Tour de France 2022 - Hot Takes / Predictions / Spoilers Allowed (once the. Tour starts)

BTW, anyone interested in a laugh, listen to Pidcock’s interview just after the race and what he says about WvA.

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“Take the p”

Thomas, Vlasov, Uran, Woods lost 5 seconds. The top 14 got given the same time as Pogacar.

[image]Cycling News
Bettiol apologised to Powless for riding with Pogacar on Tour de France cobbles
2 hours ago
](Bettiol apologised to Powless for riding with Pogacar on Tour de France cobbles | Cyclingnews)

Looks like he provided a response…

+10 bonus seconds

The real tour de france starts tomorrow!

(mtf)

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First time watching the International feed on Peacock today; a definite improvement on Bob Roll and Phil Liggett but, goodness me, Nico Roche’s random pronunciation machine is annoying. I wouldn’t mind if he was pronouncing things badly but at least stuck to a consistent pronunciation. However, he appears to say choose completely random ways of saying names each time. Think he had 4 different ways of saying Pogačar today. Any reason why Hannah Walker isn’t paired with Ant McCrossan as I thought they were excellent together when I’ve heard them?

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Are the bits the gravel sections?

“He’s playing with our balls isn’t he?” - as true as it is funny.

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Colour scheme for the gradient/slope

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True. However, yes I believe it does include the gravel section as in 2018, hence the La Super

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Too bad it’s already over. :slightly_frowning_face:

This would be a much more interested race if the hay bale had tumbled in front of Pog.

WvA has been incredible all race, but what was the point of today? His first few days were spent chasing his goals (stage win, green, yellow) and yesterday he salvaged JV’s GC hopes. Today seemed like a huge and utterly pointless effort. Jumbo should be using all resources to try to advance their GC hopes or just conserve riders for future GC moves. WvA basically has green already given the state of the other sprinters, so today was a real head scratcher.

I’m wondering if Wout was sacrificed by the team to take the pressure off the rest of them after a crazy day yesterday. By going on the break, it allowed his teammates to not pace for the entire stage giving them a much easier go. And Wout knew that he was going to lose the jersey tomorrow, so he could go out with a blaze of glory and if everything went perfect, possibly win the stage, although it was a long shot. The team would know Wout could recover after a stage or two and hopefully the team would be in better shape by then.

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Perhaps the idea was to force UAE to work. Didn’t work. IMHO WVA should have sat on, that way the stage was for him to take.

I feel like there’s no logic. They spent so much energy putting WvA in the break (Multiple teammates did lead outs for him) and making everyone race flat out for 80+km did nothing to save his team. They could have let initial break or the one with Laporte go and it would have made more sense to me.

It has to be an WvA ego thing. But I think he could have stayed in the bunch and kept the jersey most likely. Just a head scratcher.

Yes and no. It was boom or bust. Yellow was gone tomorrow anyway, his target is Green. Riding as he did today he got maximum points against the opposition and it was a very small chance of a stage win, but a chance.

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So sit up after the intermediate sprint and gain some points in the finish? Or at least support the team. It looks 100% selfish to me after the intermediate sprint.

Well, I think that’s the difference between a plan and what happens on the road. It’s clear he meant to be in the break. The fact that the peloton wasn’t willing to let the yellow jersey go up the road without a fight probably should have been anticipated and you’re right, probably spent a lot more energy to make it happen than was planned. And maybe it was Wout’s ego that it had to be HIM being the one to do it.

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Feel like it was over yesterday. Unless Pog falls off his bike. Multiple times.

At least yesterday there was the hope, that Roglic is super strong and just had a bad luck. But at todays finish he got owned by Pogacar.