Final stage & looking back on 10 days in Guadeloupe

Sorry for this one being a bit late. The final stage started at 13:00 local time instead of the usual 10AM for the other stages, meaning my complete daily rhythm of wake-up, breakfast, stretch, bus, race, lunch, bus, shower, blog, dinner got messed up.

I am writing this one now early morning on the way to the airport. Not on the way to the airport to fly back home, but to fly out to Finland for work. I flew home on Monday and, after 35 hours without sleep and one night at home, I am fresh and on my way again.

Being a bit late with this blog also means I can use it as a bit of a post-race evaluation of the full stage race. But let’s first quickly get back to the final stage on Sunday. This stage had by far the easiest profile of the race. We would do a small loop on the eastern side, Grande-Terre, of the island, followed by eight laps of 12km in the city of Pointe-à-Pitre. The most likely scenario was that it would end up in a bunch sprint. Eventually it did, but it was far from an easy stage. No break actually stayed away for long. It was mostly Vorarlberg trying to control, but the speed was so high, partly due to the continuous attacking, that no break got more than around one minute. Which, in turn, made it attractive to keep trying to jump across from the peloton.

Personally, I was also eager to try. I still wanted to win a stage and, if there was any scenario in which I could accomplish that on this stage, it would most likely be from a break. And jumping into breaks would mean we wouldn’t need to work at the front of the peloton to bring one back if it went. We have seen many times now that if the strong teams are represented, breaks can go. However, Vorarlberg was pretty committed. They would jump into breaks, not ride, and then pull again once back in the peloton. In the end they were right, as they won the bunch sprint, but it was pretty frustrating to see them play this game, again.

I was in the last break that was riding in front of the peloton. Around 10 riders, with most of the strong teams represented and willing to ride, except for one Vorarlberg rider who was sucking wheels. He and a few others successfully managed to mess up the rotation, and we started attacking each other, making it even worse. We got caught with 8km to go. At that point I flicked the switch to work for Denley. I brought him to the front and kept him there until around 2km to go, where Jens took over. They actually got P4 and P5 in the bunch sprint, which is good! Although, in hindsight, they mistimed it together a little bit. Both were very disappointed because this was a real chance for a win, but we learn as we go!

Full race reflection
So that was Sunday’s stage. Zooming out a bit to the full stage race, my first feeling: proud. Proud of the level I reached for 10 consecutive days and proud of how we did this as a team. Three top 10s and 7th in GC. You can genuinely say you are in the mix with those results! And that’s also what stings a tiny bit. If you are in the mix, you can also take a win. Especially if I look at the breakaway opportunities, there were many chances to take a stage from there. Stages 2, 4, 5, 7 and 9 all went to a break. I am very confident in saying that I could have been in each of those breaks, like I was on stage 2. But after sitting high in GC, I never really got the room to be in a break again.
I am very happy to take 7th in GC in a 10-day stage race where the level of racing is genuinely high (I will write a Debrief blog on this one!). But it is also a little bit the scenario that I feared beforehand: you are high in GC, you want to protect it and, in the end, you miss out on stage-win opportunities. That doesn’t mean I regret it, though. If you are riding for GC, there is motivation and a battle ahead in every race. You need to be on it from start to finish on every stage. And that’s just exciting. There is always something to ride for.

That also applies to the team. There are no ‘lost’ stages where you missed the move and can just sit in, or stages where you don’t have the right rider to win. There is always the GC goal to work for. A role which I believe we carried out very well over the past week. Of course, stage 4 remains very painful, after being on 9s and 20s after stage 2 & 3, I lost five minutes to a break we couldn’t control as a team. In hindsight, it would have been better to close that gap more aggressively (we brought it down to 1:20!) and jump across myself instead of expecting other teams to come and help.

Not that it matters too much. Only two guys remained in front of me who gained those five minutes on that stage, including the yellow jersey, ironically enough. (Yes, F you all the other teams that refused to help us that day😉). In the end, the riders in front of me in GC beat me fair and square on the climbing stages. So results-wise, no stage win, but I am so proud of 10 days of strong and active racing where I have shown and felt that I can totally match the level of the strongest continental riders in this race. The absolute highlight was stage 9, where both the team and I raced with a big heart.

Again next year?
Again for the first time: 1000%. Again for the second time: not sure. The experience is one for a lifetime. I will never forget this, especially all the people along the road. I have literally only seen crowds like this on summit finishes of Grand Tours and in Monuments. Also, the exotic nature of the race the island, the climate, the culture makes everything unique. But at the same time, it is also quite the hassle to get there and the risk of something going wrong, putting you out of the race and leaving you ‘stuck’ on the island, is pretty big. A broken bike, crash or illness can happen fairly easily. There are no spare bikes, so that simply means DNF and you’re done. Of course, you can say to just enjoy your time there, but if I came here to race, I can tell you I would be a pretty grumpy guy if I travelled all the way to Guadeloupe and then got taken out of the race.

And the risk of something happening over the course of 10 days is pretty high. I crashed on stage 5, almost broke my chain on stage 7 and my roommate DNF’ed on stage 6 after falling ill. Not that any of these should be a reason not to go, of course, but just to put things into perspective. I am not a pro, so this isn’t just another race in a calendar of 60 race days each year. If you come to Guadeloupe for a 10-day stage race, you want to race for 10 days. I genuinely felt sorry for the riders I saw in the hotel at breakfast every morning, gathering their morning baguette covered in bandages, showing every lack of purpose in their body language after dropping out of the race earlier.

And lastly, I genuinely felt a bit of boredom. Every day is so much alike. The races themselves are super exciting, but then you’re sitting on your bed pinning on the numbers again after having the same hotel buffet for the 10th time, and it gets a bit boring. Guadeloupe remains a relatively small island. I have seen almost every piece of road and, during the races, we have done some roads four, five, six times. So there is a repetitiveness to the race that turns all of it into a bit of a blur. Absolutely worth it for one year, but I’m not sure I would do all of it again next year.

But that’s just a microscopic nuance to an amazing 10 days of racing that I will never forget and can be extremely proud of!