Orica-GreenEDGE’s Daryl Impey shares his Critérium du Dauphiné experience with us.
I’m back in Spain after a great Dauphine. It was the first time I did the race and I found it quite different to Tour de Suisse, which I did last year.
The French guys are very aggressive because it’s obviously an important race for them as it’s the last chance for them to impress their teams to make the selection for the Tour de France.
The roads are also a lot smaller than Switzerland and more of what we’ll experience at the Tour so it was a good experience for me to do the race.
The course is also harder than Suisse and a lot of climbers went to the race which made the racing hard.
We made the most of going to France and checked out a stage of the Tour before the Dauphine started and the day after it finished so it worked out well for me going to the race.
I also wanted to do the Dauphine because you have a little more recovery time before the Tour starts and if there’s still some areas you need to sharpen up, you have time to do that.
My best result in the race was fourth on stage five. It was a stage I thought I would target from the beginning of the race.
It was such a hard start to the stage and a lot of guys fancied the breakaway’s chances.
I was in the right place at the right time and decided to commit to the stage.
I probably should have extended myself a bit more and followed Spilak on the climb but I thought it was still 20km’s to go and we had time to catch him but we all ran out of steam in the end.
Read the full race report here.
