With Simon it's the 3rd week and the high mountains, I did have Tiberi as a potential podium finisher on my bingo card. That said, riding the Tour for the first time and fighting for a potential top 5 would have been a better learning experience for Tiberi (while Lenny Martinez gets to ride the Giro, far away from the French hypetrain).
Basically everyone had Tiberi as a potential podium candidate
Very little time between McNulty, A. Yates, Carapaz, Ciccone and Arensman though. I'd expect McNulty to drop out of the top 10 once the mountains get steeper. Lord knows with A. Yates, I don't feel like I have a good handle on his form. Carapaz and Ciccone I'd expect to move up too. I also would expect Isaac del Toro to lose quite a bit of time on the big mountain stages, but I'm not sure I have a great handle on exactly how good a climber he is. Basically, I'm hoping that the final Giro top 10 won't be quite as UAE dominated as it currently looks. I really miss the 2022 days when Pog's best mountain domestique was Majka. The fact their team is so stacked that Majka doesn't even get to go to the Tour anymore makes me sad. I actually kind of liked the OG UAE, it was a bit easier to overlook the sports washing when they weren't dominating every race of the season and buying up all the top talent.
The Vuelta win was a long time ago. A few times he looked really good early in the Giro then had issues sometimes with illness or crashes or simply bad days.
You claimed three times (and boasted of the fact that you said it three times) that UAE had not tweaked Del Toro's bike to get the best performance from it. I asked whether you knew that, or were simply repeating your guesswork.
I think time supported his approach. The top five in GC all had to slow down significantly at the end, whereas Roglic had it better there but possibly a bit worse at the start.
But once looked gold in the third week and ended up on the podium. We really have no idea with him.
In the end, Sienna's victims benefited today because they had a drier the first section.
Why would UAE/Bora try to drop Lidl domestiques on San Pellegrino though? I would suspect they just want to get through the day since the stage isn‘t that good for attacks.
Stage 16, 19, and 20 for some GC action. 11, 15, and 17 for some breakaway stages. Those GC stages I mentioned can also go to the break.
I know you're a fan but it's quite clear Roglic had the best conditions of these guys. The others finished in pouring rain! A bit of realism can't hurt.
The only guy where you can more or less safely say that he's not going to crack completely is Roglic (watch him do just that after I said this). Del Toro, Ayuso, Tiberi, Yates... I wouldn't bet on any of them. It would be fun to see Yates' revenge on Finestre though.
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram