What a stage:
- These guys are madmen, 70 m/h down the hill !!!
- A little bit of a Gran Colombia alliance.
- Pog looks human again
- Mas, Connor, Lutsenko and Kelderman are now third tier.
- Very impressed with VWA
Cheers
This is a fun tour. Don’t care what you guys think - LoL
Ps Movistar “tactics” have gone viral!!! Run!!!
The downhill finishes are my biggest gripe with this year’s route. They always neutralize attacks for the GC. Today JV learned that the hard way. Hopefully that doesn’t come back to hurt him in future mountain stages.
Emergence of JV as well. He was fun to watch in the Vuelta last year, won a stage of Basque Country this year, and then the only one to drop Pogacar this year…
I’m just following a live blog which didn’t mention any obvious “issues” from him. He’s got 5+ minutes on everyone so I wouldn’t expect him to attack at all when there’s 10 stages left, just follow the people he needs to. Did they leave something out?
he couldn’t follow Vingegaard’s attack. He said afterwards that he “exploded”. H
Just read that afterwards, thanks
Soren Kragh Anderson made the time cut by 1 second! Had to sprint for it.
Can someone explain TJV’s tactics with WVA and JV? I don’t understand WVA not soft pedaling over the top once JV had dropped Pog. WVA could easily have towed JV back up to the two TSF riders, and JV would have gotten at least 40 seconds plus a chance at the stage time bonuses. Plus WVA would easily have out sprinted the two TSF riders for the stage win
Your tactic has so many degrees of freedom that it’s not even worth considering. “A Bird in the Hand is Worth Two in the Bush”. H
Well, no… You not gonna give away s certain stage win for gaining 25s in a race for second place.
WVA was ahead of the Trek riders by a considerable margin. It was practically a guaranteed stage win. If he were behind the Trek guys, yes, fall back. But you don’t pull a guy out of a winning position for the stage to chase second place in GC. The stage win today salvages a terrible tour for the team, and now they can refocus on keeping JV on the podium with a win under their belt. Seems like a win-win to me.
I know what I saw and it’s only that’s happened a handful of times in the last year. It’s very meaningful and will give fuel and ideas to the teams going forward.
Then JV attacking Pog was the wrong strategy, or he needed to do it much earlier so he’d go over the top with a bigger gap. A lot of energy used by JV for no gain.
Similar to when Carapaz attacked earlier in the race, got a gap, and Movistar pulled him back
I think it was a big deal that Pog looked human - hard to imagine him ever loosing a wheel going up hill before today.
He definitely didn’t “crack” but other teams will think the race is on now.
We don’t know if Pog could have found an extra bit of something if he wasn’t already 5 mins up on GC however.
That was more of a crack for pog than all of last years tour, even though he got back on the descent. He lost some time on col de la lose but he was never hurting like that.
You don’t win races by following the other guy. Vingegaard, like Carapaz before him, needs to try something when he is feeling good to see if an attack will stick. Sometimes it gets you nothing, sometimes it works.
What’s a good highlights YouTube video? Gcn long highlights showed 20km to go then 4km, dunno how WvA got away or anything in the final bits really.