Welcome back to Lantern Rouge Cycling Podcast for the Tour de France thumb.

Avexus, we're changing it up.

Well, thankfully, we've got a new race to look forward to and cover stage one finished early today in Clemore,

for on because yeah, it's earlier than most of the other days.

Normally it will finish, I think, about five o'clock or five thirty like the men's race normally would,

but yeah, stage one from Clemore, for on to Clemore, for on.

We just had a million races recently.

124k's, pretty flat, but a few lumps and bumps in the last sort of 20k's for the first 100

that an intermediate sprint, which we'll get to, that was a bit weird.

After Saint Hippelite, a little bit, it was uphill and then a couple of uphill up and down,

fast sweeping descents before the Kurt de Dirtole, which is 1700m, 7.1%

10k's from the finishes of the crest before a fast descent pedaling descent

and a bit of 4k's flat to the finish.

It is one of these stages that is very similar to the start of the men's tour in 2021 and 2020,

where it's a pretty easy day and then a very borderline puncture climb, not right at the finish

and you know, could go either way, could be a bunch sprint, could be a really thinned out sprint,

could be a sole attacker, could even be GC gaps. So it's really the last 30k's this stage you

need to focus on, but there were some unfortunate things earlier in the stage, Benji.

Exactly. The initial breakway was something not super unfortunate. There was a long breakway

formation phase 15 kilometers where nothing happened. As in no attacks, just waiting.

We don't have that. Companards going from the first second of the race in this first stage of

the women's tour. We see a few attacks after 10 kilometers, but they don't really go anywhere.

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