hahahaha. I did the SAME thing on the first time trial! It was so hypnotizing but It made my brain hurt! 
~6.5 w/kg for close to 20 minutes… Jai deserves it
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Maybe it’s just me, but I found this Giro boring to watch / not exciting overall, which is surprising given how close it was on time. Maybe it was because the GC riders were so close in ability, but the stages never felt exciting. Unlike past tours / giros / vueltas, I cannot think of one stage I would rewatch while doing a workout. Am I wrong? If so, which stage(s) would you rewatch?
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100% agree. there were very few stages I could keep on for motivation during a TR workout. And even just watching, I abandoned watching the full length with judicious FF’ing for the extended highlights on GCN - which were excellent btw. Total snore other than stage 20 and a stage here or there. So many sprint stages, even the commentators talked about how even stage 20 was boring until the last KMs.
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Close on time does not mean an exciting race, unfortunately. Remember the Tour when Froome beat Uran by less than a minute? One of the biggest snoozefests ever in July.
Really bummed this Giro was so boring…it could have been a great course for attacking riding, but everyone seemed so focused on everyone else that it largely led to a stalemate.
The breaks were usually super exciting though. Thanks MVdP!
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Yes agree and very boring for me the last 10 days of giro.
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No argument. It felt like Ineos believed the pre-race hype that this Giro was Carapaz’ to lose, and rode like their biggest worry was Carapaz having a ill-timed mechanical incident / crash. Not that another rider could drop Carapaz, and therefore they needed to figure out how to gain time on the other riders.
Outside of the 2020 Giro win with Tao, and Stage 18 of the 2018 Giro with Froome, it feels like Ineos rides like they are still in the era of peak Froome: ride a hard pace with the certainty that you have the strongest rider who can single handily take time out of the main contenders.
What about when Carapaz attacked solo on stage 14 with 29km still to go? Wasn’t even a summit finish day.
He didn’t have the legs to make it stick but he still took on the racing.
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One attack on one stage out of 21 stages? And then nothing. Doesn’t change my opinion that Ineos believed the race was Carapaz’, and only a mis-time mechanical / crash could take it away from him. Look at the situation going into stage 20: Carapaz was up only 3 seconds, and Ineos seemed content.
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I do think it’s a shame when winning takes priority over entertainment. That’s why we love Sagan, Allaphillipe, MvdP… pure showmen.
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same!!
Always love when teams or individuals just race and go against the pelotons “directions”.
This old school stuff is some reason I like Tadej so much as he is like the honey badger. Just doesn’t give a f and destroys team tactics even by himself.
I hate rest days.
Wait……
f#ck.
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Watching Kamna toy with Carapaz on 20 is a highlight I will remember for a long time. It was an amazing performance by Hindley, but watching Kamna go into red to create the separation and then dig in so he could sit on Carapaz’s wheel and ultimately pass him was special. Soul-crushing team tactics at their best.
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He attacked a lot more than once on 21 stages! He just couldn’t get away alone as the top riders were so closely matched. That’s why it was always just a group of three riders, with everyone else trailing behind. The other GC riders couldn’t live with the digs the top 3-4 we’re putting in.
I was rooting for either Landa or Hindley once Bardet went home, but to say Carapaz didn’t attack isn’t right.
If Carapaz didn’t have the legs on stage 20 then there wasn’t really any other tactical option for Ineos to take when racing up the Marmolada. He looked tired and pale before they even got to the start of the last climb
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He gave a few half-hearted attempts, but the only time he attacked like he meant it was on Stage 14….personally, I thought that was the race over at that point.
Was surprised when he faded / they clawed him back.
Blockhaus was a missed opportunity for him. He attacked there and was away with Bardet and Landa from memory. Hindley was distanced but it was early enough in the race that Landa, Bardet and Carapaz were focused on each other which let Hindley and Almeida pace themselves back on.
I hope that at some point we get a GT with an “easy” course. Get rid of numerous summit finishes and give us more mid mountain days or punchy circuits. Would love to see a GT that rewarded aggressive riding and opened up the cast of potential winners (maybe Guillaume Martin’s perfect race!)
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I’m from the US and had to look up what the slur even was because I read the article and still had no idea what the bad part was. So I can say that he probably didn’t know he was saying anything “wrong.” Chill out, watch the race and enjoy it. Not everything has to be offensive or a microaggression. Just because you’re offended doesn’t mean there’s an issue. Don’t try to read into things that aren’t there.
He would have known what the term meant, it was fairly common slang when I was growing up, certainly can’t see it being coincidence that he put those particular 2 words together. In less enlightened times when I was in my teens and 20s pretty much any occurrence of the word fudge would lead to somebody making a crude double entendre. Suspect he hung around in circles with a similarly bad and dated sense of humour to me and what he said just came out of his mouth without really thinking about it. Obviously shouldn’t have said it on air and was correct that he apologised, but in the grand scheme of things it seems a pretty minor mistake that I’m sure he will have learnt from, hopefully everybody forgets about it and moves on.
On the Giro itself, delighted to see Hindley win after coming so close in 2020. Shame the GC race couldn’t have been lit up with more attacks but I think the fact that it wasn’t shows just how close the lead guys were.
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