2019 Tour de France, stage 12: Toulouse>Bagnères-de-Bigorre

[hrotha]

Re: Re:

I heard someone say others need to attack Ineos in the mountains because they lost so much time. Well today showed there will be none of that happening. It's a race for 3rd place now.

I disagree.

Today was a special stage, because the TT is tomorrow.

No GC contender will go deep today, because if they win 30 secs today, they can lose 2 minutes tomorrow.

The weekend is another matter, they will both be GC days.

Yep, gotta be careful before that ITT, otherwise you can lose too much on its [checks hand] 27-km course. It's not like a hard mountain stage could also hurt the time-trialists, after all.

 

[Broccolidwarf]

The examples of a podium candidate going deep, the day before the ITT, are few and far between in tour history

 

[tobydawq]

Re: Re:

I heard someone say others need to attack Ineos in the mountains because they lost so much time. Well today showed there will be none of that happening. It's a race for 3rd place now.

I disagree.

Today was a special stage, because the TT is tomorrow.

No GC contender will go deep today, because if they win 30 secs today, they can lose 2 minutes tomorrow.

The weekend is another matter, they will both be GC days.

Yep, gotta be careful before that ITT, otherwise you can lose too much on its [checks hand] 27-km course. It's not like a hard mountain stage could also hurt the time-trialists, after all.

How could this have been a hard mountain stage? There was a plus 30 km very unsteep descent down to the finish. Any attack would immediately have been doomed because of Ineos, and only the attacker would over-exert himself. Everybody knew this. A lot of fans also postulated that they knew that but when they were proven right, they still complain. Pathetic behaviour.

 

[LaFlorecita]

Like I feared, this stage was rendered irrelevant for the GC because of tomorrow's TT. Poor race design IMO.

 

[Alexandre B.]

Re:

Like I feared, this stage was rendered irrelevant for the GC because of tomorrow's TT. Poor race design IMO.

IMO the stage design itself was not good for attacks from the peloton.

 

[HelloDolly]

Re:

Like I feared, this stage was rendered irrelevant for the GC because of tomorrow's TT. Poor race design IMO.

Yes ...should have put the IT before today

 

[Keram]

This stage had absolutely zero potential for GC action.

I thought Yates ruined Trentin chance for win but he won so nevermind.


Am I only one who thinks Matthews giving up green contest was absolutely useless?

 

[Forever The Best]

What an awful stage. I didn't expect anything else because of the awful pacing (TT and 2 MTFs after this, who thought this would bring good racing?) but not even trying to set a high pace on climbs and trying to attack is a whole another level. And they will lose even more time tomorrow because they aren't good in TTs either.
The only 2 good stages happened because one was a really well designed stage (look, well designed hilly stages deliver) and the other had crosswinds.

 

[ppanther92]

Re:

Am I only one who thinks Matthews giving up green contest was absolutely useless?

No, not at all. The only ones seeing some sense in that decision seems to be Sunweb.

 

[movingtarget]

Re: Re:

Like I feared, this stage was rendered irrelevant for the GC because of tomorrow's TT. Poor race design IMO.

IMO the stage design itself was not good for attacks from the peloton.

It was pretty much designed for a winner from the break so no surprise.

 

[search]

Re:

Am I only one who thinks Matthews giving up green contest was absolutely useless?

it's certainly strange, today he didn't even take the free points at the intermediate sprint, and then he ended up working for Roche, who had no chance to win anyway (instead of hoping for a mid-size group sprint - he is certainly not a worse climber than Stuyven, who finished in G2)... there must be more behind this, I guess

 

[HelloDolly]

Contador on ES UK saying he though they wasted not attacking today esp Landa and Bardet who are far out and not top in IT and Bardet had 2 men up the road

I agree with him

 

[movingtarget]

Re: Re:

Am I only one who thinks Matthews giving up green contest was absolutely useless?

No, not at all. The only ones seeing some sense in that decision seems to be Sunweb.

All of the training he had put in was endurance work to help Dumoulin. He wasn't going to win green and he and the team knew it. Now he can go for stage wins and free up some of the other riders on the team as well.

 

[TourOfSardinia]

Re:

Contador on ES UK saying he though they wasted not attacking today esp Landa and Bardet who are far out and not top in IT and Bardet and 2 men up the road

I agree with him

Alberto
is right

 

[movingtarget]

Yates did everything right in the sprint. Very good win. I hope Landa was watching.

 

[Eyeballs Out]

Re: Re:

Am I only one who thinks Matthews giving up green contest was absolutely useless?

No, not at all. The only ones seeing some sense in that decision seems to be Sunweb.

All of the training he had put in was endurance work to help Dumoulin. He wasn't going to win green and he and the team knew it. Now he go go for stage wins and free up some of the other riders on the team as well.

He and the team didn't appear to know it for the first 10 stages

 

[TomLPC]

Alberto looks to be in good shape, would’ve been good having him about on a day like this

 

[carton]

Congrats to Simon Yates. Slightly confusing tactics at first but very well played at the end. Also, I am surprised that others are surprised. He is just about as fast as the other two guys. I mean, Mühlberger and Bilbao are explosive enough riders, but so is Yates. It wasn't like it was Tejay stealing a march on Valverde and Alaphilippe or something.

The GC lives to fight on another day, today was never a day for GC attacks. But I do wish Movi/EF/FDJ/Jumbo at least made it a little harder, though, and pushed the pace up those hills -I actually counted nine men on the Skineos train because I temporarily forgot Thomas wasn't in yellow yet. Make it a potluck train and put in a rider apiece, if you need to. Because if you don't start wearing out those Ineos doms now, they will wear everyone out when it counts.

 

[tobydawq]

The Danish "experts" think Alaphilippe will lose yellow tomorrow.

I think he will lose less than 15 seconds to Thomas.

 

[HelloDolly]

Re: Re:

Am I only one who thinks Matthews giving up green contest was absolutely useless?

No, not at all. The only ones seeing some sense in that decision seems to be Sunweb.

All of the training he had put in was endurance work to help Dumoulin. He wasn't going to win green and he and the team knew it. Now he go go for stage wins and free up some of the other riders on the team as well.

He and the team didn't appear to know it for the first 10 stages

Matthews said in an interview yesterday that he wanted to go for green but team wanted him to only do stages

Sunweb make some strange decisions
Didn't want a GC ride by Kelderman and didnt want a green ride by Mathews...only stages which are hard to win unless you have a top sprinter

 

[Forever The Best]

Re:

What an awful stage. I didn't expect anything else because of the awful pacing (TT and 2 MTFs after this, who thought this would bring good racing?) but not even trying to set a high pace on climbs and trying to attack is a whole another level. And they will lose even more time tomorrow because they aren't good in TTs either.
The only 2 good stages happened because one was a really well designed stage (look, well designed hilly stages deliver) and the other had crosswinds.

Plus, a similar stage in Giro to Pinerolo saw action with Landa and Lopez attacking on Montoso.

 

[Midnightfright]

Re:

The Danish "experts" think Alaphilippe will lose yellow tomorrow.

I think he will lose less than 15 seconds to Thomas.

He wont lose Yellow but I would be very impressed if he loses less than 15 seconds to Thomas

 

[yaco]

I was shocked to see S.Yates in the break and a bit surprised with Trentin - Commentators are stating that Simon will be the main helper for Adam - In fact Jack haig will be the number one mountain support rider.

 

[search]

Re: Re:

The Danish "experts" think Alaphilippe will lose yellow tomorrow.

I think he will lose less than 15 seconds to Thomas.

He wont lose Yellow but I would be very impressed if he loses less than 15 seconds to Thomas

looks pretty much like a perfect course for him. He'll lose some time on the final 10k, but after the 2nd split he may even be ranked 1st, I 'd think.

 

[yaco]

I expect Alaphalippe to lose around 30 seconds to Thomas - This stage is nearly a carbon copy of the Dauphine ITT and the time gaps weren't that large.