"I hope that they choose the best riders" - Steff Cras battles for Tour nomination as the last non-French rider at TotalEnergies
Cycling
Steff Cras was off to a good start in 2025 with 6th place at Vuelta a Andalucía, but lately the mood was a bit less due to a dire situation within his own team. Despite being arguably the best GC card of his team, Tour de France nomination is far from guaranteed. And then there's the issue of title sponsor TotalEnergies apparently in negotiations with INEOS Grenadiers...
"I always had a positive feeling that they wouldn’t ignore our team this year," says Cras in an interview with WielerFlits. "Certainly with the news that they would allow an extra team, it was pretty certain that we would be there. We won that stage last year with Anthony Turgis and that probably helped. Even with only two wildcards, our position was pretty certain."
Would Cras prefer it if UCI removed one team instead of adding another wildcard, potentially increasing the risk of mass falls? "Definitely. Even more: I don’t understand why they suddenly allowed an extra team. I think it’s a lot about money and little about safety measures." Even the former national coach of France said something along those lines as well.
Cras doesn't like how much power ASO holds if they can push for such irrational last-minute change. "It’s strange that they took out a team a few years ago and now they’re adding one back. You can clearly see that ASO is very powerful towards the UCI, they almost make the rules. I actually think it’s a bit of a shame that they’re allowing this now."
"They are supposedly fighting for safety and measures to make it a bit safer for a peloton. But this is the opposite of what they are fighting for. I wonder what this will mean for the future. Will we always ride with 23 teams from now on, or will it go back to 22?"
Tour selection and future
Steff Cras was the team's leader for general classification at last Tour, finishing 16th overall. For TotalEnergies it's one of the better GC results in the team's history, however the Belgian has no certainty of being selected again. Especially when the future of this whole project is at a stake.
"I am currently at the end of my contract in the team and I haven't heard anything about the coming years. Also regarding the vision of the team. Do they want to continue with riders of a different nationality or not? Last year they also left Dries Van Gestel at home for the Tour because he didn't renew. I hope that they choose the best riders in that respect."
Why is it that Cras is the only non-French rider in the team that had stars like Peter Sagan and Niki Terpstra among their ranks in the past? "When I signed with the team at the end of 2022, there was a completely different vision. There was a will to internationalize, with a more scientific approach. In fact, that vision only lasted for one year. Since last year, they have gone back the other way a bit. In a French way, so to speak. It is a shame, because there was a lot of potential."
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- Whatever happens tomorrow... it'll be a hell of a raceslappers6605-04-2025
- Exactly Tadej, the cancer of modern society. Full of good-for-nothing people who gain visibility and importance on social media mocking, humiliating (and worse things) to earn money. But it's the follower's fault, no followers, no "influencers".
maria2024202405-04-2025 - Great commentCaralladas05-04-2025
- i’m such a sucker for those group-hug, happy ending moments between competitors, largely because it’s so WASN’T that way in my younger, stronger days. (on that note, i have this hope that somewhere down the road, maybe fifteen or twenty years, a middle aged wout and mathieu will go for a pleasure ride together in flanders, and reminisce about the days when they were the young, strong monsters that stalked the cobbles.)OCexile05-04-2025
- Just like Dwars door Vlaanderen, the Ronde van Vlaanderen was/is NOT on MAX. Get your facts straight.Ben04-04-2025
- You might bounce more for the same power, but not the same speed. Sending 20 kgs over a jump at 20 kph will fly just as far as 10 kgs at the same speed. Again, Galileo demonstrated this.acem8204-04-2025
- So, you're saying that doing a bunch of small hops on a bike is easier if you're heavier? Why do people buy lighter bikes, then? Why do they generally feel better and faster? An appeal to "rhythm" is not helpful either, as the right "rhythm" might be on the lighter or heavier side of things, and as it varies, it's likely a wash either way. Then we are left with the physics truth that it takes less power to lift lighter things than heavier things.acem8204-04-2025
- No, weight doesn't affect the ability to go into the wind at all. It's all CdA vs power at that point. For example, it's "obvious" that a heavier object falls faster than a lighter one. But, absent wind resistance, it's not true (Galileo demonstrated this). An appeal to "obviousness" doesn't matter when the physics is clear. And yes, you have to be able to hold everything else constant, or you can't determine anything! So, imagine a 300 watt rider at 80 kgs with a CdA of 2.0, then imagine that same rider at 70 kgs with a CdA of 2.0. (Assume ideal tire pressure for both, same bike.) Which one can ride over a bumpy road fastest? The lighter one, as he doesn't have to lift as much. That's also why when they test bikes on 5 star cobbled sectors, the MTB goes faster than even a cobble-build road bike. Even though rolling resistance is higher on a flat road, and the CdA is junk, it smooths out the cobbles, allowing the person to not lift as much as they otherwise would.acem8204-04-2025
- I disagree. If you have lower weight, you will bounce more at the same speed, meaning that you will spend more time in the air and shorter time on the ground, as a consequence, when you are on the ground you have to produce more force for the same speedvappaxbipmv04-04-2025
- That’s not quite true, even steep climbs and sudden gradient changes can be considered as remaining tangential to the wheel whereas the occasional dip between cobbles a wheel drops into cannot, as such riding over cobbles can become like a permanent surmounting of small obstacles that hit back into your wheel slowing you drastically if you don’t have the right rhythm to “fly” on the mounds, here again the greater the momentum the less these obstacles reduce your speed. But, it is but one factor, you cannot decide on this alone. Like with natural surface ripple formation on desert tracks used by vehicles, there is an optimal speed range to efficiently pass over such surfaces, too fast or slow and your car gets shaken to pieces from the “harmonics” in the vibrations caused. Pretty sure the same applies to riding on cobbles.Mistermaumau04-04-2025