154 riders started last week’s renamed Critérium du Dauphiné, the Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, each of them desperate to fine-tune their form ahead of the Tour de France, which is now weeks away. Just 91 riders finished, with 40% dropping out mid-race, or failing to finish the final stage. Last year, 128 riders finished. This year’s finish rate of the key Tour de France warm-up race is the lowest since 2005.
Not all the riders who left the race did so because of serious illness and injury. The Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes finished with three brutal back-to-back-to-back mountain stages, and perhaps the parcours just didn’t fit in with a rider’s training plan. There were precautionary abandons, too, the odd slightly sore throat perhaps making a rider think twice about signing on in the morning. The Tour de France is the biggest goal, after all.
