The Route d’Occitanie is a 2.1 category stage race with a nice mix of WorldTour, ProTeam and Continental squads that race around the hills and villages of the magnificent Occitanie region in France every year just before the Tour de France. This year our man in France, Chris Selden was on hand at the start of stage 2.
La Route d’Occitanie is one of the coolest races of the year so when I heard that a stage would start in the next village from mine it was an easy decision to bunk off work for the morning and go and check out the action.
First to arrive at the starting area were Continental Team, Nice Métropole Côte d’Azur with their very classy looking Girs bikes.
This Nice rider was sporting a blacked out Specialites T.A chainring that looked to be a 60 tooth.
These narrow bars and turned in levers on Noah Knecht’s bike would definitely fall foul of the UCI’s newly announced minimum bar width for next year.
Andrea Mifsud is probably Nice’s most well known rider. Firsty for his many breakaways, secondly perhaps for his mullet and thirdly the fact that he is one of just 2 pros with a Maltese license.
Speaking of Malta, the Polti Visit Malta squad were in attendance with their beautiful looking Aurums.
The squad use an interesting setup in that their spare bikes are white and the race bikes are red!
Both sets of machines are set up exactly the same using the Magma frame, Enve wheels and SRAM Red.
There were 5 World Tour teams on the startlist this year, Cofidis, Arkea-B&B, Decathlon-AG2R, EF Education Easypost & Groupama-FDJ.
The Groupama-FDJ Wilier’s look great this year with Miche wheels, full Dura-Ace groupsets and spectacular paintjobs.
Luxembourg National Champ, Kevin Geniets gets his own custom paintwork in the national colors.
The Decathlon boys were on their beautiful looking Van Rysels with a full Dura-Ace setup…
although Dorian Godon chose to equip his Van Rysel with these cool looking 58 – 46 Carbon TI chanrings.
More Van Rysels were on display today as the Van Rysel Roubaix squad are also in Occitanie this year but their Van Rysels are set up with SRAM Force.
Speaking of second tier groupsets – it was a common theme amongst the smaller teams with there probably being more Ultegra at this race than Dura-Ace!
The bike Aid boys sported Ultegra all around on their Ceeco’s…
as did Colombian continental team, SisteCredito who had Ultegra on their various model of Treks.
Also on Ultegra were the Belgian team, Wagner Bazin with their classy but understated DeRosa bikes.
There were three Cannondale equipped teams in attendance with Ef-Easypost obviously leading the way.
Continental French team St Michel Aubervillier 93 also had their Cannondales but the coolest for me were the flashy Unibet Tietma Rockets rides.
It was now time to leave the team area behind and head over on the gravel road to the sign on presentation.
The Bike Aid squad gently walked their bikes down the gravel…
whilst the Total Energie squad walked and even carried their Enve machines over the gravel.
Their mechanic would be proud!
Then former Spanish National Champion, Jesus Herrada arrived at full speed on his Look and performed a rear wheel skid as he arrived for his sign on.
Each team was presented to the public and the commentator desperately looked for a French speaker in each team to have a little chat with.
That was no problem for Groupama-FDJ as they all speak French although he did choose the worst speaker in the group, the Italian Lorenzo Germani for a chat who was wearing the leading Young Rider’s jersey after a strong time trial in stage 1.
Then EF came on stage and British rider Jack Rootkin-Gray was presented with the Citizenship prize from this little boy. He and the rest of his teammates looked confused but he accepted the award with a bemused sile. That’s okay Jack – I have no idea why or what this award was either and I speak French !
After the (sometimes bizarre) team presentations were finished it was time to head to the startline for a 7km neutral section before riding up a 7km climb that I know only too well – and hate ! 35° Celsius, 196 km to cover and starting just before midday. Good luck guys !
Arkea-B&B went 1-2 in the opening time trial with Raul Garcia-Pena & Cristian Rodriguez so they started the day in the orange leader’s jersey and the green, KOM jersey.
Take any bike race in Europe these days and the Aussies seem to be able to find each other. Here Sebastien Berwick (Caja-Rural) & Alastair Mackellar (EF) share a laugh about who had the best time trial yesterday. (It was Mackellar by 1 second in 20th place over Berwick’s 21st place)
They weren’t the only riders from Down Under at the race though with Kiwi strongman Josh Burnett riding for Burgos Burpellet BH and 18 year olw Kiwi, Carter Guichard riding for Nice.
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