WvA also was saying the Tour was going to be a build for the Olympics and Roubaix after bis April bout of appendicitis set him back a bunch. He didn’t come in the TdF in top form.
Teams are here to do SOMETHING though right? I get what you’re saying, but even if they’re not accomplishing grand goals, they’re not here to sit in for three weeks. If UAE isn’t going to sit on the front and control pace the way Sky used to, I imagine some teams are going to want to get up there and do it — if for no other reason than it’s an opportunity to get some experience doing that.
not to mention showing the sponsor(s) on telly
I’m worried that Roubaix might get canceled again. France has massively slowed its vaccination campaign.
other teams doing stuff
Ineos will keep trying until it is futile.
The rest will ride to consolidate and maintain higher placements but lack firepower to hurt Pog and UAE. That will help UAE as others ride for 2-10th and sprint wins. UAE looked pretty good as a squad last few days but Pog will be isolated again In the mountains and that might matter. Probably not but the race has many km left, bad days happen when unexpected.
The rest of the rest will pretend that a rider three hours down on GC being allowed to go up the road matters and is heroic because they are stage hunting. Racing from the break is fun to watch too.
Green could be interesting and maybe even dots. Yellow and white just need to stay upright and not get sick. Which are always harder than it appears on TV.
The biggest question of the tour remains: what are Moviestar tactics and who is their leader? LoL
No matter what… fun week ahead!!
This sentence is a bit redundant. “What are their tactics and who is their leader” is the exact same thing as just saying “Movistar”
On paper it’s a sprint day but there is this unclassified climb about 40k from the finish:
could be a staging area for an attack or big acceleration from Bahrain and/or BikeExchange (even DSM?)
The final is slightly sketchy with a roundabout inside 200m 
So what’s it gonna be?
- Massive Sprint
- Solo attacker
- Group sprint from an attack at 40Km
- another scenario
0 voters
Stop Carapaz?
And win the team prize of course.
The third season of the doc is going to have to be called “The Most Expected Day”
What is it in that little bottle that Colbrelli was taking after the sprint?
Champagne? Got to celebrate after every sprint after all 
I would guess a digestif over champagne.
Less celebratory but I can get on board with that.
Looks like a “finish bottle”…I wonder what they put in it? Tramadol? or is that banned?
For sprinters, I’d imagine it’s something that helps accelerate PCR and glucose storage recovery. Caffeine, concentrated sugar, maybe something else in there.
It can take a while for anaerobic stores to reconstitute especially at a high recovery workrate (20-30 minutes at rest, sometimes 2-3 hours at aerobic workrates)
Pure speculation on my part though. I doubt its tramadol mid-race, that would be a terrible idea medically speaking.
Oh man Cobrelli. Is that a neutral bike?
It had a race number…don’t know if they have a second team bike also with his number on it or it is a teamamtes bike that had been swapped out earlier in the stage. Such a prime position on the car indicates that it would have been Cobrelli’s spare bike on a day like this.
Pogacar had to work hard himself to close a gap. Once again his team showing weakness. And once again I´m wondering what would be if the other teams would be more healthy in the GC