It doesnt stand out on on the profile thanks to the modest y-axis but todays two climbs of the San Luca climb are hard and the final hour should be lively.Jour de gloire: focussing on certain stages I hope to profit more from the fervour of the Tour wrote Romain Bardet in his column for Saturdays LEquipe, the idea being hed pick some stages instead of going for the yellow jersey. This prophecy looked ambitious when he tried to get in the days breakaway but didnt make it.Instead his team mate Frank van den Broek launched a very solid breakaway. Uno-X missed the move and fired off riders in pursuit, it looked forlorn until Jonas Abrahamsen bridged across and hed sprint to enough hilltops to take the mountains jersey, a deserved reward.With 52km to go Romain Bardet shot out of the what was left of the peloton in an unplanned move on the San Leo climb, although hed asked Warren Barguil to fetch him some ice and a bidon so he could go equipped.He quickly bridged across to what was left of the breakaway with the help of Van Den Broek who was able to help as a precious relay. The pace was too much for Abrahamsen and then Madouas who paid for their earlier uphill sprints to leave the DSM tandem in the lead with Ben Healy stuck en chasse patate.Two minutes lead looked promising on the road to Rimini but the gap was melting like mozzarella dropped on the tarmac as several teams joined in the chase. With 5km to go the gap was below 30 seconds, 3km it was 20 seconds with the pair now in sight of the peloton and the hope that Bardet could get a well0deserved win was fading fast. Yet the hardest part of closing a gap is the last part and the chasing teams were running out of riders, all while some seemed to be holding back in order to lead out their sprinters. 2km and 14 seconds as Matteo Jorgenson took a big turn in the streets of Rimini. 1km and 10 secondsBardet took the stage and the yellow jersey while Franck Van Den Broek didnt finish the day empty handed with the combativity prize, the green jersey, the white jersey and hopefully a free drink any time he walks into a bar in France. It was close but the pair had just enough time to sit up and share the moment.Bardets best win? Le Bettex in 2016 was a coup, attacking down the Domancy descent to win the day and hoist himself onto the podium, his goal at the time but a source of stress too, a deliverance, this was joy. Hes a different rider now, no duty to ride for GC and now with irony is hes got the yellow jersey. Long an exemplary rider whose strived to make the most of his talent, he was going on personal altitude training camps armed with a sheaf of academic literature on the subject; later dragging the Ag2r team towards his meticulous ambitions where staff nicknamed him toujours plus (always more) for his demands.Elsewhere, after a hard days racing in broiling heat a few bids for the top-10 were over before they started with Alexey Lutsenko losing 24 minutes and Groupama-FDJ pair David Gaudu and Lenny Martinez losing even more, Gaudu saying hes still recovering from Covid. Mark Cavendish and Fabio Jakobsen had it rougher, the Manxman was dropped early and had most of his team around him including Michele Gazzoli who didnt finish the stage even if Cavendish and Jakobsen eventually did.The Route: 199km and 1850m of vertical gain. A start in Cesenatico to exhume the memories of Pantani once more before heading into the hills of Emilia-Romagna where the clay soils have had their role in cycling, because transformed into tiling by the likes of Ariostea and Panaria theyve funded eponymous cycling teams and because these tiles need to be stuck to walls and floors and the gaps in between filled in, sparked the need for products from Mapei which also had its team.More recently the Gallisterna name might be familiar if you remember the 2020 World Championships. These climbs are small but help spice up what can otherwise be a flat stage, the Giro oftenThe Finish: a ride into Bologna to ride around the old city walls on a boulevard with two times up the glorious but fearsome climb to the Basilica San Luca. Used every year in the late season Giro dellEmilia and in the Giro at times too this is a hard with double-digit gradients right from the start. 1.9km at 10% doesnt sound like much but its got a hard start to rob momentum and acceleration after is expensive.An urban climb it is lined by a brick-built portico all the way up so people can walk to the hilltop basilica in the shade. The road itself though is exposed and with long ramps. The 19% on the profile above is the inside line around the orphans curve where its more like 16% here.Its the same descent as Emilia too which helps but the pressure of the Tour is different of course and the race then takes the big boulevard around the old city walls, no obvious difficulties but stressful as riders will jostle for position going into the climb knowing it takes a big effort to make up just a few metres on a climb like this.The Contenders: DSM are likely to chase any early breakaway and we should see the GC teams take over later as theyll want to pace their leaders into place for the foot of the climb. Each time too, meaning anyone launching the first time up the San Luca might take 10-15 seconds over the top but good luck holding this on the streets of Bologna, let alone preserving this the next time up.An uphill finish? Primo Rogli (Redbull-Bora-Hansgrohe) is the obvious pick but as he gets older has he still got the same searing jump? He has just won two stages of the Dauphin with his modus operandi. His team are strong too to help get him in place.And yet competition is going to be fierce today with Tadej Pogaar (UAE) the other obvious choice. Theres a theory that todays stage gives Pogaar a bigger advantage over Vingegaard than the Galibier as the Dane just doesnt do one day races and is more at ease on a long climb. So twice up the San Luca plays into Pogaars comparative advantage but comparative because maybe Jonas Vingegaard (Visma-LAB) can put on a show too.Longer shots already include Maxim Van Gils (Lotto-Dstny), Tom Pidcock (Ineos) and Oscar Onley (DSM).Rogli, PogaarVingegaardVan Gils, Ciccone, Pidcock, Williams, Bilbao, OnleyWeather: warm and sunny, 33C at the finish Bologna. A WSW wind will blow at 15km/h and could gust to 25km/h which is borderline crosswind weather again for the sections where the race uses the long and exposed Via Emilia sections.TV: KM0 is at 12.35pm CEST and the finish is forecast for 5.20pm CEST. Tune in for the final hour to see the race reach Bologna and the two climbs of the San Luca.Postcard from BrisighellaBrisighella is 70km into todays stage. Today every parameter going in cycling seems to be measured. LEquipe has had a good series this week on the modernisation of cycling in recent years, one piece asked if riders are becoming lab rats. For years power and heart rate have been measured in training and racing and lactate levels logged during training camps. Now teams are trying to explore all sorts of measures. UAE coach Iigo San Milan told the newspaper (translated):With two drops of blood we can see between a thousand and two thousand parameters, the metabolic responses, the recovery capacity, all the glycolic path or the mitochondria.Now two thousand signals sounds like be noise are instructive but teams trying to find the signals. In recent years blood glycogen and body temperature sensors have appeared as commercial products and so theyve been in the limelight. Hydration monitors are probably next. But monitoring blood levels is private and discreet among each team, its not a commercial thing and theres probably a weariness to talk about haematology given the sports past. Perhaps one day all sorts of haematological, endocrinal values will be logged live during a race, even on display on a bike computer. Were not there yet.Whats this all got to do with Brisighella? Well just as the race leaves Faenza to ride to Brisighella so did Davide Cassani many times. He was a pro from 1982 to 1996, and recently the Italian national team selector and now again a pundit on RAI, Italian state TV and he also came up with the route today. This was his warm-up along the straight road that gradually climbs up the Lamone valley. Then turn at Brisighella for the SP23 to Riolo Terme. Here the road kicks up with some hairpin bends. Its just a two kilometre climb but Monticino was considered enough for Cassani to test his form: if he felt good on the climb then he knew hed be alright in a race. During his time he probably had a stop watch and later a heart rate monitor but feeling was his guide. Indeed it still counts for plenty and a rider who feels theyre floating up the climb out of Brisighella might fancy their chances later on the San Luca, no matter what their bike computer says.The post Tour de France Stage 2 Preview first appeared on The Inner Ring.