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32ème édition du Tour de l'Ain (2.1) // August 7th - 9th 2020

Page 10 - Get up to date with the latest news, scores & standings from the Cycling News Community.
Will wait for stage 3, to start making conclusions. The performance of TJV today was exceptional on multiple levels. Isolating Bernal in such fashion, it almost reads as science fiction. Bernal is in good form, though. I have a feeling that Froome, maybe Thomas, more or less came for Grand Colombier. We'll see tomorrow. Dumoulin can't be in all that bad shape, dropping Thomas and Froome. Bennett has put a lot of heart in it today, exceptional performance. First time i have seen Kruijswijk on Roglič side. Isolating Bernal for the second time, Kruijswijk making Castroviejo work, that was just brilliant. Quintana again performing good, time is running out for Aru.

P.S. Tomorrow, on stage 3, i expect Ineos to perform better.
 
Today will be the day where a lot should become evident Re: Froomester and G. They can't afford making it into a training ride. Need to show something to reassure the team and less important, us, the fans too. My prediction is Chris will flop and G will be average but with enough to assure his status as co-leader
 
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The question I have is do the Tour de France riders need to be in great form already. Pinot's level at the Route du Sud is probably at the top end of where I'd want to be. Hope Quintana gets it right this time (if only because of that training crash...)
You have a good point. But I am worried for Froome he is not going to make the final selection if he does not show something reassuring soon
 
The question I have is do the Tour de France riders need to be in great form already. Pinot's level at the Route du Sud is probably at the top end of where I'd want to be. Hope Quintana gets it right this time (if only because of that training crash...)
Depends individually. Some riders are closer to top form than others throughout the year, some have higher peaks in relative terms, etc. For this reason they will at this point be racing with different levels of fatigue and freshness too.

My thinking may be old school here, but Id rather be at 90-95% at the moment, with the engine built and trimmed. Like Bernal and Roglic are. The last bit, or sharpness, comes via hard efforts specific to your racing needs, ie racing, and some tapering.
 
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If Almeida holds on to his Top 10 today he will have finished Algarve (9th), Burgos (3rd) and l'Ain all in the top 10. Which would actually be pretty incredible for a 1998 neo-pro a couple of years ago. Now with Pogacar, Evenepoel, Bernal this is almost an underperformer :)

Curious also to see Van Wilder today.
 
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12 riders in the break:

Mauri Vansevenant & Andrea Bagioli (Deceuninck-Quick Step), Romain Saigle & Léo Vincent (Groupama-FDJ), Julien Bernard (Trek-Segafredo), Carl Fredrik Hagen (Lotto-Soudal), Will Barta, Joey Rosskopf en Georg Zimmerman (CCC Team), Mads Würtz Schmidt (Israel Start-Up Nation) & Thymen Arensman & Sam Oomen (Team Sunweb).
 
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