Unfortunately, the legs were not up to the motivation for Valentin Madouas and Groupama-FDJ this Thursday on the Tour du Limousin. In a very hilly third stage, the Frenchman and his teammates were aggressive to try and turn the general classification around. However, the former French champion didn’t have enough energy to attack in the final and had to settle with seventh place within a chasing group, four seconds behind the winner Jefferson Cepeda. He remains seventh overall before the last stage in Limoges on Friday.
With over 3,500 metres of elevation gain on stage 3 of the Tour du Limousin-Périgord – Nouvelle Aquitaine, there was a real opportunity this Thursday to shake up the general classification, dominated since the day before by Alex Baudin (Decathlon-AG2R). While the classified climbs were fewer than on Wednesday, they were nonetheless longer. “We knew it was the hardest stage,” confirmed Benoît Vaugrenard. “The goal wasn’t really to put someone in the breakaway, but we hoped that there would be a rider from another team who was dangerous in GC, which is what happened. Thanks to it, the breakaway didn’t take a big gap, then the plan was to make it hard with 70 kilometres to go, because we knew that it could end up with a 40-man sprint if we didn’t do it. We decided to make it hard to shake things up because we had nothing to lose today. This also allowed the team, the riders, and the youngsters to be in the action. We weren’t very good as a team yesterday, so we had to get back into the game today.” After a “quiet” chase for half the stage, Colin Savioz and Thibaud Gruel therefore took things in hand on the Bassignac-le-Haut climb, as planned. “If we hadn’t pushed, not much would have happened,” said Benoît. “The breakaway had to be caught at the top of the climb to start a whole new race. Our idea was to get some moves going again to make Decathlon-AG2R work and make the race hard.”
“We wanted not to have regrets, and we don’t have any,” Benoît Vaugrenard
This mission was achieved, notably by Lenny Martinez who had to go twice to launch a new breakaway. The young French climber eventually escaped with three men and took a thirty-second gap. The four riders crossed the finish line with thirty-eight kilometres to go before heading towards the penultimate climb, a few kilometres further on. On the Auzelou climb (4 km at 6.5%), the peloton exploded a bit while catching the leading group, but Valentin Madouas and Enzo Paleni kept their position alongside the other GC contenders. On the downhill, however, the former “La Conti” rider lost contact like half of the remaining peloton. There were only about twenty riders left at the front when it came to tackling the Servières climb (5 km at 4%). Some other attacks happened, the yellow jersey could count on his teammates to lead the chase, and Valentin Madouas was unable to really join the fight. “He was there but not strong enough to be offensive,” confided Benoît. “It was enough to follow, but not enough to attack. From there, we had to hope to make a move in the final, but Cepeda finished alone. We wanted to try to win, even if it meant losing everything. We missed a little something in the final, but we wanted not to have regrets, and we don’t have any tonight.”
After attacking towards the top of the final climb, about ten kilometres from the finish, Jefferson Cepeda (Caja Rural-Seguros RGA) didn’t get caught on the downhill or on the flat portion leading to the line. The Ecuadorian therefore took the win with a four-second lead over a small chasing group in which Valentin Madouas took seventh place on the day, which is also his position in the general classification. “The last stage is never easy to control on the Tour du Limousin, anything is possible, but the trend is still to have a sprint finish of forty riders, after a tough fight,” concluded Benoît.
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