Le Tour '18 stage 12: Bourg-Saint-Maurice > Alpe d'Huez 175k

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Who is going to win the stage?

  • Chris Froome

    Votes: 46 41.8%
  • Geraint Thomas

    Votes: 7 6.4%
  • Tom Dumoulin

    Votes: 4 3.6%
  • Romain Bardet

    Votes: 9 8.2%
  • Nairo Quintana

    Votes: 12 10.9%
  • Vincenzo Nibali

    Votes: 3 2.7%
  • Primoz Roglic

    Votes: 7 6.4%
  • Steven Kruijswijk

    Votes: 8 7.3%
  • Mikel Landa

    Votes: 3 2.7%
  • Someone else

    Votes: 11 10.0%

  • Total voters
    110
  • Poll closed .
Re: Le Tour '18 stage 12: Bourg-Saint-Maurice > Alpe d'Huez

SKSemtex said:
I know that nobody cares about the green jersey but does anybody knows what was the maximum scored in the points competition.

Should be easy peasy for Sagan to beat it this year, no matter how big this record is.

They have changed the scoring system so many times that you cannot compare.
 
Re: Re:

saganftw said:
TMP402 said:
yaco said:
Thomas has a fast sprintf for a climber type - Probably only Valverde beats him in a sprint.

Former Tour Down Under Sprints clasification winner Geraint Thomas?

thats former track champion turned cobble specialist turned best climber among time trialists and best time trialist among climbers and best sprinters among non sprinters to you ,put some respec on his name :D

A great all-rounder indeed.
 
Re: Re:

yaco said:
Zinoviev Letter said:
arvc40 said:
rick james said:
arvc40 said:
Thomas just Superb and an incredible ambassador for the Sport. Great stage. Only spoilt by the absolute scum that Boo the riders.
better with boos than piss get thrown and fans attacking them

Yes, I suppose so.

There’s nothing at all wrong with booing riders. It’s an entirely civilized way to show disapproval of the behaviour of people with a public profile or platform.

You are wasting energy by booing riders instead of using positive energy to cheer on riders - The French public are embarrassing their country with their uncouth behaviour, whereas in the Giro the fans were well behaved.
I hope you realize that the crowds in mountain stages are remarkably international.
 
Re:

Amazinmets87 said:
32 is still peak age for an endurance athlete. I believe the posters expression incredulity over his age are referencing his late-career ascension to an elite GC rider.

It's just the way his career panned out. Being at Sky meant it was hard to be a leader with wiggins and Froome about and in many ways he's been a victim of his own versatility. That plus a lot of bad luck at bad times
 
Re: Re:

willbick said:
Amazinmets87 said:
32 is still peak age for an endurance athlete. I believe the posters expression incredulity over his age are referencing his late-career ascension to an elite GC rider.

It's just the way his career panned out. Being at Sky meant it was hard to be a leader with wiggins and Froome about and in many ways he's been a victim of his own versatility. That plus a lot of bad luck at bad times

And he famously doesn't have a winning mentality, too willing to be generous to others. Even in his interview today he said he was only planning on keeping yellow for a few days because Froome is the main man and a legend.
 
Re:

willbick said:
Team sky have known that Thomas has the ability to win a GT for years. He's finally got the chance to show it as he's in top form and allowed to ride for himself and has avoided mishap. But I suppose the arrogant keyboard warriors on this forum think they know more about what it takes to win the tour than the team who have won it 5 of last 6 years. Laughable. P.s. 32 is no age at all for modern day endurance athletes

Oh and btw he would have podiumed at least in last year's giro if he hadn't been knocked off by a moto. Was in top form then but didn't get the chance to show it

Amazing how Sky seem to just keep discovering these late career nobodies who were secret Tour winners all along. Even more amazing the succession of marks willing to lap it up and tell us all that there’s nothing surprising about it.

We’ve had the late 20s track rider and second tier prologue specialist who it turns out always had the ability to win GTs. Then we had the late 20s low grade career domestique best known for winning the anatomic jock race and getting thrown out of a Giro for needing a motor vehicle to get to the top of an incline. He also always had the secret ability to win a GTs. Now we have the thirty two year old failed cobbled classics contender who has never come close to even troubling the top 10 of a GT in a dozen previous rides, reaching early middle age as a GT non entity and guess what? Sky knew all along that he was a future GT contender.

I’m thinking of giving “Sir” Dave Brailsford a ring myself, to see if he’ll order a few lab tests for me. After all, I fit the pattern. I’m in my thirties. To the foolish among us I’ve never yet shown any indication that I have capacity to contend for a GT. I would certainly need the help of a motor vehicle to finish a Giro mountain stage. I’ve generally been better at cycling on the flat than uphill, but crucially I’ve never been so good at cycling on the flat that I’m in any danger of winning a cobbled monument or dominating longer TTs. I’ve missed testing myself in the Junior Tour of Wales, but Im pretty sure that I too wouldn’t have been good enough to win it. I could probably do with losing a few kilos too.

All Dave needs to do is provide a contract and a few training plans and I’ll be skipping my way up the Alpe, guiding the last guy to go through the same process behind me. Best of all, there will be an endless supply of slack jawed yokels willing to assure anyone sceptical of my apparent ability that it’s all perfectly normal, expected even. I won’t even have to pay them. They will embarrass themselves for free.
 
Re: Re:

woodburn said:
Riding for GC and domestiquing are totally different things. Yes, you pull but then you can chill to the finish.

Not when you finish 11th on GC. If he'd have "chilled to the finish" he'd have finished half an hour behind and taken it easy in the time trials instead of riding them faster than LeMond.

woodburn said:
Fact is, Indurain dropped time on Alpe and other places because he wasn't strong enough.

No, Indurain dropped 15 minutes on Alpe because he spent most of the stage hammering on the front on the flat while LeMond sat in the wheels because Pensec was in yellow.

woodburn said:
LeMond, however, didn't have the chance to attack and gain time until the final stages. Even up Luz Ardiden, LeMond attacked and Indurain just sat on the whole way to allow him to sprint for win. Wouldn't work same way if Indurain was GC contender.

You're misremembering. While LeMond took more pulls, they both worked. And it wasn't a sprint, LeMond just couldn't take the pace and eventually lost the wheel. Unless you consider riding in the saddle for 500m without any accelerations "a sprint" :)

This discussion is "Was Indurain clearly strong enough to win the Tour even before he won it?"
The answer is an unequivocal yes.

Here are the time gaps between the two. On every other stage they finished s.t.
Read it and tell me exactly where, in your words, "Indurain dropped time because he wasn't strong enough"

Prologue (ITT):
LeMond
Indurain +13 seconds

Stage 3 (TTT)
Z
Banesto + 1m05s

Stage 4 (flat)
Lemond
Indurain + 17 seconds (crash)

Stage 7 ITT
Indurain
LeMond + 47s

Stage 11 (mountain. The stage we discussed, where Indurain buried himself on the front for Delgado long before they even got to the Alpe)
LeMond
Indurain +11m55s

Stage 12 (mountain ITT)
Indurain
LeMond +13s

Stage 13 (flat-ish)
LeMond
Indurain +36s

Indurain was in the front group with LeMond descending to the finish line when he was ordered to stop and wait for Delgado who was in the chasing group. So he did. Once again it wasn't a problem with the legs

Stage 14 (medium mountain)
Indurain
LeMond +10s

Stage 15 (mountain)
Indurain
LeMond +6s

Stage 20 (ITT)
Indurain
LeMond +14s
 
Re: Re:

Zinoviev Letter said:
willbick said:
Team sky have known that Thomas has the ability to win a GT for years. He's finally got the chance to show it as he's in top form and allowed to ride for himself and has avoided mishap. But I suppose the arrogant keyboard warriors on this forum think they know more about what it takes to win the tour than the team who have won it 5 of last 6 years. Laughable. P.s. 32 is no age at all for modern day endurance athletes

Oh and btw he would have podiumed at least in last year's giro if he hadn't been knocked off by a moto. Was in top form then but didn't get the chance to show it

Amazing how Sky seem to just keep discovering these late career nobodies who were secret Tour winners all along. Even more amazing the succession of marks willing to lap it up and tell us all that there’s nothing surprising about it.

We’ve had the late 20s track rider and second tier prologue specialist who it turns out always had the ability to win GTs. Then we had the late 20s low grade career domestique best known for winning the anatomic jock race and getting thrown out of a Giro for needing a motor vehicle to get to the top of an incline. He also always had the secret ability to win a GTs. Now we have the thirty two year old failed cobbled classics contender who has never come close to even troubling the top 10 of a GT in a dozen previous rides, reaching early middle age as a GT non entity and guess what? Sky knew all along that he was a future GT contender.

I’m thinking of giving “Sir” Dave Brailsford a ring myself, to see if he’ll order a few lab tests for me. After all, I fit the pattern. I’m in my thirties. To the foolish among us I’ve never yet shown any indication that I have capacity to contend for a GT. I would certainly need the help of a motor vehicle to finish a Giro mountain stage. I’ve generally been better at cycling on the flat than uphill, but crucially I’ve never been so good at cycling on the flat that I’m in any danger of winning a cobbled monument or dominating longer TTs. I’ve missed testing myself in the Junior Tour of Wales, but Im pretty sure that I too wouldn’t have been good enough to win it. I could probably do with losing a few kilos too.

All Dave needs to do is provide a contract and a few training plans and I’ll be skipping my way up the Alpe, guiding the last guy to go through the same process behind me. Best of all, there will be an endless supply of slack jawed yokels willing to assure anyone sceptical of my apparent ability that it’s all perfectly normal, expected even. I won’t even have to pay them. They will embarrass themselves for free.

I remember Phil Liggett predicting Geraint would be a future tour winner back in 2010. Then again I remember him saying Tony Martin was in 2009.
 
I think when you have a physique like Thomas's (or Dumoulin's, or Wiggins's), it's not unrealistic to move between various specialities. Clearly, someone with tiny bones like Bardet or gangly like Froome is not going to be a good track rider. Or a thicker guy like Sagan probably won't ever be a climber. But those three (just to point out a few examples) look like normal "athletes" who have focused on cycling.

I don't particularly think Thomas's ascent is all that remarkable in the context of Sky. He and Froome spent 80 percent of the day behind 6 teammates, whereas the rest of the teams looked like the Keystone Kops. But, let's see how it pans out. I recall a recent race in Italy with a surprise leader who looked invinceable.
 
Re: Re:

willbick said:
Lequack said:
Frosty said:
Nibali off to have an x-ray - suspected fracture vertebrae according to cyclingnews live report.

Darn I hope not, he really looked strong today, if not for that fall he would be a stage winner for me.

You seriously saying he would've won that stage today??!! Wow the delusion on here is strong

Why not, he said himself he was feeling strong just before he crashed, and he had to be strong to almost catch them at the end. And he is not a bad sprinter.
 
Re: Re:

willbick said:
Lequack said:
Frosty said:
Nibali off to have an x-ray - suspected fracture vertebrae according to cyclingnews live report.

Darn I hope not, he really looked strong today, if not for that fall he would be a stage winner for me.

You seriously saying he would've won that stage today??!! Wow the delusion on here is strong

Why delusion? He was in the mix, and I think he would have had a more than reasonable chance. As it was, he got clobbered by a motorcycle, lost over a minute and still finished within a few meters of the winners.
 
Re: Re:

Zinoviev Letter said:
willbick said:
Team sky have known that Thomas has the ability to win a GT for years. He's finally got the chance to show it as he's in top form and allowed to ride for himself and has avoided mishap. But I suppose the arrogant keyboard warriors on this forum think they know more about what it takes to win the tour than the team who have won it 5 of last 6 years. Laughable. P.s. 32 is no age at all for modern day endurance athletes

Oh and btw he would have podiumed at least in last year's giro if he hadn't been knocked off by a moto. Was in top form then but didn't get the chance to show it

Amazing how Sky seem to just keep discovering these late career nobodies who were secret Tour winners all along. Even more amazing the succession of marks willing to lap it up and tell us all that there’s nothing surprising about it.

Erm actually he's come close to a top 10 in a GT a few times before but circumstances and bad luck etc have stopped it happening. I'm sure if you asked the other GC riders whether he had the ability to do well in a GT if everything went his way they would say yes. P.s. I love the way you try to make a 32 year old sound like an old man with a walking stick lol.

We’ve had the late 20s track rider and second tier prologue specialist who it turns out always had the ability to win GTs. Then we had the late 20s low grade career domestique best known for winning the anatomic jock race and getting thrown out of a Giro for needing a motor vehicle to get to the top of an incline. He also always had the secret ability to win a GTs. Now we have the thirty two year old failed cobbled classics contender who has never come close to even troubling the top 10 of a GT in a dozen previous rides, reaching early middle age as a GT non entity and guess what? Sky knew all along that he was a future GT contender.

I’m thinking of giving “Sir” Dave Brailsford a ring myself, to see if he’ll order a few lab tests for me. After all, I fit the pattern. I’m in my thirties. To the foolish among us I’ve never yet shown any indication that I have capacity to contend for a GT. I would certainly need the help of a motor vehicle to finish a Giro mountain stage. I’ve generally been better at cycling on the flat than uphill, but crucially I’ve never been so good at cycling on the flat that I’m in any danger of winning a cobbled monument or dominating longer TTs. I’ve missed testing myself in the Junior Tour of Wales, but Im pretty sure that I too wouldn’t have been good enough to win it. I could probably do with losing a few kilos too.

All Dave needs to do is provide a contract and a few training plans and I’ll be skipping my way up the Alpe, guiding the last guy to go through the same process behind me. Best of all, there will be an endless supply of slack jawed yokels willing to assure anyone sceptical of my apparent ability that it’s all perfectly normal, expected even. I won’t even have to pay them. They will embarrass themselves for free.
 
Re: Re:

Lequack said:
willbick said:
Lequack said:
Frosty said:
Nibali off to have an x-ray - suspected fracture vertebrae according to cyclingnews live report.

Darn I hope not, he really looked strong today, if not for that fall he would be a stage winner for me.

You seriously saying he would've won that stage today??!! Wow the delusion on here is strong

Why not, he said himself he was feeling strong just before he crashed, and he had to be strong to almost catch them at the end. And he is not a bad sprinter.

If you think he wudda beat Thomas at the end there you must be on crack
 
Re: Re:

And Indurain would have been by far the strongest guy in the race the previous year...

Debatable. Simply no way of knowing that.

Then came the last mountain stage and he was finally given freedom. It wasn't a sprint, he straight up dropped everyone.

Absolutely false. Lemond dropped everyone and led the entire way up the last 7-8 km. It was quite normal that the one guy who managed to cling to his slipstream would be able to out kick him in the last few hundred meters.

The talk at the end of that edition was "Indurain would probably have won if he had freedom" since negating the time loss of just a single stage would have him winning, and that's without even removing the time loss from domestiquing in every other stage

That is really stupid talk, since the entire race would have played out differently with different tactics. And same could be said for other riders who lost most of their time on one unlucky event (Rominger comes to mind, Quintana in 2015, perhaps Dumoulin this year...)

Also, everything to do with indurain has to be taken with a grain of salt as his meteoric assent from strong (though ridiculously large) rider to absolute dominator also went hand in hand with the latest clinic advances.
 
Re: Re:

willbick said:
Lequack said:
Frosty said:
Nibali off to have an x-ray - suspected fracture vertebrae according to cyclingnews live report.

Darn I hope not, he really looked strong today, if not for that fall he would be a stage winner for me.

You seriously saying he would've won that stage today??!! Wow the delusion on here is strong
What's delusional about that opinion? It's not implausible - he hadn't showed any real weakness at that point and was definitely strong enough to be with the group that fought out the finish. It's not as if he said he definitely would have won.
 
Re:

Bolder said:
I think when you have a physique like Thomas's (or Dumoulin's, or Wiggins's), it's not unrealistic to move between various specialities. Clearly, someone with tiny bones like Bardet or gangly like Froome is not going to be a good track rider. Or a thicker guy like Sagan probably won't ever be a climber. But those three (just to point out a few examples) look like normal "athletes" who have focused on cycling.

I don't particularly think Thomas's ascent is all that remarkable in the context of Sky. He and Froome spent 80 percent of the day behind 6 teammates, whereas the rest of the teams looked like the Keystone Kops. But, let's see how it pans out. I recall a recent race in Italy with a surprise leader who looked invinceable.


Finally some unbiased sanity
 
Those of you disappointed by Quintana, or even Adam Yates or other underperforming small climber, do not understand the history of the Tour and the reason why a more powerful all-rounder is almost always crowned.

The fact that there were nine flat stages with nary a single climb is terrible for pure climbers most of all. It is precisely in those long boring flat sprinter stages that everyone complains about that the climbers legs are ridden out of them and they are rarely as scintillating/dominant once they reach the actual climbs. It is all that is left to even the race (since GTs have horrendously curtailed the ITTs).

A GT is not supposed to be made up of nothing but MTFs and won by tiny little climbers. GTs are for the best all-rounder - the guy who can ITT, climb, and not get worn out by the high speed flat stages and cobbles.

Same with the green jersey. Traditionally this is not necessarily meant for the best pure sprinter -- while they done much to try and make it so (crazy distortion depending on the type of stage and intermediary sprints. It is traditionally there to recompense the most consistently placed rider throughout all the stages. That's why Kelly won it, Van Springel (no sprinter!) won it, Merckx won it, etc...

Dumoulin is - quite frankly - the historical prototype of a GT winner. Had he raced in another era we would be a multiple Tour winner. Imagine Dumo with over 100 kms of ITT. LOL!