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General News Thread

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Ok, I just took a closer look at the profile's of the Tour of the Alpes and oh boy, they are horrible.
Stage 1: That one fine with with the final circuit that features a short uphill ramp before the finish line.
Stage 2 features a pointless 10km flat circuit around Lana at the end so that no gc action can happen, that is just Lana spelled backwards.
Stage 3: They actually take the road through Oberolang after the Furcia descent to have a shot uphill section, but then they go out of their way and turn left instead of going straight ahead over the Sallerstraße climb. That would be another short climb and you'd cut the 12.5km of flat a the ed down to 5kms of flat.
Stage 4: The final climb is this one until 7.5kms to go, doesn's scream gc action to me, buut I could be wrong:
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The start of the stage is actually interesting, the long descent of the Kartitscher Sattel is always up and down and features lots of twists and turns. If the stage would finish in Kötschach-Mauthen or even in Oberdrauburg after the Gailbergsattel it would be a great place for an ambush.

Stage 5: This one is actually pretty great and features multiple awesome shorter climbs and a punchy uphill finish at the end, cero,cero,cero complains.
I mean they use the Pustertaler Höhenstraße, you can't go wrong with that one.
From right to left:
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Amanuel Ghebreigzabhier crashed hard in Catalunya, is still in the hospital and will be out for a number of months.
 
Amanuel Ghebreigzabhier crashed hard in Catalunya, is still in the hospital and will be out for a number of months.

Wow, that must have been on the final lap of the circuit, because I remember he made a small attack at one point and I was thinking that he could become the first black African to win a World Tour race. Then someone else became that instead.

Sad news, he has been riding really well so far this year. Skjelmose said that he had had all sorts of troubles following him in the Tour de La Provence.
 
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There will potentially be a space program in Vietnam as we approach the almighty HTV Cup for 2022, as after two years with quarantine regulations going down, there have been some shifts around the Vietnamese bunch and some new imports, after for the last two seasons Javier Sardá (2019 and 2020 winner) and Loïc Désriac (2021 winner) have been the only overseas riders to contest the race, having been resident in Vietnam already when the pandemic struck.

The Vietnamese Cândido Barbosa, Nguyễn Tấn Hoài, has moved from the multi-coloured DDT team to Lộc Trời, where he will be joined by former Rusvelo man Roman Maikin. Maikin has some experience racing in Asia, riding for Cambodia Cycling Academy in 2020 briefly, and doing the Tour of China races with Minsk Cycling Club in 2019. Nguyễn's spot at DDT will be filled with Loïc Désriac, who moves across from BikeLife.

Iranian climber Ali Khademi, who has been out of action for a while but is returning to the bunch after four years out (hmmm, that's not suspicious at all) and has joined the Àn Giàng team, his most noteworthy results are a 5th in the Tour of Iran-Azerbaijan and a 12th in the Banyuwangi Tour de Ijen, but he was a domestique for Tabriz Petrochemical Team during their most absurdly petrochemical phase from 2013-2016.

Meanwhile, the real space program can begin, as the HCM-Vianam team which already boasts Javier Sardá has announced they have signed COSMONAUT FROLOV.
 
Wow, that must have been on the final lap of the circuit, because I remember he made a small attack at one point and I was thinking that he could become the first black African to win a World Tour race. Then someone else became that instead.

Sad news, he has been riding really well so far this year. Skjelmose said that he had had all sorts of troubles following him in the Tour de La Provence.
I remember seeing him in the Österreich Rundfahrt 2019, when Vlasov won on the Horn he finished 3rd. He attacked too early on the climb, otherwise he could have been fighting for the stage win. He's a really strong rider.
 
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There will potentially be a space program in Vietnam as we approach the almighty HTV Cup for 2022, as after two years with quarantine regulations going down, there have been some shifts around the Vietnamese bunch and some new imports, after for the last two seasons Javier Sardá (2019 and 2020 winner) and Loïc Désriac (2021 winner) have been the only overseas riders to contest the race, having been resident in Vietnam already when the pandemic struck.

The Vietnamese Cândido Barbosa, Nguyễn Tấn Hoài, has moved from the multi-coloured DDT team to Lộc Trời, where he will be joined by former Rusvelo man Roman Maikin. Maikin has some experience racing in Asia, riding for Cambodia Cycling Academy in 2020 briefly, and doing the Tour of China races with Minsk Cycling Club in 2019. Nguyễn's spot at DDT will be filled with Loïc Désriac, who moves across from BikeLife.

Iranian climber Ali Khademi, who has been out of action for a while but is returning to the bunch after four years out (hmmm, that's not suspicious at all) and has joined the Àn Giàng team, his most noteworthy results are a 5th in the Tour of Iran-Azerbaijan and a 12th in the Banyuwangi Tour de Ijen, but he was a domestique for Tabriz Petrochemical Team during their most absurdly petrochemical phase from 2013-2016.

Meanwhile, the real space program can begin, as the HCM-Vianam team which already boasts Javier Sardá has announced they have signed COSMONAUT FROLOV.

I should be able to get to the Hanoi stage on the 10th - this race is so poorly promoted here that I didn't know it was in Hanoi at all last year - and I live 3 blocks from Hoan Kiem Lake.

I see the Hanoi stage is a mammoth 43km, but I can't see start/finish times - I suspect somehow you'll know?
 
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I should be able to get to the Hanoi stage on the 10th - this race is so poorly promoted here that I didn't know it was in Hanoi at all last year - and I live 3 blocks from Hoan Kiem Lake.

I see the Hanoi stage is a mammoth 43km, but I can't see start/finish times - I suspect somehow you'll know?
The promotion tends to be better in the south for the race, owing to the organisers' location, but yes, the stage on the 9th ends in Hanoi and then there is a crit stage in Hanoi on the 10th. Those super short stages in the HTV Cup tend to be crits, these are quite common in the race on recent evidence.

During the pandemic period they've tended to stick to the same routes for the race as they've already closed off those areas previously. As a result last year's stage is a good indicator for the route. Last year's Hanoi stage was 42,5km in length so I suspect it's the same stage exactly - so it would be around Hoan Kiem Lake.

Looks like the main climbing stage to Da Lat will have the climbing further from the finish once more. I really thing the Hai Van stage needs to finish at Bàn Cò if they are going to insist on descending into Da Nang, because they got much better gaps in the rival VTV Cup when they put the finish at the summit, and that being fairly early in the race would improve the second half. I guess, however, that they haven't wanted to eliminate NTH from contention for the home audience and he keeps on picking up the bonus seconds that challenge the overseas stars in the GC. With Désriac moving away from BikeLife so that Nguyễn Hoàng Sàng will be their sole leader, however, there is a Vietnamese climber who could be up in the GC mix, especially as their team has a good TTT, so this reliance on the bonus seconds for the home interest needn't continue. There are a few more climbs in the race's southern heartlands that they could use that would shake up the race a bit more. Would love a MTF at the Yersin Hut, but that's a genuine HC and probably a bit OTT seeing as the depth of the field here is hardly comparable to the Banyuwangi Tour de Ijen or the Tour de Langkawi, but still something like Bàn Cò as previously mentioned, or Chùa Bà Rá at Phước Long, would be a suitable type of MTF stage for the race, being around 5-6km in length, steep enough to ensure gaps but not long enough to become completely over-decisive.

Unless Cosmonaut Frolov sets the thrusters to hyperdrive of course.
 
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Frolov has been racing and training in Thailand before and he has been training around Dalat for 2 weeks,, so he should be used to the climate.
I know more than one story of central Europeans who travelled to Southeast Asia and got rheumatism for a few weeks because of the high humidity.
I hoped that we'd get to see Frolov in some of the Chinese races like the Tour of Quinghai Lake.
 
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Really gutted by news of Richard's passing. We had corresponded briefly in the past re: In Search of Robert Millar and loved listening to the show - especially the daily grand tour ones which were a real ritual for a while for me.

I only started listening last fall (after the Vuelta) and had been looking forward to their daily Grand Tour shows so I wasn't as used to him as others might have been. But I really found him very likeable, especially with his great British humour.
 

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