The stage of the day: Vejle-Sonderborg (182 kilometers)
The Danish triptych ends without a sea bridge to cross in the finale this time. The 182 kilometer course, although marked by three fourth category difficulties between Vejle and Sönderborg, is conducive to a (new) arrival in a bunch sprint.
Be careful, all the same, if the peloton is not going to ride over the Baltic Sea like on Saturday, curbs can still occur. “You can experience side winds in unsheltered areas. The last 40 kilometers are on big roads », notes Dane Kasper Asgreen, from the Quick-Step Alpha Vinyl team. The local of the stage will have the mission to launch its sprinter, the Dutchman Fabio Jakobsen, towards a second victory.
The predictions
The reason
Dutch Fabio Jakobsen can he kiss? Victorious on Saturday at Nyborg, at the exit of the Storebaelt bridge, he has the thighs to make a perfect Danish Tour campaign. “On the bike, it’s brute force”, says of him his pilot fish Michael Morkov, who sees his teammate, preferred to Mark Cavendish by the management of the Belgian team, win several stages on the Grande Boucle. Like today in the streets of Sonderborg? Nyborg’s winning sprint gave him confidence.
The heart
He took everyone by surprise with his signing for TotalEnergies this season. Twelve times stage winner on the Tour in career, mountebank of the peloton capable of signing an autograph in full ascent, Peter Sagan rides at 32 for a French team in the second echelon of world cycling. In 2022, the Slovak hardly shone, with the exception of a sprint victory in the Tour de Suisse. But we still really want to see him cross the line first in Sonderborg and give us a celebration of which he has the secret.
The declared
“The fall made me humble”
We are not going to lie to each other: the Dutch are not known for their humility. Neither do sprinters. So imagine the combination of the two. Saturday, at a press conference after his victory in the 2e stage in Nyborg, Fabio Jakobsen (Quick-Step) conceded it halfway… Before giving up, a few questions later: “Today I was the fastest, probably on Earth. » More humble, really?
Detour of the Tour
For the third stage of the Tour, the inhabitants of Vejle will be entitled to a double ration of caravan and peloton. Starting city of the third stage, the port city of Jutland will indeed see the riders pass through its streets 22.5 kilometers after their first pedal strokes. Vejle, definitely the best Sunday plan, since the first difficulty of the day, the coast of Koldingvej (4e category) is located just outside the city. Known as the “Manchester of Denmark”, Vejle is also worth a look for its resolutely modern architecture (sorry Franck Ferrand), like the Fjordenhus or the residential buildings De Fem Sostre and Bolgen.
In the retro
“He had seven positive doping tests, a record in the world of cycling. » As his Wikipedia page specifies, Kim Andersen tended to drag his hand in the medicine box. But posterity has also retained of him that he was the very first Dane before the Sorensen, Riis or Rasmussen to wear the yellow jersey of the Tour.
In 1983, this 3e stage looks like a small Paris-Roubaix with the sectors of Camphin-en-Pévèle and Carrefour de l’Arbre on the program. 57 kilometers from the finish in Roubaix, Andersen followed Rudy Matthijs’ attack. The Belgian is rewarded with the stage win as Andersen dons the leader’s tunic.
The Coop team rider put it on for six days and wore it again in 1985, the year he experienced the first of his positive tests. This busy past did not prevent him from becoming in the 2000s one of the sports directors of the CSC, a team led by… Bjarne Riis, a compatriot with an equally sulphurous reputation in terms of doping.
The broom wagon
The special envoys of Monde had a bit of a scare on Saturday… Before the big start, Tour followers receive a self-adhesive banner for their vehicle, which gives them access to the start and finish areas on each stage. The kind of object that should not be lost. Only here, on Friday, it rained in the Danish capital. Rained a lot. And said headband suffered the repeated assaults of the windshield wipers. So much so that at the entrance to the expressway leading from Copenhagen to Roskilde, he ended up coming off.
We already imagined talking for hours with the security guards to gain access to the site and what was our surprise when, once there, we were greeted with a friendly smile and a wave of the hand. “We lost our headband on the fast lane actually…”we tried to justify without anyone asking us. “Well no, it’s glued to your roof. » We will not be unhappy to change car – and headband – when we return to France, from Monday.
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