Welcome back to Lancer Rouge Cycling Podcast presented by Zwift for another stunning edition

of the men's starter Bianca race. We had the women's recap earlier in the day, a chaotic finish

with some questionable team tactics in the final of that race. Something similar here, a great

day for team tactics discussions, 185 Ks from Ciena to Ciena. It has 11 gravel sectors. They're

longer in the middle and then three punchy ones in the last 23 kilometers. The decisive one is

the Montessanta Marie sector eight, usually with about 50 Ks to go. That is where Pog went solo

last year. It's where groups often form like in 2021. And then it's up and down throughout the

whole finale before the punchy finish into Ciena. We had pickock on the start list of

Vanderpool, no pigatchet, no wealth and art. Jumbo, Visma, bringing Volta, Benote and not even

Tratnik to this race. Alaphilippe here too, Benji. Yep. Off the back of a win last week.

What did you expect from Quick Steps tactics before the race? With Vanderpool, by the way,

everybody, $2.50 for it. What did you expect Quick Steps approach to be?

I don't know. It's difficult, you know, because they don't have the as-grained type and so full

of in this in this squad as well. So I'm looking at what can Alaphilippe do it as a race. We've seen

him do well at one of the two French classics at the end of February. We see him do a bit poorly in

the second one. That came in that weekend. And then I feel like when we look at this parkour

in Strade, you've got the option of going early with moves on Montessanta Marie or you stay in

the second group and hope that it comes back towards the end. That's what we see in previous years

often happen. I think while we're not launched on Montessanta Marie, we've heard of Vanderpool

launch on Santa Maria back in the day forming a group. We saw loads of stuff happening on that

section. But I don't know. I had this thing in my head like this could easily become the kind of

race where Alaphilippe could just disappear in the background like that second French classics.

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