I was surprised to see Cavagna on the Venge as well. That said, he was setting an insane speed space on that thing, so it clearly was working for him.
As for the time trail today. My god. What a performance. We will be talking about this for years to come.
This tour has been a banger. There was really only one snoozefest of a stage and it was very early on. Since then, all the jerseys had their moments of intrigue and excitement. One of the better well-rounded Tours to watch start to finish. Even the “easy” days were at insane paces.
I’d just like to note that nearly every prediction I made about this year’s tour was wrong…literally. I can’t think of Year when I was so wrong on almost everything.
Wait…hang on. I did pick Roglic to come 2nd, I think.
Merckx took all 3 jerseys (yellow, green and pois) in his first Tour. (There was no White jersey then, but he was 24 so would ave won it had it existed)
So many variables led to this TT being intense and exciting. Without that day where Ineos drilled it at 60+ kph on the flats in the crosswind and shredded the group causing Pogacar to lose over a minute, for example, today’s TT stage just wouldn’t have had the same feel to it. Most TT stages are run of the mill and difficult to make exciting, but everything leading up to this one created a beautiful concoction of drama. I’m still stunned by it.
Also, for those confused by Lopez’ performance today, he’s just notoriously bad at TTs. Only the last 6 km was uphill which is what would have suited him. He was destined to lose 1.5-2 minutes to Porte on the 30 km before he got to the climb.
Speaking of Porte, I am SO STOKED for him to be on the podium. Dude has deserved to be on the steps (and has shown he had the form) for a long time now, but his string of bad luck has held him down. Happy to see the man up there, and from what I’m reading, he is also beyond excited to have a podium finish, too.
Asked about his new helmet, which he used for the first time on Saturday, he said drily, “Obviously it was not such a good idea. But let’s leave the materials, for now, because if you push more watts you can always go faster.”
I’d love to see some power data for these riders today that was insane.
The only thing that’s a bit crap during these ITT races is changing bikes - it’s just weird and annoying. Annoying mostly cause when 99.99% of us ride we can’t change bikes as the roads change.
I took this from another forum…was supposedly posted in IG, but I don’t know the source, so I can’t speak to its accuracy.
On September 20th 2017 almost 3 years to the date, Tom Dumoulin put together a 430 watt 44:41 minute time trial to win the world time trial championships ahead of Primoz Roglic who finished a minute behind, and ahead of that years Tour de France Champion and Olympic bronze medalist Chris Froome who came in 80 seconds off pace. Today, a more experienced Tom Dumoulin did 440 watts average to the base of the final climb, then 430 watts for the ascend where he lost over a minute to today’s winner, Tadej Pogacar. With this in mind one might be able to understand WHY Tom Dumoulin said that he doesn’t understand how Pogacar did what he did today. Until today, Tadej Pogacar’s best performance in an ITT at this level was 11th on stage 10 of the Vuelta last year, where Roglic took the win. Yes, we all know that Pogacar marginally beat Roglic this year in the Slovanian ITT championships by 9 seconds. It’s important to note that what we’re looking at in Pogacar’s performance today isn’t just his best performance ever, it’s the best time trial performance in the history of the sport. "
During the bike swap, both roglic and WVA removed the huge visor from their helmet. That’s why it looks weird. Looked totally normal with visor attached.
I’m not saying whether it fit or not. Im just saying they took off the visor which made it look wierd. Watching it live I noticed it was wierd on WVA before I even saw roglic. And look, its the same helmet. And it looked fine with visor attached.
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NEW. 
