Skoda Tour de Luxembourg LIVE

First of all there’s not much competition. There’s only four stage races on the calendar now that the Vuelta is done. In ascending order, I rank ‘em like so:

4. Tour de Kyushu. Three stages, October 12-14. This is just the second year for this race and the first year on our FSA-DS calendar as they have two WT teams, EF, and Astana. Let’s give them a nice round of applause and hope that the plucky new race has a great future.

3. Gree-Tour of Guangxi. Yes this is a WT race on October 15-20. Yes there are 14 WT teams set to attend. Yes, this is (one of) the last races on the calendar. But come on: this is the race where asshole DS’s send the riders who are in their doghouses to race. Who really wants to be here? The poster boy of this is Enric Mas who back in 2019, in his last race with Quickstep, won the GC here. Do you really think Mas thinks of this race as one of his career highlights? Mas beat Danny Martinez by one second in the only stage with any sort of climb that mattered-and that duel was the slowest finish to a “mountain” stage that you ever saw. I swear that both of them were pounding some brews during that climb. Talk about lack of motivation.

2. CRO Race. Six stages from October 1-6. Situated as it is in the middle of the fall Italian/rest of Europe single day race calendar (it overlaps with Binche – Chimay – Binche, Sparkassen Münsterland Giro, Giro dell’Emilia, Coppa Agostoni, and Paris-Tours) it has a ceiling to its importance. But on the lositive side it is just across the Adriatic from those Italian races so riders can easily make the trip before and after to those races. Plus its got some nice punchy hills and scary sprint stages through some amazingly pretty territory to keep things interesting. Six WT teams too along with seven solid Pro Conty teams. It is always a good sign that a race of this stature has most of its startlist already set as it shows that teams have designs on this race. And the defending champ, Orluis Aulur, is back to defend his title.

1. That leaves the Skoda Tour de Luxembourg as the big stage race. Yes it is a .pro race. It also has 10 WT teams, making it just as important in FSA-DS lore as Guangxi, both cat 3 races, plus eight more PRT teams. Its got serious riders who are reaching their top fall form for Worlds: Hirschi, Skjelmose, MvdP, Mads, Tiberi, Storer, Cort, Madouas, Ayuso, Laporte, and Kelderman to come in third or whatever.

But why is Luxembourg such a relatively big race? Fans may recal that before the pandemic, the Tour of Luxembourg was just another stage races in an overcrowded spring calendar. In FSA-DS terms it was not even on the calendar in 2018 and 2019 as no WT teams bothered to enter. Otherwise it was a cat 6 or maybe a cat 5 race, easily overlooked. Butthen the Pandemic Lockdown happened and race organizers took advantage and moved 2020’s cancelled May race to September. Suddenly Luxembourg was popular and it stuck with September and the higher profile followed. It is now a relatively big race every year.

I also love that Luxembourg labels its categorized climbs as either cat 1 or HC. I think the logic goes like this: France is 213 times bigger than Luxembourg (I looked that up) so if you shrink everything down then these climbs such as the opening stage Cote de Eschodorf (2.5km @ 8.6%) should, if there is a God in heaven, that’s an HC climb. Its Luxembourg’s Tourmalet.

I just can’t argue with that. Who’s gonna win? Hard to pass by the rider who’s on a serious hot streak, and is the defending champ

Here’s stage 1: