73ª Volta a Portugal 2.1 04/08 - 15/08

[trevim]

broco will get the second time but mestre will have yellow tomorrow. right?

I think you're right

 

[trevim]

Mestre 44s ahead of Broco in GC

 

[trevim]

Ribeiro lost 2.27 at the finish

 

[Mellow Velo]

Big gaps with one big hill remaining.

 

[canyonball]

Wow, just look at the stage results. Mestre really stands out.

 

[Parrulo]

mestre destroyed the field.

well tomorrow broco will have to go early if he wants to get back 46 seconds. cardoso is too far behind to do anything i would say.

it will be btw broco and mestre

 

[trevim]

Cardoso did really good. But Mestre really crushed it so... One more year in Portugal riding flat races for Cardoso I fear....

 

[Parrulo]

Cardoso did really good. But Mestre really crushed it so... One more year in Portugal riding flat races for Cardoso I fear....

its not like winning the volta would have changed that unfortunately.

 

[trevim]

I know that. But it would be his best chance

 

[canyonball]

I still hope for a glimpse of madness from Vidal Fitas. They had like four guys on the top of Senhora da Graça. Just send Cardoso from 60 km and let LA chase.

They have no reason to do that of course. Just dreaming...The most likely scenario is Cardoso back at domestique duties for tomorrow.

 

[trevim]

GC

1. Mestre
2. Broco +44
3. Cardoso +1.40
4. Ribeiro +1.59
5. Vilela +2.18
6. Sousa +2.29
7. Vitorino +2.35

 

[trevim]

Candido Barbosa on the podium now.

Christ he's so fat now How could he climb?!

 

[trevim]

Stage top10:

1.MESTRE Ricardo Jorge Correia PRT 45h52'02"
2.BROCO Hernani Manuel Conceiçao LAR 01'00"
3.VILELA Ricardo Augusto Afonso BOA 01'42"
4.CARDOSO Andre Fernando S. Martins PRT 01'42"
5.SOUSA Rui Miguel Barbosa BEF 01'55"
6.VITORINO Nelson Nuno Sequeira PRT 02'21"
7.RIBEIRO Sergio Miguel Vieira BEF 02'27"
8.CABREIRA Joao Paulo Costa BOA 02'39"
9.KRITSKIY Timofey TIK 02'50"
10.SANTOS Virgilio Martins LAR 03'00"

 

[jens_attacks]

damn missed the finale,had to drive like crazy back home to see sergio ribeiro failing(actually he didn't,i expect him next year maybe he will be stronger)...
at least something good happened:

my guess is that ribeiro will make the top 3 in the itt,the barbot team's devotion says all:they are uber confident in ribeiro's form otherwise how the hell did the sousa's become his domestiques?
if this won't happen,at least i want a strong performance from the tavira guys.

mestre killed it,tavira will control nicely the action tomorrow, he's the winner of this volta for sure,nice job.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Candido Barbosa on the podium now.

Christ he's so fat now How could he climb?!

He couldn't. He just miraculously discovered the ability for two weeks in August every goddamn year. But because he won practically everything he kinda hurt the cause of the sport for youngsters, since nobody else was getting their name out there.

Really good stage today. That's a real tough ITT parcours, chapeau to the organisers, one of the few times I'll say that with the parcours we've been given.

Mestre bossed the Trofeu Joaquim Agostinho and won the mountains jersey in the Volta ao Algarve - this has been his year for sure. Cardoso probably needs to put in a showing like the combined forces of himself on Senhora da Graça last year, Guerra on Torre in 2007 and Rolland on Luz Ardiden if he really wants to get out of Portugal. Can't believe nobody picked him up after his Worlds showing a couple of years ago too, he's shown he can do it over long distance pretty well.

LA had a lot of guys up at the front on Senhora da Graça - now, what people like Livramento do is irrelevant. Vitorino and Cardoso could be used as carrots, sure, but 44 seconds is something Broco can definitely win back on a good day, especially if Vilela and Sousa still think they have a chance (that's if Sousa isn't being asked to carry Ribeiro around, which is both depressing and extremely likely) and start animating things early on. Rui Sousa can usually be depended on to animate things, so we might have a great stage ahead of us.

 

[Parrulo]

. Can't believe nobody picked him up after his Worlds showing a couple of years ago too, he's shown he can do it over long distance pretty well.

in what year was that? last year he finished on the first group but ofc had no chance in the sprint.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

in what year was that? last year he finished on the first group but ofc had no chance in the sprint.

He was 15th in the Worlds last year (ofc had no chance in the sprint), which shows he's pretty good at lasting a 260km race, 100km longer than most of what he gets to do in Portugal, but he was also 17th in Mendrisio, lasting out a very long time at the front, and only Gerrans and Hoogerland finished ahead of him outside of ProTour riders, while he finished ahead of the group with the likes of Vino, Valjavec, Chavanel, Lövkvist and Gesink, all of whom you'd have thought the race suited more than Andre, especially given how few races of that kind of length he gets to compete in.

 

[Dekker_Tifosi]

Mendrisio was 1 week after the Vuelta 09, where Gesink got a huge hole in his knee a few days before the finish

not hard to finish in front of that in Mendrisio

 

[Parrulo]

Mendrisio was 1 week after the Vuelta 09, where Gesink got a huge hole in his knee a few days before the finish

not hard to finish in front of that in Mendrisio

believe it or not, gesink wasn't the subject of the discussion and was mostly likely one of a few random names libertine thought of.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

not hard to finish in front of that in Mendrisio

Ah yes, I remember that. Let's also bear in mind that apart from the Olympics (where he finished 16 minutes down), Andre Cardoso had never raced an event even close to that length before. Since the fall of Porto-Lisboa, there haven't been any races of that kind of length in Portugal.

Beating names like that when you're riding almost 100km past your usual racing threshold (as a lot of races in Portugal are .2 and have amateurs, plus the baking heat, we don't see much above 175km at any point) and have next to no experience of that kind of race, is still a good sign, and you'd think that after making the top 20 of the Worlds two years running, on two very different parcours, he might be worth a look.

The only non-ProTour riders above him were Gerrans - riding for the ProTour in all but name Cervélo, and Hoogerland, coming off a stellar Vuelta.

Cardoso has never been in a team bigger than Palmeiras Resort-Tavíra. The next best-placed rider from a Continental team was Miguel Ángel Rubiano, a Colombian who had been on CSF-Navigare earlier in his career and served a doping suspension, and had been in the breakaway. After that it was Rujano.

 

[Kazistuta]

Kinda funny that a race "hyped" by some very prolific posters in here might end up being decided on a time trial, just like Paris-Nice and all the other "Tony Martin-made" stage races

I know Mestre is a decent climber, so the comparison ids a bit harsh, but I would''ve thought that Volta A Portugal should've (should of? ) been decided in the mountains....

The German Panzerwagen would have easily won this years edition

 

[canyonball]

Extended coverage today on RTPn, though there's no live stream available yet. Vitor Gamito on the commentary box _o_

Right now there's a big group with 2:04 on the peloton. A sign of things to come? we can only hope!

12-António Amorim(Barbot/Efapel)
17-Bruno Pinto(Barbot/Efapel)
19-Filipe Cardoso(Barbot/Efapel)
25-Hugo Sancho(LA/Antarte)
34-Célio Sousa(Onda/Boavista)
38-Delio Fernandez(Onda/Boavista)
44-Domingos Gonçalves(Selecção Nacional portuguesa)
46-Micael Isidoro(Selecção Nacional portuguesa
53-Francesco Gavazzi(Lampre/ISD)
64-Gianluca Mirenda(Farnese Vini/Neri)
87-Fabricio Ferrari(Caja Rural)
102-Yohan Cauquil(La Pomme Marseille)
132-Alex Howes(Chipotle Development Team)
135-Robbie Squire(Chipotle Development Team)

 

[Parrulo]

Kinda funny that a race "hyped" by some very prolific posters in here might end up being decided on a time trial, just like Paris-Nice and all the other "Tony Martin-made" stage races

I know Mestre is a decent climber, so the comparison ids a bit harsh, but I would''ve thought that Volta A Portugal should've (should of? ) been decided in the mountains....

The German Panzerwagen would have easily won this years edition

cus martin would survive this

ya right

btw neither me nor libertine have any problems with races being decided on a time trial when the climbers get the chance to do something about it. paris nice had nothing that gave a chance to the climbers to drop martin so thats the difference.

oh and btw you can see right from the original post of this thread made by me even before we had seen the stage profiles and only knew the start and the finish place of each stage that i was disappointed because once again the volta ignored the alto de são macario.

 

[canyonball]

Kinda funny that a race "hyped" by some very prolific posters in here might end up being decided on a time trial, just like Paris-Nice and all the other "Tony Martin-made" stage races

Let's make conclusions in the end of the Volta. There's still a hard stage ahead (today). yes, it's not the thoughest parcours overall. I'll give you that.

Edit: Oh, I forgot...Andrea Guardini is out of the race. That's a bummer. We'll never know how many minutes he would have lost.

 

[trevim]

Off topic but to be fair to Paris Nice, the parcours wasn't the hardest, that's true. But on the stage of the Col d'Eze nobody even tried. Only Samu and he was way down. Even Vaitkus attacked somewhere on the last climb. So the climbers had the chance they just didn't took it. They handed Martin the race on a plate and he has done pretty well taking it.