June 10/26 21:44 pm - Colombia Takes First Yellow Jersey of Beauce
Posted by Editoress on 06/10/26
The 38th edition of the Tour de Beauce opened on Wednesday with a 190 kilometre stage that took riders in a big square through the rolling terrain Beauce is famous (or infamous) for. The finish came down to a thirteen rider uphill sprint, won by Marshall Erwood (Whoosh-NZ Cycling Project), ahead of Andres Paredes (Team Medellin-EPM) and Léo Roy (Entreposage Bluebird Quebec en velo). However, Paredes took both the Yellow leader's jersey (by two seconds) and the white Points jersey, after racking up time bonuses by winning two of the three sprints. Erwood won the Red jersey as Best Young Rider, while Samuel Couture (Cannondale Echelon pb 4iiii) will wear the Blue jersey as Best Climber.
The race has no clear favourite team this year, with many riders entering for their first time - six out of seven on Equipe du Quebec are first timers at Beauce, for example. This may have contributed to keeping the race tight together for the first half; many attempts to form a break were made, but none got more than a few seconds.
Then, an outside factor played a hand. A small break had ten seconds as the race bypassed Lac Megantic roughly halfway through the stage, but they and the peloton were forced to stop for a long (and very slow moving) train. After a 15 minute break, the race restarted with everyone together (since the break had less than 30 seconds advantage.
At this point, what would eventually be the winning move, began to assemble off the front as the peloton stopped chasing aggressively. First six went clear, then six more, and then a few more trickled across, until there were eventually 20-some riders up the road. They began to work together and opened up a minute-plus gap before the field reacted - led by TaG Cycling. The gap yo-yo'd between 45 seconds and a minute for the remainder of the race, with a handful dropped on the final KoM climb 12 kilometres from the finish.
Tour de Beauce: Stage 1 results
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