Benji Naesen

But regardless, we would have a flat run-in.

It's not the longest stage in the world, but a flat run-in to the foot of Colle del Finestre, which is a monster climb, is how I classify it.

Usually 17k maybe, roughly 18k at 8 plus percent.

So very hard climb.

Second half of it is gravel, which makes it even harder.

And then afterwards, we have the downhill into a plateau segment into the final climb, which is Siestriere climb, which is

easier but um we'll get to that in a second because we had a break we have the road patrick that included eva van nacht and celia jerry once again so two potential satellite riders for fdj suez but i want to talk about what happened basically once we hit the foot of the climb because i started hearing rumors whether it's on tv whether it's on twitter or social media that there were some issues roughly a kilometer from the top or in the last kilometer to the top where the first things i heard was there was an avalanche at the top of the climb which that sounds a bit

Very bad, if I've got to be honest.

Like, why are we still riding?

What's my first reaction to that?

There was a landslide that happened maybe in the descent of the Col d'Isra, I think, where we already had GC attacks on that climb.

And then maybe Rigoberto Urán was angry ahead of the race against the motorbike, because it was like, landslides?

I was born molded by landslide.

I can ride through them.

but ron was so angry that day i vividly remember him shouting at the camera but regardless of that in this specific stage we only got to hear that at the foot of the climate it wasn't even the the ice sheet initially i heard there was an avalanche at the top i was like ah that sounds pretty bad but the more we we went into the broadcast because the broadcast started pretty late on uh eurosport maybe like

five minutes after the climb already began of Finestre, which I'd rather see the whole climb of Finestre if I'm being honest on TV.

And at this point, the peloton was already down to maybe 25, 20 riders, and the break was getting caught.

So Célia Geriff from that breakaway started pacing in that peloton, whatever's left of it, for Volring to try and make the climb hard.

They still had Lauren Dixon as well.

Yeah, Dixon had started.