Primož Roglič won on Le Collet d’Allevard mountain top finish, beating Giulio Ciccone in the final meters. The race leader Remco Evenepoel could not follow the top climbers and lost his leader’s jersey.
It was the first big mountain top finish in the 2024 Criterium du Dauphiné. Many GC favourites crashed in the previous wet stages, such as Primož Roglič and Remco Evenepoel, while Juan Ayuso did not start today after hurting his hip. Le Collet d’Allevard (11.23 km, 8.5%) was a perfect w/kg test for the climbers before the Tour de France as it was over 30 minutes and consistently steep after a relatively easy stage.
The peloton did the steep part of the Col du Granier climb at 5.7 ᵉW/Kg for 18 minutes. Neilson Powless before the final climb spent 2,934 kilojoules for 3:48h, which is only 11.67 kj/kg/h – an easy mountain stage by WorldTour and Dauphiné standards.
INEOS set a high tempo from the base of Allevard with Joshua Tarling, Omar Fraile, Jonathan Castroviejo and Michal Kwiatkowski for their team leader Carlos Rodriguez. His teammate Laurens de Plus attacked with 4.9 km to go and Aleksandr Vlasov bridged to him. Mikel Landa in the GC group paced for the race leader Remco Evenepoel who won the time trial, but after the horrific Basque Country crash, seems to be still on his way back to full fitness.
Later Giulio Ciccone accelerated from the GC group with Primož Roglič, Derek Gee, Carlos Rodriguez and Matteo Jorgenson following the Italian, while Evenepoel was doing damage control. They bridged to the leading group where Vlasov started pacing for his teammate Roglič and dropped everyone except Ciccone. Roglič despite crashing twice in earlier stages won the sprint.
Primož Roglič averaged 6.45 ᵉW/Kg for 31:38 min on Le Collet d’Allevard as the conditions were ideal for a top performance. Ciccone, Vlasov, Gee and Jorgenson pushed 6.39 – 6.44 ᵉW/Kg, doing their career-best pure climbing efforts at least at such a high level race. After a successful Giro d’Italia 2023, the Canadian beast Derek Gee looks even stronger before the Tour de France and will have a good chance to win a stage from the breakaways. Evenepoel lost 42 seconds to Roglič with 6.31 ᵉW/Kg for 32:20 min.
Roglič became the new GC leader with two climbing days this weekend where everything might change as his rivals will have to attack. Stage 7 will finish up Samoens 1600 (9.9 km, 9.0%) and stage 8 up Plateau des Glieres (9.3 km, 7.3%).
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What’s the margin of error on these w/kg numbers?