Ya know what I mean! Lol he was still brilliant just didn’t have that oomph that Primo had and showed in his face. Loved G’s interview. Absolute class act
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First one to find out Geraint’s gearing gets a 0 kcal delicious brownie.
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I’m going to start a new one #ROCKETGATE that finishing pace was unreal. Like he dropped the chain on purpose… 
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Great interview with G on GCN plus. Feel terrible for him but also happy for Rog to exercise those TT demons. Wish we could have 2 winners.
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But they’re already putting him up for the Tour. That’s cruel. Let the man rest and recover. Jebus.
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Such drama. But I would like to add: kid on lap with stick for post-race interview was excellent and should be mandatory.
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I was laughing my ass off. Exactly the sort of thing my toddler does.
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Makes him more human and relatable!
Yeah, I thought that was a brave call but when I saw the gears G was trying to turn on 25% slopes I thought probably game over. However 40 seconds was massive
I don’t know about you but I start sprinting up hill in a low gear to get the cadence up and change up and it also helps if I’ve been spinny beforehand and not ground out for the 20mins or so before. I’ve just watch the rerun of the TT it looks like it was the right choice for him again, if not his DS and him wouldn’t have chose it.
How did Rog manage to drop a chain on a 1x gravel setup, riding pavement! Probably the Spirt of Gravel come to penalize his transgressions. I about lost my breath when I saw it happen, thought there went his chance, but damn he drilled it from there on!
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Lots of sports technology & equipment subplots today.
Under category of #HelmetGate:
- breaking the curse (or maybe just attempted breaking?) of the cursed Lazer TT helmet. Same exact model from Belles Filles. Still looks just as dumb, but at least it didn’t turn sideways today
- Van Wilder riding the Spaceballs helmet straight to the summit. Had to have been boiling in that thing
- and of course, G’s bike and helmet change that is the rare exception to “slow is smooth, smooth is fast”
Under more general technology conspiracies
- Did Rog channel the spirit of gravel and spin to win or on the contrary prove why 90% of WT teams ride Shimano
- … except for that Shimano’s DuraAce power meter is well established to be garbage, especially under high torque in the little ring. Did getting completely bogus power data affect G’s pacing of the climb?
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Could be both. I have lower gears than him with Shimano Dura-Ace (and a Rotor crankset ahah).
“To quote a great philosopher”
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How poetic that Rog has now won a GT the same way he lost one 2.5 years ago. Strong Hollywood sports movie vibes
I’m way sadder for Thomas than I expect I would’ve been for Rog if things had stayed status quo through the TT. Just a brutal way to lose. Tons of great footage afterwards though - from the gracious Thomas ‘congrats’ to Jumbo riders during their interviews, to the reaction shots of teammates as Rog and then Thomas finished, to the clear highlight (mentioned above) of Rog’s interview with his son on his lap
I found all of the cadence/gearing discussions above interesting - it didn’t occur to me that people would think Thomas had failed or had an off day today. His time splits on everyone except Rog were pretty much as expected.
To me these TT results feel very similar to the earlier TTs where most performed as expected except Remco, who made everyone else look like they were struggling. In this one most of the top 10 performed to expectations (including Thomas) and Rog blew them all away. As such, I didn’t interpret this as an equipment or performance gap by Thomas
Helmet swap - my understanding is that the ‘overheating’ you get in these duration of events from a closed TT helmet can have a measurable impact on RPE, but not physical limits. Obviously not an expert, but if that RPE is meaningful then the few seconds lost are worth it
Chain drop - I don’t understand how you drop your chain in that situation. If he was descending and slammed in the 10 in the rear there would be enough loose chain that I can see it, but in the gear he was in there should’ve been so much tension that it boggles the mind that he lost it. I’ve never ridden modern SRAM (my last group set of theirs was Red-22…maybe 4 years ago?) so I can’t directly comment - but it just seems very hard to imagine from a general setup perspective
Need some time to digest the GC ‘excitement’ level of the entire Giro - a week ago it was a 2/10, worst I can remember. This final week doesn’t fully redeem it by any stretch, same as the last minute lead change last year didn’t change an overall poor race to watch. Have to let the excitement die down for a bit to rate it IMO
It was the bump/transition on that “road”. I guess the RD couldn’t cope with the chain slack/slap that happened going over it.
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G losing the race in the 2nd to last stage highlights the stupidity of Ineos tactics of riding conservatively during the previous mountain stages. They rode to not lose the Giro banking on the TT, and lost. Feels a bit like last year with Carapaz losing to Hindley.
Here’s hoping the Tour is more exciting, ridden to win instead of to not lose.
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My first thought was that the chain went in between the spokes and the largest cog, possibly due to a bad limit screw setting. If that was the case, he was lucky it didn’t jam completely. Can’t think of any other place the chain can go from the largest cog in the back, that gives you trouble. The other direction would just give you lower cadence. Still weird, since those kind of things usually only happen while shifting up.
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Ironically, that was my criticism of JV earlier in the race.
No, it came off the front chainring. You can see that from the way Rog got the chain back on ( and how relatively easily). The fact that it came off like that make me wonder if they were not using a 1x ring….which would be an absolutely idiotic move from a team mechanic.
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Honestly, once Geoghegan Hart crashed out I’m not sure what aggressive options Ineos was passing up.
Prior to that - yes they could’ve/should’ve been playing their numerical advantage more aggressively. In his absence I’m not sure that there were stages they could’ve played more aggressively.
I agree with your point, they shouldn’t have been comfortable going into the TT, I just don’t know what they could’ve done differently
I say this as someone who has been pretty consistent in my criticism in this thread and elsewhere of conservative race tactics, particularly by Ineos. I just don’t know what options they had remaining
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