Recent content by oropa

With Peyresourde only at Km 130, an early breakaway would have plenty of flat roads to get a decent gap, but probably Portet is just too hard to see a breakaway winner... a decent climber would need something like 5 minutes at the base of the Portet, at least, I reckon

:D Well, it's never come down to that, except for the crosswinds, perhaps... that could've been exploited a bit more / in other stages?

In my view, part of the answer is: Roglic, Landa, MAL and Yates are overestimating their potential performance on Saturday's TT Roglic is by no means 100% safe if Pogacar is 10-20" behind him on Saturday (nerves, a puncture, third week, who knows what), but it may be altogether too late to try...

How many feed / drink zones are there in a stage? It's like a leisure ride with the local club with a beer stop every 20km

Maybe INEOS wants to have a "not without a fight" performance? Today looks like a golden opportunity for Kwiatkowski, Sivakov, Amador, Carapaz... it's really the perfect day to get an edge with a team attack On profile, this is less hard than tomorrow, but if time gaps are to be seen on Loze...

Jumbo + Roglic reminds me more and more of Liquigas + Basso in the 2012 Giro Setting a pace that deters movements and at the same time is who buy the bluff... The prime objective is to get into the "comfort zone" with as many team-mates as possible so nobody wants to be the first to attack...

Fully agree with this. Today was a very good day to hold a long ITT and clean up the distortion in the GC so climbers would have their work cut out from tomorrow without the "I'm only xx seconds behind yellow, I can wait" excuse

Yeah, that's very much what Enric Mas said... I just can´t stand the argument "You haven´t been a professional, so you don't know anything about bike racing. This is a lot harder than you think" I wonder what Chiappucci or Hinault would think about these statements... they probably switched off...

it almost feels like a bad joke now... i know

Totally agree that a war of attrition is necessarily fought in multiple days. I haven't really seen any fight so far, so this is pretty much a long recovery ride so far. Even the breakaways (except for today) have been pretty low-key, to be generous. In my mind, JV wasted a few opportunities...

Personally, I've come to expect the racing to be neglected by the GC guys during the first week. Everybody fancies their chances and believes they have a lot to lose. All the focus is placed on stopping things from happening as the backbone of the strategy... for those who remember, it's like...

I actually thought Yates was going to try something when he positioned himself near the front at the beginning of the climb, but the real selection was only made like 1.5-2km out, with a lot of other guys "in range", where Yates had no real edge to fight for the win... In my impression, the...

Hopefully you're right and we'll see more of Primoz than just accelerations in the "control zone"... If I'm not wrong, he won every TT in Giro + Vuelta last year except for the final short one in Verona... also true that he had a much weaker team around him and his only real goal in the final...

In my mind, that should be JV's preferred scenario. Assuming Tom is not in top form (which he does not seem to be), they will probably try to keep things reasonably civilized up the Lusette and deliver Roglic to his 1-1.5km "comfort zone" in Mont Aigoual

Agreed... the way things stand at this point, I can´t see Jumbo thinking anything different than Roglic snatching a few seconds here and there and waiting it out for the TT... so far, so good Also, the Pyrenees stages aren´t that hard on paper, and I don´t particularly see why JV or INEOS will...