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2019 Critérium du Dauphiné

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Not much wrong with the course, although it's not as tough as other years, with mostly middle mountains. I wonder what Fuglsang's shape will be like.

Scenario 1: Ineos train controls everything. Kwiatkowski wins by taking bonus seconds.
Scenario 2: Buchmann wins after taking five minutes in a breakaway in stage 1.
Scenario 3: Richie Porte wins. The bookmakers declare him top favorite for the Tour.
 
Stage 2 will have a gc impact. Either with a breakaway gaining 8 minutes and the new yellow jersey trying to hang on through the TT and MTF, or with a team of one solid contender (like Astana) just dropping the hammer and isolating some others to get their guy free in the last 30km.
 
Re:

Pantani_lives said:
Not much wrong with the course, although it's not as tough as other years, with mostly middle mountains. I wonder what Fuglsang's shape will be like.

Scenario 1: Ineos train controls everything. Kwiatkowski wins by taking bonus seconds.
Scenario 2: Buchmann wins after taking five minutes in a breakaway in stage 1.
Scenario 3: Richie Porte wins. The bookmakers declare him top favorite for the Tour.

I can at least live with Scenario 2...........
 
Not a bad route but I suspect Ineos will kill the racing and Froome will win pretty comfortably. He will be keen to assert himself as the team leader and I expect we will see him pretty close to his peak (sadly). I hope I'm wrong and something goes wrong with him and Ineos but I doubt it.
 
damian13ster said:
Really like the route! Unfortunately I will be travelling for most of the time so won't get to watch, but I do hope everyone at Ineos has freedom before going back into a regimen at TdF
Kwiatkowski could make this race very fun if he is allowed to!


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Overheard:
1-"Porte (said 'Portay') should ride a different bike."
2-"He used to, but couldn't win on a French bike either." (I assume he thinks that BMC or Pinarello is French? :)
Me-"He rides for TREK, so they probably want him to ride their bike."
2-"None of the guys in Europe actually ride the team bikes."
 
That last point was at least true back in the day. Riders would get a custom made bike or a bike they preferred sprayed up to look like the team bikes. That was easier when all the bikes were steel frames with standard gauge tubes. In these days of monocoque carbon frames, though, if you tried to pass off a respray of a Colnago as a Madone, you’d get laughed out of the UCI inspection tent.
 
Re:

Leinster said:
That last point was at least true back in the day. Riders would get a custom made bike or a bike they preferred sprayed up to look like the team bikes. That was easier when all the bikes were steel frames with standard gauge tubes. In these days of monocoque carbon frames, though, if you tried to pass off a respray of a Colnago as a Madone, you’d get laughed out of the UCI inspection tent.
That was one of several fun things in this exchange. The question being though, when was "back in the day"? We've got to be 20+ years at least (not counting TT bikes). The last of that in my (bad) memory was guys getting Ti bikes painted and stickered up to look like their sponsors' CroMo bikes.
 

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