While the tactics were bad, I think they were bad for different reasons than everyone is saying.
For starters, on the podcasts I’ve been listening to they have been expecting Del Toro to lose the jersey today for the past 2 weeks. It shifted slightly from “it’s inevitable he’ll lose it today” to “he’ll most likely lose it today unless UAE has perfect tactics” after some of his recent performances.
UAE knew this too, which is why they kept riding for Ayuso until his knee imploded. Del Toro weighs 8kg more than Carapaz and Yates, has never proven consistency in a 3 week race, and to boot he’s been burning matches consistently throughout the last 3 weeks to gain seconds when anyone could look at the profile and see that today could be decided by minutes.
The real stupidity in UAE’s tactics is the reason I dislike them as a team: the majority of their team is just gobbling up every potential GC leader with oil money then going into every race with 4+ people riding for their own GC due to their egos. While I like McNulty, him riding for GC in this race was pure idiocy. He should have purposely lost time, saved his strength and gone into the break today as a satellite rider so he could do the same for Del Toro as Wout did for Yates. That, plus the reckless expenditure of energy due to the inexperience and enthusiasm of youth is where the race was truly lost, not the staring match with Carapaz.
I really wonder how much of UAE’s brain dead tactics are due to having Pog who can win without tactics? This whole Giro feels like UAE had no plan how to win, and they just thought del Torro would do a Pog and win “just cause”
Majka has to be absolutely pissed off at Del Toro’s (lack of) action today. That guy has absolutely buried himself for the young guy to literally watch the race ride away, and then sprint for a completely useless placinf
Agree, it’s a bit like the Sky Froome (and briefly Thomas and Bernal) years when their tactics of drilling it on the front all day inevitably worked because they also happened to have the dominant GC rider in the world on their team. Once they no longer had the strongest guy in the race it turned out that sitting on the front all day didn’t really do much other than tee it up for everybody else.
I’m not convinced Yates wouldn’t have won anyway. It made sense for del Toro to sit on Carapaz for a little while, until his jersey was really threatened (maybe a 1 minute gap?). But maybe he waits that long and then Yates still gets to Wout before Carapaz and del Toro can close it? Then it comes down to seconds.. and it would have been thrilling.
I’m happy for Yates regardless. Visma played it perfectly. (And Wout needs another superdomestique reward for this stage.. which should totally be a thing.) I was ready to forgive UAE if del Toro was feeling sick or empty or or.. SOMETHING. But when he sprinted at the end that went out the window. Ridiculous that he seems to have been feeling fine and they didn’t at least try to keep the jersey.
No faith in him and thought he’d blow up completely (and lose the podium) if he tried to close Yates? That’s all I can figure.
I agree with you. But what irritates me is the cat and mouse game #1&2 were playing while Yates went up a minute. Someone has to be yelling in his ear “GO GO GO!” I just can’t understand why the lack of fight.
I get Carapaz’ tactics: he’s won a giro before, so 2nd or 3rd doesn’t make a difference.
I don’t get Del Torro: you have the jersey. If you want to win, ride. Del Torro had no strong domestique up the road. The minute Yates gets to Wout with a gap, race over. Del Torro would burn himself out chasing Wout, while Yates would be getting a draft.
UAE’s tactics only make sense if they really thought Carapaz cared about 2nd vs 3rd
What a stage super exciting and I’m happy for Yates, good storyline with him now winning the Giro on the finestre. Didn’t think he had the legs.
For me one of the major tactical mistakes of UAE was to let the break out that much and getting Wout into play. Also not having a rider like McNulty or so that can go into the break because he is in the top ten.
Del Toro should have paced but it is also hard to know how the riders felt. Normally del Toro snap closed attacks but the longer the climb went on the slower he reeled back in Carapaz. And yeah thinking that Carapaz cares about 2nd or 3rd was also questionable.
Was a great giro with some great stages. It’s really helpful if there isn’t just one or two super dominant riders in the race.
I think UAEs tactical mistakes are detailed already, and I mostly agree with the comments
I’m also interested in the EF tactics
I think the whole climb plays out differently if carapaz never closes Yates. Instead he closed the first three (four?) attacks Yates made instead of staring at Del toro.
By closing those attacks he gave away any leverage he had and was essentially racing for the podium. Ultimately when he did the right thing and stopped chasing he’d already showed his hand
Generally agree that the outcome might not have changed, but it was frustrating to watch him close Yates at a time where there was zero reason
Did anyone use the quad view for coverage? I like the idea, but we didn’t use it too much. A bit dizzying sometimes and since there were no on screen graphics and no instant replays, the commentary didn’t always matched what we could see.
When watching the post-race replays, we did use the ‘key moments’ feature. This let us jump to climb starts & finishes, intermed sprints, attacks, crashes, etc. The feature worked in the Max/HBO app and on our LG TV, but not on our lower end Roku tv. Nice to have.
I wonder if Peacock will pick up either feature for the TdF.
What an amazing Giro. I found myself rooting for Del Torro in week 2 and 3 for no apparent reason. However, all his effort is now shaded by his actions allowing the jersey to ride away without a fight. He may have lost anyway, but I can’t accept his actions. Young and dumb with a bit of arrogance and he got taught a lesson. I’ll be curious to see if he’ll ever sniff a grand tour victory again now that he’s marked.
My experience was same as yours, it seemed like a good idea but it was dizzying to watch. I think the quad feed is really for a for a second screen if you are a die-hard and want to be able to glance over to see everything going on, not something I’d watch the whole time.
Not long ago the narrative would have been that a 21 year old coming top 10 in a grand tour would have been mind blowing. We haven’t seen the last of Del Toro.
More ominously, up until yesterday the Col de Finestre KOM was held by Pablo Torres, a 19 year old who smashed the record and rode over 6 w/kg for an hour in the Tour de l’Avenir last year. That performance remains inconceivable for a 19 year old.
And you’ll never guess who gobbled him up and has him signed until 2030.
That’s a bit much. Del Toro will win a grand tour in the next 2 years, barring injuries. It would be foolish of UAE to hold this against him. Nobody, and I mean nobody, really thought he was a contender at the start of the race. If the team was told at the start that he would end up in second, they would have been thrilled.
Of course they have to be disappointed with the way it played out. It is easy for everyone to second guess the actions afterwards. In retrospect, yes, they should have had somebody in the break. They probably should have told McNulty to lose some GC time at the start of the week. If there was a pretty clear mistake, it was not having a strong person far enough down the GC to be in that role. And maybe Wout is just a unicorn, so they didn’t have anyone who cold play that role.
On the road, I wonder how much time they really had to make a decision. looking back on the procycling stats, there had been a series of small attacks by the top 3, each pulled back with little drama. I wonder at what moment the last Yates attack went from “we’ll just catch him”, to “I hope that other guy pulls because I’m tired” to “uh oh. looks like we have a problem” to “well, that’s it”. I bet it was less than 5 minutes. I’m too lazy to watch the replay to confirm that.
del Toro’s small sprint at the end didn’t mean he had more in the tank on the big climb. That group had already dialed back the effort and ‘rested’ when it became clear that they would not catch yates.
Certainly I think they made huge mistakes but he’s 21 and has a lot to learn
The directors at UAE definitely need to be a lot more introspective about their performances. Mistakes are learning opportunities. Repeating mistakes is the issue
Seeing Yates’ time and power numbers has also made me re-evaluate what happened on Saturday. At the time I thought the gap he opened up was purely down to the stand off between del Toro and Carapaz and the start stop way they were riding with attacks and recoveries while Yates could just do a much more efficient hard steady effort. And that’s obviously still somewhat true, but I didn’t appreciate at the time just how well he was climbing - he put out career-best numbers of 6.2W/kg and knocked a minute and a half off the Finestre fastest ascent time (and 5 minutes off Froome’s time from 2018). That is a deeply impressive effort that deep into a grand tour.
I think the fairly innocuous way he rode off initially and the fact that they stayed fairly close for a while and in fact nearly caught back onto him after one of Carapaz’s attacks lulled them into a false sense of security and made them think they could reel him in when they needed to so the real race was between the two of them. Possible also that communication wasn’t great - even from the comfort of the living room we weren’t getting any camera shots or time gaps on Wout, so who knows how accurate the info getting to the riders was with the race and cars spread all over the mountain. Maybe they thought he was closer, maybe they didn’t know about Wout, maybe they thought the UAE domestiques were close enough to come and help out. By the time Yates was ~1 minute up the road then the way he was riding it was all over. As catching him at that point would have needed a sustained effort well above 6W/kg, and if they didn’t catch him before he got to Wout then it was all over anyway as even Carapaz and del Toro working seamlessly in a 2up wasn’t going to match a fairly fresh Wout on those roads, and meanwhile Yates was getting a free ride.
A simply brilliant 3 week performance by Simon Yates, no wasted bullets, mr Invisible. So pleased for him, remember his battle with Froome vividly, couldn’t stop watching it that year.
I don’t think it would have made the blindest bit of difference what the other two did, Simon (and the team) were too strong and too clever on the day.
Very strange to see Del Toro sprint like that for 2nd though and celebrate. It looks a bit personal between them.