French “opening weekend” got underway on Saturday with the challenging Faun-Ardèche Classic, that featured some steep and difficult climbs in the finale of the day. The day followed a familiar pattern with an early break of three getting a large gap before they were slowly brought back by the peloton approaching the penultimate climb. On the ascent, Kevin Vermaerke rode strongly to follow in a chasing group behind a strong quartet of attackers, with Warren Barguil and Romain Bardet summiting not far behind the American. The three Team dsm-firmenich PostNL riders would link up in the chase group but in the end the leading four would just hold on to fight it out for the win, while Vermaerke showed a good turn of speed to take sixth place in the sprint.
Vermaerke explained: “It was a pretty easy race until the final 80 kilometres. The guys rode really well for the big long descent into the punchy climb with 50 kilometres to go. I had a small crash there after someone fell into my back wheel but I was able to come back to the guys with the help of Romain [Combaud] and Martijn. We had a really strong team presence going into the final 20-minute long climb. The front four were just too strong so I tried to follow in the second group. Over the top a group with Romain [Bardet] came back but off of the descent the cooperation in the group wasn’t too good so another group with Warren came back. On the last short climb we tried a few moves but nothing stuck, so coming into the final Romain and Warren really tried to help lead me out. It got a bit hectic going through the last roundabout where I lost the wheel but I was able to squeeze back through on the right side. I wanted to try and win the sprint from the group but could only manage second as it was my fault I couldn’t follow the guys better in the lead-out. We think tomorrow will be a bit more open so we will try and animate the race and do our best to take home that win.”