Wellens breaks his rivals at Bessèges
The ‘échappée royale’ is a relatively rare thing in cycling; perhaps even more so at the Étoile de Bessèges. But the 17-rider break that went up the road on stage 3 of the earlyseason French race this year was a good example of the form.
To qualify as an échappée royale, a break simply needs not just good but great riders: proven race winners and team leaders. Perhaps the perfect example happened in the last mountain stage of the 1989 Tour de France to Aix-les-Bains, when the top four on GC - Laurent Fignon, Greg LeMond, Pedro
Delgado and Gert-Jan Theunisse, plus seventh-placed Marino Lejarreta (who would rise to fifth, making it a ‘perfect’ break) - escaped and rode together to the finish. It was a good year for it. The first stage of the Critérium International in 1989 saw a sevenrider break which included four past and future Tour de France winners - Laurent Fignon, Greg LeMond, Stephen Roche and Miguel Indurain - plus Paris-Roubaix winner Marc Madiot, future Giro d’Italia runner-up and Lombardia winner Charly Mottet and French journeyman Laurent Bezault, who must have been overawed by the company he was keeping.
The 2021 version at Étoile de Bessèges wasn’t quite as packed with quality as those two breaks, but it was certainly the strongest one seen at the race for many years, and more evidence for the case that in the covid era, riders are treating every race seriously, in case it’s the
last for some time. It included a Tour winner in Egan Bernal, Paris-Roubaix winners in Philippe Gilbert and Greg Van Avermaet and a Milan-San Remo winner in Michał Kwiatkowski. Also present: Giro and Vuelta a España stage winner Tim Wellens, Roubaix runner-up Nils Politt, perennial classics top-10 finisher Edward Theuns, former U23 world time trial champion Mads Würtz Schmidt and prominent French sprinter Bryan Coquard. It was strong on its own terms, but might also have offered more quality than entire Étoile de Bessèges fields in recent years.
It formed over the mid-stage climbs, and the lead went out to two and a half minutes, by which time the peloton was doomed. That didn’t prevent a long chase by Cofidis, defending the race lead of Christophe Laporte. The French sprinter had gone into the lead after winning stage 1 in a punchy sprint up a steep hill against his former team-mate Nacer Bouhanni. Cofidis were joined in the chase by EF-Nippo, who were noticeably absent from the break. But each team gave three or four domestiques to the chase, and in comparison to 17 strong and motivated riders up front, they were underpowered. In the end, 40ish riders would come in three minutes down, with even more dropping 13 minutes and more.
Up ahead, Kwiatkowski was aggressive in the final 20km, but he was countered by Wellens, and on a damp descent, Kwiatkowski slipped off the road, which gave Wellens the gap he needed to motor away. The group had split, and with Gilbert marking the chase for Lotto Soudal teammate Wellens, it was left to Bernal to chase for Kwiatkowski, who had designs on the GC title. But Wellens was committed, and his lead settled at around 40 seconds.
With one more grippy stage and a time trial to come, Wellens’ lead was relatively safe, and he was happy to defend his lead while Filippo Ganna reprised his Giro ride of 2020, first winning stage 4 with a spectacular solo attack with 10km to go after a day in the breakaway, then winning the time trial handily.
But behind Ganna in fourth place was Wellens, who has previously won early-season stage race time trials and is no slouch against the clock. Some had speculated that his GC lead of 46 seconds to Schmidt and 48 to Kwiatkowski might be vulnerable on the final day; in the end the Belgian actually extended his lead.
The 2021 Étoile de Bessèges was defined, then, by a quality break on the third day of the race. However, the break itself wasn’t enough - it took another quality escape from that break for Tim Wellens to win the race.
The stage 3 break was strong on its own terms, but it might also have offered more quality than the entire Étoile de Bessèges field in recent years