The Tour de la Mirabelle is a UCI 2.2 Europe Tour race held in the region of Lorraine in the north-east of France. It is named after the small, sweet, dark-yellow Mirabelle plums that are grown locally in abundance and are featured on the race’s King of the Mountains (KOM) jersey.

The only previous occasion the team had competed in this event was in 2019 when the then Canyon dhb p/b Bloor Homes team had a splendid tour taking two stage wins, the KOM jersey and 4^th place on GC (General Classification). With a stronger field present in 2021, the Canyon dhb SunGod team would no doubt be delighted if they could emulate that result!

The 2021 edition took place between 27^th-30^th May consisting of a short prologue and three stages across a mixed terrain of the plains surrounding La Mosselle river and into the picturesque dark-green forests of the Vosges mountain range. The total route of 529km was ridden in welcome spring sunshine following weeks of poor weather similar to that experienced in the UK.

Canyon dhb SunGod selected six riders able to tackle the variety of challenges and likely race scenarios for each stage: Ryan Christensen, Callum MacLeod, Jacob Scott, Rob Scott, Max Stedman and Rory Townsend. Simon Holt was Directeur Sportif with Eoin O’Donohoe as mechanic and Marie and Russ the soigneurs. The competition included three UCI Pro Teams: Equipe Kern Pharma, Novo Nordisk and Uno-X, the latter team from Norway having had an impressive start to the year with podiums at Le Samyn, Boucles de la Mayenne and the Presidential Tour of Turkey. There were 12 UCI Continental teams taking part including Canyon dhb SunGod and Trinity Racing from the UK along with six elite team from France and Belgium.

Prologue: 3.1km Tomblaine

Townsend was an early starter in the prologue and stormed round the flat town centre course with six right-angled corners and a couple of bends in 3min 41.58sec at an average of 50.5kph (31.5mph) on his road bike (no TT bikes were allowed)! It was not until the last wave of riders set off that his time was bettered by two rivals, Idar Andersen (Uno-X) and Thery Schir (Swiss Racing Academy) who recorded 6 hundredths and 3 hundredths of a second quicker, respectively. Rob Scott also had a superb ride to take fourth place just 2 tenths of a second behind Townsend. Jacob Scott was 12^th at 5 sec, Macleod 47^th at 10sec, Stedman 56^th at 11sec and Christensen 74^th at 15sec from a field of 124 riders. 19 year-old Max Walker (Trinity Racing) also impressed with 6th place just one second down.

So 3^rd and 4^th places were a more than solid opening for the team’s tour and a great motivator for the stages to come!

Stage 1: 159km Pont-a-Mousson to Lesmenils

 The team had targeted targeted this stage well before travelling to Lorraine with Townsend convinced he could perform well on this particular parcours with two moderate climbs interspersed with some fairly benign flatlands before a final climb of 1.4km at 9% positioned just 4km from the finish.

Three riders went into an early break and kept away for almost 130km sweeping up two intermediate sprints and two KOM climbs al

ong the way. The two Scotts put in the hard yards drilling it into the final climb and getting the lead-out train positioned well. Macleod and Stedman took it on from there with Townsend nailing the sprint finish in fine style taking a relatively comfortable win from 19 year-old Joseph Pidcock (Equipe continentale Groupama-FDJ). Townsend was awarded the Green Jersey for Points Leader after his third place the previous day. Stedman was 8^th and Macleod 15^th in the same time as Townsend. Andersen (Uno-X) finished 17^th but kept his GC race leader’s Yellow Jersey.

Rob Scott was 39^th at 15sec, Jacob Scott 63^rd at 40sec and Christensen 99^th at 5min 14sec.

Townsend provides his insight into Stage 1 as follows:

‘Today was great, it really went to plan for the most part which was nice. We raced into the first 3^rd cat climb, it went hard up there without causing any major damage to the bunch. We lost Ryan over the top of that and he was content sitting up to protect himself for what will be a big day tomorrow. Coming into the finishing climb we had Rob (Scott) and Jake (Scott) lining it up to get some good position going into it. It goes from quite a wide road into a narrow one and thankfully we were able to recce it the day we arrived. So when we got into it a little bit further back than we would like, I used the gravel on the right-hand side to move up a bit so when it came to the steepest part where I was naturally going to struggle, I didn’t slide too far back. There was a little move that went off the front just as we crested the hill which we were quite happy to let go and use the descent to pull things back together. As we came off the descent I gave the call to Callum to take things up. Callum took us from about 2km to go until well into the final km and gave a really big pull with Max on his wheel and me behind Max with a lot of fighting and jostling behind me. We came into the first sharp right-hander with about 400 metres to go and a few got their line wrong ending up going straight on. Then Max took it up for the last few hundred metres, we went down a tight right-hander where he swung off and I literally took it on, kicked straight out of the corner and gapped the guys behind me straight away and it turned into quite a long sprint with 250 metres to go with a slight drag but I knew I had enough from the initial kick’.

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Photo/Diagram Credits

1. Tour de la Mirabelle website
2. Herve Dancerelle / DirectVelo
3. Tour de la Mirabelle website
4. Alexandre Marchi
5. Tour de la Mirabelle website
6. David Jaunet Photographie @clickadocphoto
7. Herve Dancerelle / DirectVelo