This Sunday sees the final two round of the Capdet Raynal Coupe de France Dames 2011. This series of French domestic races (plus those belonging to the Coupe de France clubs DN Dames) were added to the VDS calendar for two reasons: because they looked interesting and I wanted to remember to check out the results, and because we wanted to find some races where Marianne Vos and Emma Johansson wouldn’t hoover up all the points. The second reason has worked out very well; the first maybe not so well. As a little compensation, now seems like a good time to come up with a little summary of how the season has developed. Here’s part one which takes us roughly to mid-May and Les Petites Reines de Sauternes.
First of all a little explanation about the two trophies. The Capdet Raynal Coupe de France Dames is a trophy for individual riders, the Coupe de France clubs DN Dames for teams. The Capdet Raynal races are the top level elite races (they even pay a token amount of petrol money to the team cars of 0.20 Euro per kilometer), and the competition is open to French riders and to riders on French teams. Other UCI teams are allowed to enter the races, but they get a lower priority than French club teams if case of oversubscription. Points go to the top 30 finishers in every race, apart from the last race of the season where they go down to 40th place. This year there are six races:
20th March – Cholet Pays de Loire
25th April – Prix de la Ville de Pujols
15th May – GP Feminin Ain d’Yzernore
27th May – GP de Plumelec Feminin
12th June - Prix des Communes de Nogent l’Abbesse et Beine Nauroy
19th June – Classis Feminine Vienne Poitou Charentes
The Coupe de France clubs DN includes all the races on the Capdet Raynal Coupe de France Dames apart from Cholet Pays de Loire which is on the UCI calendar this year (presumably the clash of the two different sets of rules was a unicorns with light sabres sort of thing – they should have called for The Hoff, instead they rather boringly issued a new set of rules ), plus an additional four, making nine in total. Points are given to the teams of the first thirty in a Capdet Raynal race, and the first twenty in other races. Those additional races are:
13th March - GP de Chambery
7/8th May – Ronde de Bourgogne
22nd May – Les Petites Reines de Sauternes
30/31st July – Tour de Charente Maritime
If you want the technical details then you can download the rulebooks for the Capdet Raynal Coupe de France and the Coupe de France clubs DN from the FFC website. See over for some details on the races themselves.
Grand Prix de Chambéry - we actually got a race thread for that one so there’s not a lot to add. I’ve still not seen any video, but this clip from 2010 suggests that there really ought to be. For VDS purposes only the top 5 count and Sophie Creux and Edwige Pitel did their DS’s proud:
1. Sophie Creux (Vienne-Futuroscope) en 2h10’40"
2. Elodie Hégoburu (ES Gervais Lilas) à 1"
3. Edwige Pitel (Vienne-Futuroscope) à 2"
4. Amélie Rivat (Chambéry Cyclisme Compétition)
5. Jessica Schneeberger (Bike Import)
(And as an aside for VDS 2011, I’d suggest that a rough rule of thumb measurement of whether a race should be included would be that the top 5 includes at least 2 riders that got picked this year.We’d like to big up the calendar a little (with apologies to anyone who ever taught me English), but it’s pretty useless if we’ve not heard of anyone riding there).
Cholet Pays de Loire - another race thread. This is a UCI race so scoring goes down to tenth place, and as Marianne Vos was still racing on the track the steam-rolling was being done by Emma Johansson, while Christel Ferrier Bruneau was reminding us that there is more than one hyphenated French star. Velo-Ouest gave us some video taken each time the leaders crossed the finish line, now here’s a bit taken in the feedzone (best to ignore the bit that describes her Emma J as champion of Finland, and more so the bit that calls her teammate champion of the Vikings).
From the same YouTube account here’s the podium ceremony, or if you prefer it without Franz Ferdinand. But despite the UCI race ranking and the presence of international teams, the top ten on the day still had a definite French tinge.
1 JOHANSSON Emma HITEC PRODUCTS – UCK en 3h 05’44s
2 FERRIER BRUNEAU Christel MIXTE CHAMBERY C. COMPETITION / GAUSS à 51"
3 MUSTONEN Sara HITEC PRODUCTS – UCK à 01’47s
4 CREUX Sophie VIENNE FUTUROSCOPE à 01’47s
5 MAJERUS Christine TEAM GSD GESTION à 01’47s
6 NÖSTVOLD Lise HITEC PRODUCTS – UCK à 01’47s
7 HEGOBURU Elodie ES GERVAIS LILAS ESP à 01’51"
8 CORDON Audrey VIENNE FUTUROSCOPE ESP à 01’51"
9 ROUSSE Marion VIENNE FUTUROSCOPE ESP à 01’54s
10 LESUEUR Mélodie ES GERVAIS LILAS ESP à 02’21"
Prix de la Ville du Mont Pujols Feminin - This was the race where Magdalena de Saint Jean showed that others in the peloton can do a Pooley, and rode off into the distance for victory. No video of this has appeared yet, but there’s a nice photo essay thanks to Guy Dagot at Actu velo Aquitain, and further photos on picassa.
1 DE SAINT JEAN Magdalena VENTOUX VELO SENSATIONS en 2h 51mn 29s
2 PITEL Edwige VIENNE FUTUROSCOPE à 04mn 29s
3 THOMAS Beatrice ASPTT DIJON - BOURGOGNE à 04mn 34s
4 MERMILLOD Eugenie TEAM GSD GESTION à 04mn 34s
5 SOUYRIS Manon TEAM FERRUS MIDI-PYRENEES J2 à 04mn 47s
Ronde de Bourgogne – The French calendar also includes a few mini stage races (up to two days), and this was the first of them in 2011, and it was a really close contest. Day one was a road race, while day two had both a team time trial then an afternoon crit. Outsiders Colavita Forno d’Asolo took the lead after the first stage when Elena Cecchini won a four way sprint on a day when the race was spread all over the road, only eight women were within a minute of her and everyone else was more than two minutes down.
1 CECCHINI Elena FCL ITA 03h22'04" 10"
2 ROUSSE Marion FUT FRA 03h22'04" 6"
3 PITEL Edwige FUT FRA 03h22'04" 4"
4 DE SAINT JEAN Magdalena MIX FRA 03h22'04"
5 AUNE Karin MIC SWE 03h22'09" 05"
With local pride at stake Vienne Futuroscope hammered it in the time trial and came in 4.88 seconds ahead of Colavita, which put Marion Rousse in the lead by that 0.88 seconds. Magdalena de Saint Jean who otherwise have had a very good weekend lost over 3 minutes and showed that a mixed team is not a good place to be in for a team time trial.
1 Vienne - Futuroscope Team UCI 30'34"04
2 Colavita - Forno D`Assolo Team UCI 30'38"92 04"88
3 Sengers Ladies Cycling Team 31'11"54 37"50
In the crit a group of four riders got away and took all the time bonuses at the end, then just to be sure Marion Rousse outsprinted Elena Cecchini at the head of the rest of the peloton.
1 CORDON Audrey FUT FRA 01h48'03" 6"
2 LESUEUR Mélodie ESG FRA 01h48'03" 4"
3 BIDEAU Sandrine PUT FRA 01h48'04" 01" 2"
4 DE SAINT JEAN Magdalena MIX FRA 01h48'04" "
5 ROUSSE Marion FUT FRA 01h48'20" 17"
6 CECCHINI Elena FCL ITA 01h48'20" "
which left the final classification dominated by Vienne Futuroscope
1 6 FRA19910817 * ROUSSE Marion FUT FRA 05h40'52"
2 36 ITA19920525 * CECCHINI Elena FCL ITA 05h40'52"
3 1 FRA19670604 PITEL Edwige FUT FRA 05h40'54" 02"
4 2 CAN19880630 BEVERIDGE Julie FUT CAN 05h41'03" 11"
5 11 SWE19750429 AUNE Karin MIC SWE 05h42'11" 01'19"
I’ve not found any other footage of this at all, but last year team Midi-Pyrenees posted a few short videos. If you want to see the local landscape then here are stage 1 (don’t whatever you do miss the monks’ football match at 1.43), stage 2 (rules say that teams must enter a minimum of three riders, but doing most of this with that minimum has got to hurt) and stage 3.
Coupe de France dames Izernore by MCF82
(and I’d love it if someone could name that tune for me) Actually we were a bit spoiled for information from this race, since the organisers not only set up a dedicated Twitter account to post live updates from the race, but also uploaded, in as close to real time as you can get, short videos taken as the peloton crossed the start-finish line every lap. The weather dominated the results here as a late and very heavy thunderstorm made the chase to catch the early escape very unenthusiastic.
1. Ludivine LOZE (Midi-Pyrénées)
2. Alexia MUFFAT (Bourgogne)
3. Alna BURATO (Champagne)
4. Rosane KIRCH (Colavita)
5. Emmanuelle MERLOT
Despite the rain the organisers thought that the day was a great success and are already preparing for next year’s race (that’s 13th May if you are that organised yourself).
Les Petites Reines de Sauternes – Even now I’m struggling to find out much about this race. The website is aimed more at competitors (and if the photographer should stumble across this article then here’s a little tip – not all photos flip equally), and the photogalleries I’ve found are just pages of unlabelled raw shots. Thanks then to the ever brilliant Gwena for telling us that the race was over ten laps of a 10.5km circuit, and on the 3rd lap a group of three riders finally managed to break away: Melodie Lesueur, Florence Girardet and Pascale Jeuland, then 5km later Lesueur dropped the other two and rode solo for 70km for the win.
1 LESUEUR MELODIE ES GERVAIS LILAS 93 les 92.7 km en 2h54'57" (moy. 31.791 km/h)
2 BRAVARD MELANIE VELO NAINTREENNE 2h56m26
3 JEULAND PASCALE VIENNE FUTUROSCOPE 2h56m26
4 LOZE LUDIVINE TE FERRUS M PYRENEES 2h56m26
5 PADER LUCIE COMITE AUVERGNE 2h56m26
That’s part one – part two should appear in a few days.