frenchman, making the GC battle even more intriguing ahead of the final mountain stages. What already looked like a decisive weekend in Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes has now been blown wide open by Decathlon’s young leader and UAE’s Mexican star.

Author: David Bavin-Hobbs - [email protected]