A beautiful sunny day in Northwestern France welcomed the riders to the start of the 51st edition of the Tour de Vendée with 21-year-old Italian Filippo Ridolfo again coming to the fore in the days breakaway before a crash for Matyas Kopecky disrupted Team Novo Nordisk’s plans in the sprint finale and Andrea Peron recovered ground for a top 20.
Head sports director Massimo Podenzana:
“The plan was to try our best to make the early breakaway because we knew it would be a fast start and we weren’t wrong. Umberto was the first to try, but the move came back and then thankfully Filippo was really attentive and managed to follow the next attack and ended up part of a quartet that gained good time on the peloton.”
“With the final circuits being the main characteristic of the Tour de Vendée we knew that Filippo’s move was never going to make it all the way, but he did a great job and took some pressure off Andrea and Matyas until we hit La Roche-sur-Yon.
“Once we entered the circuits, the pace went up and the group lined out and as expected the French WorldTour teams took over. Unfortunately on the last lap Matyas came down in a crash that split the group and left Andrea up there alone to try and make up some ground before the sprint, but the lead out had already begun and it was a very small group that went to the line.”
Andrea Peron:
“We were really well placed until the last lap and then someone clipped wheels in front of Matyas and a few guys went down. He couldn’t avoid it and fortunately he’s ok, but we lost our momentum at the worst point.”
“I tried to move back up towards the front again, but there was already maybe ten guys accelerating away into the last kilometer and they contested the sprint. We have another hard one coming up on Tuesday at Münsterland so now we’ll regroup and look ahead to that.”