{"id":169320,"date":"2025-06-09T04:15:15","date_gmt":"2025-06-09T04:15:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/169320\/"},"modified":"2025-06-09T04:15:15","modified_gmt":"2025-06-09T04:15:15","slug":"stewart-narrowly-misses-the-win-on-opening-day-at-criterium-du-dauphine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/169320\/","title":{"rendered":"Stewart narrowly misses the win on opening day at Crit\u00e9rium du Dauphin\u00e9"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>It was a case of 50 or so meters too short for Jake Stewart on the first stage of the Crit\u00e9rium du Dauphin\u00e9 with the 25-year-old Brit sprinting to fifth place, winning the bunch sprint, but unable to pull back the late attack. <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Stewart and the reduced peloton just caught the back of the five-man leading group as Tadej Poga\u010dar celebrated the win in Montlu\u00e7on on what was far from a predictable sprint stage with late attacks from the General Classification contenders shaking things up in the final laps of the finish circuit. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe always knew it would be chaos in the final but I don\u2019t think anyone really expected the GC guys to try and light it up so it was interesting,\u201d explained Stewart. \u201cLidl \u2013 Trek were clearly keen for a sprint finish as well, with Milan, so we collaborated with them all day to control the race. Unfortunately, Acki [Ackermann] had a puncture going into the last lap so he handed it over to me for the sprint, and I\u2019m happy with the result.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBecause the finish was so fast over the top, guys were probably expecting it to come back faster than it did. The guys in front clearly worked well together as well. We could see them around five or 10 seconds ahead as we hit the flamme rouge and Lutsenko did a really good pull for me there which I massively appreciate. It was close on the finish but it was a few meters too short in the end.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/sprintcyclingagency_9045115_1_2000px-741x494.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"741\" height=\"494\" class=\"alignnone size-large wp-image-24406\"  \/><\/p>\n<p>While Stewart made the most of the opportunity in today\u2019s finale, he\u2019s focused on the crucial role he\u2019ll be playing in Ackermann\u2019s sprint train this week.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m here to do the lead out with Acki and that\u2019s the job that I prefer doing. I don\u2019t really like the pressure so much when we start racing and I know it\u2019s all for me for the final. But like today, or like what happened in Dunkirk, if the opportunity arises, then I\u2019ll always take it, but we\u2019re focused on Acki this week.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It was a case of 50 or so meters too short for Jake Stewart on the first stage&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":169321,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4104],"tags":[31322,4230,70697,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-169320","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cycling","8":"tag-criterium-du-dauphine","9":"tag-cycling","10":"tag-jake-stewart","11":"tag-sports","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114651472111214502","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169320","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=169320"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169320\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/169321"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=169320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=169320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=169320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}