Giro 2018 stage 13: Ferrara – Nervesa della Battaglia 180 km

[Zinoviev Letter]

Steppers not working at all

 

[Laplaz]

Katusha working for the 9th place of Planckaert

 

[More Strides than Rides]

Re:

Steppers not working at all

Every team looks depleted.

 

[dgodave]

nice kick!

 

[DNP-Old]

Damn, some sprint from Viviani. Exhausted? Not so much!

 

[Climbing]

Regal sprint!

 

[Zinoviev Letter]

Bennett way out of position. Don’t know what Bora were at. Nice finish Viviani

 

[Laplaz]

Coledan winning would have been great

 

[skippo12]

Re: Giro 2018 stage 13: Ferrara – Nervesa della Battaglia 18

Bennett is the strongst but Viviani is smarter. Bora did a terrible job on the last kms. Bennett was in 20-25 position with 500m to go.

 

[Carols]

Ho Hum Viviani again......

Hopefully some real racing tomorrow

 

[Bye Bye Bicycle]

Re:

Katusha working for the 9th place of Planckaert

Indeed. :lol:

 

[tobydawq]

Re:

Katusha working for the 9th place of Planckaert

Haha, epic call!

 

[Climbing]

Re:

Ho Hum Viviani again......

Hopefully some real racing tomorrow

Can't really hide up there, can they? :lol:

 

[EroicaStradeBianche]

Re:

Coledan winning would have been great

Too great

 

[Squire]

Brave sprint by Viviani. Diving through the gaps.

 

[movingtarget]

Re:

Brave sprint by Viviani. Diving through the gaps.

Made it look easy.

 

[Laplaz]

Re: Re:

Katusha working for the 9th place of Planckaert

Indeed. :lol:

Katusha working for the 9th place of Planckaert

Haha, epic call!

 

[Eyeballs Out]

Good piece by Flecha on Eurosport about how Quickstep organised the sprint so that Bennett couldn't get Viviani's wheel this time

 

[skippo12]

Re:

Good piece by Flecha on Eurosport about how Quickstep organised the sprint so that Bennett couldn't get Viviani's wheel this time

I wonder why teams aren`t able to do a similar move more often. Stybar did a great job to keep the position behind Viviani and when Quickstep moved to the front he simpy blocked Bennett.

 

[Zinoviev Letter]

Re: Re:

Good piece by Flecha on Eurosport about how Quickstep organised the sprint so that Bennett couldn't get Viviani's wheel this time

I wonder why teams aren`t able to do a similar move more often. Stybar did a great job to keep the position behind Viviani and when Quickstep moved to the front he simpy blocked Bennett.

You can only really pull it off with a pretty aggro big lump with both speed and bike handling skills like Stybar. If you try it with a flimsier rider a real sprinter will simply knock them out of the way (in fact Bennett bumped Morkov off Viviani’s wheel without so much as slowing his cadence a few stages ago and Morkov isn’t a lightweight). Most of the time it isn’t worth deploying such a rider in that role rather than as a lead out. It only makes sense here because QS have an endless supply of big lumps and know that Bennett is the only rider likely to beat Viviani, so getting in Bennett’s way is more useful than adding to their lead out. Viviani and Bennett will still smash the third tier guys almost no matter what.

Sprints where two riders are on a different level to the rest have an element of the chess match to them. Here Bennett has the edge on hills and power and is probably faster in a drag race, but Viviani is winning 3-2 because he’s very clever and has better support.