Benji Naesen

That is...

not just an individually good stage, but also the start of the rise of Afonso El Alio, where he entered in Malia Rosa by quite a bit of time to the point that he kept that jersey for X amount of days.

But the next day was a bit of a disaster, was a cobble sprint with a bend in it.

half the sprinters crashed.

In doing so, Davide Ballerini from Astana rode away and won the stage.

Maybe the most impressive performance was Paul Meunier getting back up and then sprinting to third position somehow.

Crazy stuff.

But Blockhaus was coming, Patrick, and Blockhaus was 245 kilometers, a crazy amount, plus 4.5K altitude meters, I'm pretty sure.

In the end,

Jonas Wingergau on the stage, Wismalisa by control for the stage win, and Felix Gall finished second, but actually quite close on 12-ish seconds.

But it's fair to say we were never really scared that Felix Gall was going to beat Jonas here, you know?

Heidensmann lost a minute to Hindley on Blockhouse.

Yeah.

About two seconds to G and so forth.

So it's like, it's not a horrible performance, but it wasn't great, you know?

The problem is that they will always go to the breakaways.

Unless you put them in the first week and then you've got Narvaez and Pogacar on stage one in 2024.

That was a fantastic stage.

That was the most shocking one for me that day.

Then again, it's a flat long time trial, so maybe we shouldn't be expecting the world of Jonas, but it's still an underperformance to be sure.