Le Tour 2018 stage 10: Annecy > Le Grand-Bornand 158,5 km

[movingtarget]

Re:

What a boring stage. Congrats Alaphilippe on a nice win

The Borg made sure of that. Shedding riders slowly but surely.

 

[wheresmybrakes]

Re: Le Tour 2018 stage 10: Annecy > Le Grand-Bornand 158,5 k

If Quintana or Landa don't do anything the next couple of days they're gonners for the Tour. I can see Froome going for the win on D'huez like he won the big one in the Giro then it's game over for the rest. Think Dumo is just gonna try and stick with Froome and G to have a showdown in the ITT. Nibali, I have no idea what to think of him at the moment, but I have a feeling that he will at least try something more than Borastar!

 

[Bot. Sky_Bot]

Re:

What a boring stage. Congrats Alaphilippe on a nice win

La Flo, wait a second, you promised two weeks ago not to watch it, am I right?

 

[movingtarget]

Re:

Congrats to Alaphilipe and what a ride by GVA to honor the jersey and keep it for another day!

Yes really the only good things on the stage. Uran suffering from his crash. Tejay dropped on the first mountain stage. Business as usual.

 

[yaco]

Re: Le Tour 2018 stage 10: Annecy > Le Grand-Bornand 158,5 k

It's incredible that enthusiasts on a cycling forum were expecting >100km GC attacks on the first mountain stage. "If only Contador were here" :lol:

Expecting? On the contrary, I expected (as I wrote in the first pages of the thread) that probably nothing will happen between the favorites. What I need is, yes, 100+ km GC attacks, or at least some testing of the SKY train, because this is boring as hell. But to expect such a scenario...do you take me and like-minded people for being fools?

The way to test the Sky Train is for a team/s to contol the peleton from kilometre zero by riding at a faster tempo - Teams allow Sky to ride the flat as if it's a sunday afternoon coffee ride and then wonder why Sky has five or six strong riders for the mountains.

 

[Dekker_Tifosi]

Dumoulin reports a fierce headwind on the climb making attacks non sensical. He felt good but attacking didn't make sense

 

[LaFlorecita]

Re: Re:

What a boring stage. Congrats Alaphilippe on a nice win

La Flo, wait a second, you promised two weeks ago not to watch it, am I right?

I promised nothing. I wrote that I would miss most of the race (thankfully) because I am leaving on holiday tomorrow.

 

[Frosty]

Re:

Dumoulin reports a fierce headwind on the climb making attacks non sensical. He felt good but attacking didn't make sense

Dan Martin saying the same. Says that Bardet wanted to attack too but was put off by the headwind.

 

[Zinoviev Letter]

Re:

So as expected Sky’s domestiques are superior to all the other teams and superior to some of the team leaders. Bahrain-Merida had no one supporting nibbles, Movistar simply had their three leaders, lotto had their two leaders, but no one had actual support who was able to match sky’s. Could be a long tour ahead.

This is why I’m skeptical of the multi leader team’s strategy. If every rider in a team who can do anything versus the Sky domestiques is a “leader” it creates a strong risk that they all just hang on, conserving their own chances for as long as possible. Instead of a unified strategy to win, you can end up riding like two or three little teams. If there is a clear hierarchy, the second and third guys can be ordered to ride in a manner that’s suboptimal to their own chances in order to break up Sky’s control.

In order for it to work in any other way, the “leaders” need to be committed to aggressive riding. I am not optimistic that either Movistar or LottoNL are.

 

[wheresmybrakes]

Re: Le Tour 2018 stage 10: Annecy > Le Grand-Bornand 158,5 k

It's incredible that enthusiasts on a cycling forum were expecting >100km GC attacks on the first mountain stage. "If only Contador were here" :lol:

Expecting? On the contrary, I expected (as I wrote in the first pages of the thread) that probably nothing will happen between the favorites. What I need is, yes, 100+ km GC attacks, or at least some testing of the SKY train, because this is boring as hell. But to expect such a scenario...do you take me and like-minded people for being fools?

The way to test the Sky Train is for a team/s to contol the peleton from kilometre zero by riding at a faster tempo - Teams allow Sky to ride the flat as if it's a sunday afternoon coffee ride and then wonder why Sky has five or six strong riders for the mountains.

But if SKY are riding like its a sunday afternoon coffee ride, surely the other teams doms should still be with them (i.e. Soler)? When you look Ala who won the stage from the break and those doms that fell out the back suffering from SKYs lame pace, surely something must be wrong with those doms?

Edit: Understand why there were no attacks now due to the strong headwind, but still expected most of the doms to still be with their leaders.

 

[Zinoviev Letter]

Re: Le Tour 2018 stage 10: Annecy > Le Grand-Bornand 158,5 k

It's incredible that enthusiasts on a cycling forum were expecting >100km GC attacks on the first mountain stage. "If only Contador were here" :lol:

Expecting? On the contrary, I expected (as I wrote in the first pages of the thread) that probably nothing will happen between the favorites. What I need is, yes, 100+ km GC attacks, or at least some testing of the SKY train, because this is boring as hell. But to expect such a scenario...do you take me and like-minded people for being fools?

The way to test the Sky Train is for a team/s to contol the peleton from kilometre zero by riding at a faster tempo - Teams allow Sky to ride the flat as if it's a sunday afternoon coffee ride and then wonder why Sky has five or six strong riders for the mountains.

No team is capable of tiring a Kwiatkowski, Moscon, Castroviejo etc by pulling them along on the flat in their slipstream, no matter how fast they go.

 

[macbindle]

Re:

What a boring stage. Congrats Alaphilippe on a nice win

Boring? What planet are you on??

A mountain stage dominated by classics riders! It was great. Plus the scenery was spectacular

 

[eric_vv]

Re:

So as expected Sky’s domestiques are superior to all the other teams and superior to some of the team leaders. Bahrain-Merida had no one supporting nibbles, Movistar simply had their three leaders, lotto had their two leaders, but no one had actual support who was able to match sky’s. Could be a long tour ahead.

Jumbo had Tolhoek for a long time (and Gesink up the road) they're obviously not at Sky level, but not bad for a team aiming at both GC en sprint. But with Roglic they can gamble on the TT to get them a result.

 

[hfer07]

Re:

Dumoulin reports a fierce headwind on the climb making attacks non sensical. He felt good but attacking didn't make sense

OR

Sky was killin' it with a massive pace nonetheless it is extremely odd that NONE of the GC riders ever dared to at least "test" SKY & the magic Kenyan just once .....

 

[Dekker_Tifosi]

Kittel, Cavendish and Groenewegen make the time limit with only 30 seconds to spare

 

[macbindle]

Re: Re:

Dumoulin reports a fierce headwind on the climb making attacks non sensical. He felt good but attacking didn't make sense

OR

Sky was killin' it with a massive pace nonetheless it is extremely odd that NONE of the GC riders ever dared to at least "test" SKY & the magic Kenyan just once .....

Yates talked about a block headwind too. Makes it impossible to launch an attack that will stick.Plus it wasn't an MTF.

Let's face it, Sky have the best team, and play to their enormous strengths. Its a tactic that works. Its up to other teams to draw in the sponsorship that would permit them to buy a team with the depth of Sky. Either that or work together against Sky a little more effectively.

 

[Zinoviev Letter]

Interesting that Bernal was the only Sky dom to survive to the end of the climb. Even so though, we now know that nobody else has domestiques capable of shedding them or even sticking around with them: everyone left in the group was a leader except for Bernal and Latour.

Also I’m a bit surprised that the GC men dropped by Martin’s dig lost 50 seconds.

 

[Lequack]

So what watts were the Sky computers set at?

 

[Logic-is-your-friend]

Re:

Kittel, Cavendish and Groenewegen make the time limit with only 30 seconds to spare

Who won the sprint though?

 

[movingtarget]

Re:

Kittel, Cavendish and Groenewegen make the time limit with only 30 seconds to spare

Maybe Cav and Kittel should have delayed for 31 seconds..........

 

[SHAD0W93]

Re: Re:

Kittel, Cavendish and Groenewegen make the time limit with only 30 seconds to spare

Who won the sprint though?

Cavendish dominated it.

 

[Anderis]

Disappointed with the stage. It offered an excellent opportunity for tactical moves but very few riders from big teams went to the breakaway so it was obvious it wouldn't work. Perhaps this stage would be better somewhere later in the race because today nobody wanted to risk while being uncertain where his climbing form stands compared to others. Headwind was a valid excuse for not attacking on the final climb but the stage offered an excellent opportunity for an ambush after Plateau des Glieres. It would require for a team to act risky and ballsy at the beginning of the stage but apparently everyone had an excuse not to.

 

[Son of Amsterhammer]

Couple of key things here for me.

Most of the pretenders (outsider GC hopes) were pretty much exposed as such.

Respect to GVA. What an effort. He’ll probably lose 30 mins tomorrow!

Hopefully no headwinds tomorrow!!!

 

[GuyIncognito]

I've said it many times, I'll say it again

If you're not contending for the podium after a few short seasons of turning pro, you're unlikely to ever be because you won't improve much more.
I've said it in the context of "But Tejay and Talansky are the next generation of winners", I've said it before that with Kreuziger and others, and I've been saying it since last year in the context of Jungels. As shocking as it may seem, he's not likely to get much better than this which was already his level last year

 

[Lequack]

Re:

I've said it many times, I'll say it again

If you're not contending for the podium after a few short seasons of turning pro, you're unlikely to ever be because you won't improve much more.
I've said it in the context of "But Tejay and Talansky are the next generation of winners", I've said it before that with Kreuziger and others, and I've been saying it since last year in the context of Jungels. As shocking as it may seem, he's not likely to get much better than this which was already his level last year

Chris Horner would disagree with you.