The Critérium du Dauphiné is often billed as a mini Tour de France . Featuring some of the roads and climbs of the three-week race, so the thinking goes, it is meant to give an indication of who the major players are going to be in July. For certain editions that may well have been true, but it does depend on who is on the start line and how the route is laid out.
This 76th edition looked on paper to be a constant slog over undulating terrain until the final weekend when it became properly mountainous, with a midweek time trial there to establish some kind of GC order for the climbers. Coming in, the main favourites were a mixed bunch. There were Remco Evenepoel and Primož Roglič, both on the comeback trail after crashing out of Itzulia Basque Country, and Juan Ayuso, who had won that race.
Then there were Matteo Jorgenson, Carlos Rodríguez and Alexandr Vlasov, who were expected to be involved in a serious way. On the next level of interest came Mikel Landa, Tao Geoghan Hart, Jai Hindley and maybe, for the French interest, David Gaudu. Yet from this quartet Geoghan Hart was rebuilding his confidence, Hindley was likely to be looking after Roglič, while Landa was there to guide Evenepoel through his return to racing up mountains.
Gaudu would have been mainly hoping for a glimpse of form. The Dauphiné is a beautiful event if it’s sunny but grim if it isn’t and so when the rain came the race changed from a form indicator into a test of inner strength and quite .
