this post was submitted on 01 Aug 2025
3 points (80.0% liked)
procycling
597 readers
5 users here now
for news and discussion of professional cycling
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Last winners:
- Powless🇺🇸 before Mohoritch in 2021,
- Evenepoel🇧🇪 before Sivakov,
- Evenepoel🇧🇪 before Bilbao,
- Hirschi🇨🇭 before Alaphilippe in 2024.
Evenepoel was expected to run for a 4^th^ victory, but his presence was cancelled.
Final part:
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
In my opinion, Christen's (🇨🇭 UAE) immediate attack when he joined Del Toro (🇲🇽 UAE) and Ciccone (🇮🇹 Lidl-Trek) caused the loss of the race for UAE. If he hadn't, Ciccone🇮🇹 wouldn't have attacked so soon, UAE would have enjoyed a 2 vs 1 longer, Ciccone🇮🇹 would have made a narrower gap or not gap at all over Christen🇨🇭, and Del Toro🇲🇽 wouldn't have been pushed so far, so Christen🇨🇭 could have stayed in the wheels of Ciccone🇮🇹 until the end.
I was wondering what your opinion was on that race. Both UAE riders seemed quite strong on the day yet Ciccone won relatively easily in the end. In fact, the commentator on the stream I was watching said with about 40 km to go something like "no one else other than Del Toro is winning today" because he and UAE were looking so strong at that stage.
I am not in a good position to emit a strong or detailed opinion, as I was switching between San Sebastian and the women Tour de France 😀 (and as San Sebastian was on Max and not on a regular TV channel, which makes switching between both slow and convoluted, I wasn't switching often).
Yeah, I heard and read the same about the sure win for Del Toro in my country, I reckon. UAE riders scared everyone 😀, especially before Ayuso was unexpectedly dropped. Then Bora and UAE looked almost equally strong. And then the Bora riders disappeared one after the other. And Del Toro looked damn easy. And then Christen coming back too gave the impression they would crunch the only opponent remaining. So, yeah, on the sections I saw, there were many signs that they would easily win. Yet...
I haven't watched Getxo yet (I may do it tonight or tomorrow), just had a glimpse of the situation 80 or 90 km from the finish line: the whole UAE team was leading the bunch (chasing a breakaway) and putting it in line. They are terrorising .1 races now... 😬
Actually one funny thing I forgot about San Sebastian until you reminded me just now was Roglič doing a teleport backwards in the final kilometres to finish several groups back despite leading the race for quite a long time. It was like he just gave up completely when he realised no one was catching Ciccone lol
Ah yeah, I hadn't noticed he had finished so far 😀