Critérium du Dauphiné 2024, June 2 - 9

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That's not how racing works. You expect all 170 riders to agree with each other to go slow done the descent and wait for each other at the bottom, despite, no doubt, intense pressure from DS's to try to gain a racing advantage? You only need a couple of those 170 riders to try to gain an advantage, and the rest have to follow. Everybody has got quicker, bikes have got quicker, pressure has increased, fron all sides. To expect a peloton to disregard all of that and act purely in each other's interests when fatigue and adrenalin are high is utterly ludicrous. The only reasonable solution is to make bikes safer and slower. Putting the onus on riders to solve this problem is not going to work. Sorry, it isn't, and the meat grinder is going to get worse and we're going to miss out on seeing the best riders because they're in a hospital bed.
El Patron, the one and only Juanpe, would have kept them in line.
 
Verona always writes a bit about the stages on Strava, and also today (google translated from Spanish):

"The truth is that I don't know what happened, personally in the first of the three descents today, I have already seen that the ground was much more slippery than usual, since I started with "dry" pressure in both wheels, and Right at the start I decided to deflate the front wheel a little but not the rear one since normally there are never grip problems on this one... but on that first descent, the rear wheel did a couple of strange things on me and I had to leave it alone. to the AG2R rider I was racing with because I felt completely out of my comfort zone.

Later we heard on the radio that in the escape a rider had fallen, that two motorcycles from the organization had also fallen, and on the second of the three descents I led the peloton as slowly as possible to try to reduce tension in the group and that the teams in the general classification saw that we only and exclusively wanted to compete in the sprint, but in the last descent and only 20km to the finish line, we all wanted to be in front even though my intention was the same as in the previous descent, and although I managed to stay at the head of the pack, we all wanted to be there, no one wanted to lose a weather to be ahead and the way the road was today, the last thing we could do was brake... but we didn't all get on the road, we have passed the first five and Then some team will have wanted to speed up the braking to gain positions and ciao... a millisecond that changes everything, and what could have been a day of great teamwork has ended up being a day of resignation and satisfaction for being all on our bikes. ."


That fully matches my impression watching it.

If the GC teams had chilled and let Trek manage the affairs up front, it wouldn't have went down like it did.
 
Its kinda like Jumbo going full *** in Dwaars door Vlaanderen when these GC-teams with much bigger fish to fry ride like this on meaningless stage such as this
It is almost like they are trying to catch someone slipping or in a very cynical way to look at it... provoke things like this occuring, but somehow being hit with the biggest blows themselves. Like it is self inflicted (from everyone involved).

Pretty much the same teams and riders involved here as in Basque as well, which makes it a bit eerie.
 
Aquaplaning is impossible on a bicycle, the contact patch is too small, this is also why bicycle tyre tread is purely cosmetic. All grip is obtained from the friction between stone and deforming the rubber, not the rubber channelling away water through the grooves to reduce potential aquaplaning.
The contact patch is smaller, but the total weight is also MUCH less.

a bike rider on 30 mm tires inflated to 80 psi mounted on 25 mm (inside) rims with a combined weight of 170 lbs.

an automobile on 225/18 tires inflated to 40 psi with a combined weight of 4,500 lbs.
 
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Remco was going for the win all along here. That talk before the race, as I suspected, was Senator Remco sandbagging

You could also just link the original article, it isn't behind a paywall and you don't support a clickbait website that just steals content.


Quite funny though that Lefevere said the opposite to Sporza in front of the camera. Well opposite is a strong word but he just said that the TT was the real test and in the mountains they would wait and see.
 
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It was @houtdffan who brought it up here.

What is your reaction to what Lefevere says?
I don’t believe Evenepoel wanted to go for the win from the start. Lefevere might, but I don’t think Evenepoel would say I’m going to help teammates and then be the leader. At least not deliberately.

I think he’s unsure, in general insecure, and he doesn’t want to overpromise so he covers himself in case he does another Vuelta ‘23.
 
Evenepoel with a pretty good comment:

“My helmet saved me,” Evenepoel continued. “That shows once again how important it is to wear it.” After such a massive fall, the discussion about safety in the pro peloton automatically flares up again, which Evenepoel also understands. The riders could have handled it smarter (in hindsight), he indicated. Especially since some had called for taking it easy. "It was the last dangerous point of the day. And we knew there had been falls in the previous descent as well, so we could have maybe ensured a little more peace."

Whether he still enjoys it, a colleague asked at the press conference. It prompted a grin on Evenepoel's face, but at the same time he was very serious. "Good question. I still love my job, but my job is to win races like in the time trial and not be on the ground. At times like this, you do start to think a little more negatively about it. Why all this pressure at the front when we go downhill? Why does everyone want faster and faster bikes with faster tires and less grip? There are many whys, but no answers."