Analysis Tour de France 2023: Brilliant Tour de France for Spanish cycling despite Movistar and Landa

Five years had passed since the last victory of Spanish cycling in the Tour de France. Since Omar Fraile in 2018 no cyclist had been able to win. However, the start of the Basque Country has given luck to the Spaniards and after so much drought 3 triumphs have come in one go: Pello Bilbao, Ion Izagirre and Carlos Rodríguez.

Thus, analyzing the Tour de France of the Spaniards, we must give an overall grade of outstanding. The first victory came from Pello Bilbao, who managed to end the curse in the tenth stage finishing in Issoire by being the strongest of a high quality breakaway and finishing ahead of Georg Zimmermann, Ben O'Connor and Krists Neilands. This breakaway allowed him to climb positions in the general classification to finish sixth, close to fifth place. Brutal his Tour.

The second win went to a man who had already won on the Grande Boucle, Ion Izagirre. The Cofidis climber won stage 12 in Belleville-en-Beaujolais after blowing away his breakaway companions on the final climb with 30km to go, descending with his trademark class and soloing to the finish to beat a group that included the likes of Matteo Jorgenson, Tiesj Benoot, Thibaut Pinot and Mathieu van der Poel.

Last but not least, we must give another outstanding performance to Carlos Rodríguez who finished fifth overall after fighting hand in hand with the Yates brothers for the podium and who managed to beat Tadej Pogacar and Joans Vingegaard in the Morzine stage after an anthological descent. Has a new star for Spanish cycling been born?

On the positive side, it is worth mentioning the Tour de France of Jonathan Castroviejo and Omar Fraile working for Carlos Rodríguez in INEOS and that of Marc SOler for Tadej Pogacar in UAE. Juanpe Lopez had a long first Tour, although he had stretches in which he was a good gregario in the mountains for Lidl-Trek.

Disappointments.

Movistar Team failed. It is true that the abandonment by fall in the first stage of Enric Mas has conditioned the whole race, but they have not been able to adapt and, except for a couple of good performances of Matteo Jorgenson who could not close two breakaways in which he seemed the strongest, we can not highlight anything. Bad Rúben Guerreiro, bad Gorka Izagirre and bad Alex Aranburu;

The other failure is Mikel Landa. Much was expected from the Spaniard in a Tour de France that started from the Basque Country, but his performance has been very bad. He finished 19th, more than an hour behind Jonas Vingegaard. Not a single day has he been with the overall and not a single day has he had a chance to be even close to winning a stage. Very poor performance;