Stage 3: the big final climb

It's good to see Evenepoel🇧🇪 back this year to his former favourite role: King of SSRs and not much else 😜 It's time to throw a D6 to see how he will react (the initial sulking is guaranteed, but after?).

Del Toro🇲🇽 did as he already did several times: dropped early, and then coming back and dropping (almost) everyone. A sort of accentuated Almeida.

Gall🇦🇹 didn't do bad. Perhaps he attacked too early, and therefore was in a bit of trouble for the rest of the climb. But his acceleration is the thing that made Evenepoel🇧🇪 blow up. Anyway, Gall🇦🇹 had lost almost 1 minute on the TT yesterday, so he had to try something; he couldn't know that Evenepoel🇧🇪 wouldn't be a real opponent.

Gaudu🇫🇷 was dropped early too, and... kept on being dropped, arriving close to 3 minutes after the winner.

Tiberi🇮🇹 of course did well. Of course he got worried at some point at Del Toro🇲🇽's comeback, but he managed to save a bit of time gap, and the Mexican couldn't maintain his level of effort until the end, he already had done a lot to catch back and drop so many riders.

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The first Frenchman is (again?) Mathys Rondel🇫🇷 from Tudor, 11^th^, arriving just after Plapp🇦🇺 who was at the front for a good while. I don't know why, but I always fail to see Plapp🇦🇺 as a climber, despite his good performances in that domain.

First rider from a French team was of course Gall🇦🇹, 5^th^ for Decathlon.

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Unless there are echelons one day, the next and last stage where GC modifying gaps can be created will be stage 6, with a final climb, not as steep as today's, but still a proper mountain climb.

Stage 1 results

::: spoiler spoiler Very entertaining finale, it's not very often that you see a mix of sprinters and climbers in top 10. I thought del Toro had gone too early, but he managed to keep Cees Bol behind him in the end. :::

Did pogacar have to fight to skip this race to focus on strade?

i imagine there must have been lots of owner/sponsor pressure to have pogacar defend his title