2016 Eneco Tour (WT): Sept 19 - 25th

[barmaher]

Last year was a sumptuous ribeye steak, served with dauphinoise potatoes and braised red cabbage and a truffle and red wine jus.

This year is a burger and chips bought outside a nightclub.

 

[Velolover2]

What about Phinney? He used to be a pretty good classics rider.

And Quinziato. He won the stage to Geraardsbergen and is in front of GVA.

 

[Keram]

Where is golden kilometer tomorrow? Next stage is pretty easy to cause some damage. Sagan should collect as much bonuses as possible an try some long range attack at sunday. Could be fun.

 

[Kwibus]

Re: Re:

Biggest danger for Sagan is GVA who can sit on his wheel all day sunday and take those 6 secs on the vesten

Imagine the war on this forum pro Sagan vs pro GVA if it happens and in the end GVA takes the GC win

Gva sitting Sagans wheel will be perfectly fine though. Him working with Sagan would be insane ofcourse.

 

[Flamin]

Bah, terrible result. Dennis gonna win gc. On the positive side, Sagan can't wait til the Muur now.

 

[SKSemtex]

Mission impossible for Sagan. BMC has riders and nombers. And although it is good that Etixx is in the mix, BMC has all aces to play with.

 

[Dekker_Tifosi]

Only a miracle can do anything about Dennis winning the GC

ENECO is back to the years where the best time trialler wins the GC.

 

[SKSemtex]

But if he wins it somehow we can close that "nice" thread about the golden pedal.

 

[Gigs_98]

Dennis has the big advantage to have GVA in his team. If Greg just sucks Sagan's wheel Sagan can't really attack, since then Van Avermaet would be stronger and probably finish higher in the gc than Sagan. Therefore Peter somehow has to get rid of the whole BMC team.

 

[tomorrow]

Mission impossible for Sagan. BMC has riders and nombers. And although it is good that Etixx is in the mix, BMC has all aces to play with.

Maybe I am no seeing something, but why would it be so miracoulous? There are still 39 bonus seconds on the table left to take. And sagan can very possibly take at lesat 20 of them. And with the style he's be racing lately it wouldn't be such a surprise that he would win only thanks to them, two wins and golden km in the last stage should do it.
But I would enjoy much if he went full *** on sunday and let us get the feeling of the spring. It would be refreshing in these autumn days.

 

[portugal11]

Dennis has zero chances against sagan. He will loose a minute to him in the final stage. Only avearmat could do anything against him

 

[Maaaaaaaarten]

Re:

Only a miracle can do anything about Dennis winning the GC

Dennis has very little chance to win the GC.

Sagan and Etixx will easily demolish him in the Flemish Ardennes. Dennis' only chance is if GVA covers all Sagan and Etixx attacks and then they don't want to ride with GVA in their wheel and then there's never a serious attack from further out.

 

[MacBAir]

Re: Re:

Biggest danger for Sagan is GVA who can sit on his wheel all day sunday and take those 6 secs on the vesten

Imagine the war on this forum pro Sagan vs pro GVA if it happens and in the end GVA takes the GC win

That would be so awesome, specially if GVA jus wheelsucks.

I promise to do my best to burn this place down with my fanboyism.

 

[tomorrow]

Re: Re:

Only a miracle can do anything about Dennis winning the GC

Dennis has very little chance to win the GC.

Sagan and Etixx will easily demolish him in the Flemish Ardennes. Dennis' only chance is if GVA covers all Sagan and Etixx attacks and then they don't want to ride with GVA in their wheel and then there's never a serious attack from further out.

Imho sagan can actually afford tow gva to the finish, even if gva wins the stage, caus sagan will definately take bonuses both on saturday ano sunday, whereas gva will have only those taken from sagan on sunday, and that won't be enough.

Also, regarding the show, I think that the ttt did to gc exactly what the organizers hoped for. Certainly, the last stage is much more opened than last year

 

[Velolover2]

Re:

Dennis has zero chances against sagan. He will loose a minute to him in the final stage. Only avearmat could do anything against him

But do Phinney?

 

[Maaaaaaaarten]

Phinney has been very bad this year. Potentially he might be able to survive this type of terrain and get a good result here, but to be honest I'm expecting Phinney not to feature prominently in the GC. Quinziato on the other hand can go very far in Flanders on a good day. I mean, it's not like Quinziato has many good results in cobbled classics, but at least he has a lot of experience on these climbs unlike e.g. Dennis, and when you look at his results in the past in Flemish races you need to take into account that he's usually a domestique.

Dennis I'm predicting to fail, Phinney might do okay but I'm not expecting it, Quinziato can do very well if the race develops in the right way and if he's on a strong day, GVA should be up there, but whether he can nip it from Sagan, despite Sagan getting some more boni's, is a mystery. Etixx at least has the right team to destroy the race on Sunday and there are chances for Terpstra and Stybar too. Martin and Jungels are weird riders and I don't have a clue what they will do tomorrow, but both haven't looked that good recently though they're probably still good enough to contribute to Etixx attacks and tactics and being relatively close in GC can make them very useful in that role.

Also, Roglic is the high wizard of the Dinaric Alps and can do everything on a bike; he will ski-jump over the Muur and take it home on Sunday, but I'm not sure if he can take a big enough lead on Sagan to take the GC.

 

[SKSemtex]

There will be no bonus seconds for Sagan from golden km. ETIXX and BMC are not idiots and Sagan has not team to controll the race.
It will be very difficult to control all BMC and Etixx attacks in final stage or to get rid of everybody who is in front of him. The only key is to win tommorow, but the competition here is hungry as well.

 

[classicomano]

A Sagan who is forced to go balls to the wall to win is Best Sagan. He will perform magic on Sunday.

 

[Velolover2]

Isn't tomorrow's stage like poor man's Amstel Gold Race? Sagan could easily win the real AGR if he focused on it.

 

[Flamin]

Re:

Phinney has been very bad this year. Potentially he might be able to survive this type of terrain and get a good result here, but to be honest I'm expecting Phinney not to feature prominently in the GC. Quinziato on the other hand can go very far in Flanders on a good day. I mean, it's not like Quinziato has many good results in cobbled classics, but at least he has a lot of experience on these climbs unlike e.g. Dennis, and when you look at his results in the past in Flemish races you need to take into account that he's usually a domestique.

Dennis I'm predicting to fail, Phinney might do okay but I'm not expecting it, Quinziato can do very well if the race develops in the right way and if he's on a strong day, GVA should be up there, but whether he can nip it from Sagan, despite Sagan getting some more boni's, is a mystery. Etixx at least has the right team to destroy the race on Sunday and there are chances for Terpstra and Stybar too. Martin and Jungels are weird riders and I don't have a clue what they will do tomorrow, but both haven't looked that good recently though they're probably still good enough to contribute to Etixx attacks and tactics and being relatively close in GC can make them very useful in that role.

Also, Roglic is the high wizard of the Dinaric Alps and can do everything on a bike; he will ski-jump over the Muur and take it home on Sunday, but I'm not sure if he can take a big enough lead on Sagan to take the GC.

Dennis is in very good shape and still fresh so deep in the season, can't believe he'll do bad. If he doesn't win the gc, I think it's rather going to be for another BMC rider than Sagan.

 

[tomorrow]

There will be no bonus seconds for Sagan from golden km. ETIXX and BMC are not idiots and Sagan has not team to controll the race.
It will be very difficult to control all BMC and Etixx attacks in final stage or to get rid of everybody who is in front of him. The only key is to win tommorow, but the competition here is hungry as well.

I wouldn't be that sure about the golden km. On sunday it is just after las bosberg, and the bosberg is probably best place for sagan to unleash the beast. Look what he did in GW. After three muurs, everybody will already be tired. Btw, who do bmc have there besides gva, who could be able to control the race when the fun begins? Maybe quinciato and phiney. Thats too little. Etixx will want the stage at least, and for that they need to beat sagan. So it won't be that "easy" for bmc as it was for lotto last year.

 

[Brullnux]

The thing is, if Dennis, Phinney and Quinziato are all dropped early(ish) on i.e roughly twenty to go because Etixx have forced the pace, then GvA can't afford to sit on Sagan's wheel. If Dennis is distanced, then Sagan becomes the overwhelming favourite. However, if Rohan has a Zohan like day and stays in the main group all day, then Sagan has very little to no chance as GvA will likely follow him and sit on his wheel, and then outsprint him and take a few seconds too, if he attacks with 500 to go or so. GvA ofc has every right to do so, for obvious reasons.

 

[Keram]

There will be no bonus seconds for Sagan from golden km. ETIXX and BMC are not idiots and Sagan has not team to controll the race.
It will be very difficult to control all BMC and Etixx attacks in final stage or to get rid of everybody who is in front of him. The only key is to win tommorow, but the competition here is hungry as well.

I wouldn't be that sure about the golden km. On sunday it is just after las bosberg, and the bosberg is probably best place for sagan to unleash the beast. Look what he did in GW. After three muurs, everybody will already be tired. Btw, who do bmc have there besides gva, who could be able to control the race when the fun begins? Maybe quinciato and phiney. Thats too little. Etixx will want the stage at least, and for that they need to beat sagan. So it won't be that "easy" for bmc as it was for lotto last year.

But they need to catch early break by then. Or maybe Sagan will be in break some kilometres already

 

[MacBAir]

I'm sorry, but Dennis won't be able to follow Sagan at all. The issue is that if BMC is minimally smart, they can easily destroy tinkoff and attack with Phinney, Quinziato and Dennis himself, forcing Sagan's end and having GVA do what he does best, and win the overall.

This is BMC's best hope and there's nothing Sagan can do about it, unless we see some RVV level stuff.

 

[Monte]

Seems Dimension Data now will not get the neccessary Worldtour points, they will be CC team next year .. if not Boasson Hagen does something incredible tomorrow..