Recent content by Leinster

A medal at Worlds, to go with a TdF stage win and GC top 10 and a few days in yellow. And a stage at Itzulia, too. It’s been a big year for Ben. He needs a classic win, and a Vuelta stage. He can probably get a GC podium in one of the GTs if he picks the right one in the right year. If it...

Trek are wasting him carrying water for plodders like Ciccone, Milan and Pedersen.

We’ve seen it a couple times from Almeida now, it happened in the Giro a couple years ago, that sometimes when a group absolutely needs someone to get on the front, no games or waving about, and hammer up a climb, he’s the one who’ll go to the front and just do it. It might mean someone hops off...

When I was at the finish in Turin last year, I saw them literally patching a pothole in the minutes before the Caravan came through; I was really impressed with how quickly they did it. That was a much smaller fix than this one, though.

Quinn Simmons, Ben O’Connor, Storer, Martinez to all be in the break and fight it out for the win.

If they made it any harder, Pog would just ride away from everyone on every stage.

This is circular reasoning, though. Everybody “can’t win a GT” until they win one. Purito “can’t win a GT,” but Hesjedal can. Dumoulin can’t win a TdF, but Geraint Thomas can. Roglic can’t win a TdF, but Bernal can. 2019 Carapaz can win a Giro, but 2025 Carapaz can’t, and no Carapaz can win a...

Yates was cooked in 2018. He’d lost time the day before, and the only question on Finestre day was how much time Dumoulin, Carapaz, Lopez and the other gc contenders would put into him. When Sky went full-train, he hadn’t a hope.

With that in mind, they really should have been working to put someone in the break. If, say, Asgreen had been available in the valley when Wout was, the tactics would have played out very differently. And that applies to UAE too. Letting the guy at 1:21 have an unmarked domestique up the road...

In hindsight, Carapaz launched way too early on Finestre. Vaughters was on earlier in the week saying that Carapaz gets better when there’s multiple hard climbs in a row, but instead they went full gas on the lower slopes of the first hard climb of the day. They burnt their men so hard that...

He couldn’t drop him on the Fenestre, but if they’d kept Yates within 10-20s and close enough to bridge then other options come into play. I think especially given how fresh Del Toro seemed getting across the line that MOST of the blame probably falls to UAE, but to give Carapaz a pass on it is...

I’m so mad at Carapaz and Del Toro I’m finding it hard to be as happy as I should be for Yates.

If they’d worked together enough to keep Yates within a minute or so, that point might be valid, but they’ve both actively thrown it. Carapaz’s Giro win is 6 years ago now. His team haven’t won a GT since 2012; this was the biggest chance they’ll get for a long time to come. There’s no way he...

I mean, yes, but also no. Both Carapaz and Del Toro are actively throwing this away. As I type the gap has gone out to 4 minutes, so “have actively thrown” this away.

Time waits for no man.