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Le Tour 2018 stage 16:Carcassonne - Bagnères-de-Luchon 218km

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Gilbert climbing up:

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Di4dYAaX0AE0MYc.jpg
 
Re: Re:

ontheroad said:
happytramp said:
Everyone's hands are tied. Froome isn't allowed attack. Dumolin can't risk an attack. Thomas doesn't need to attack. They're all waiting for the TT and have been this past week.

Roglic is more than happy finishing 4th and he is out of contention for the overall, outside chance of a podium if one of the top 3 crack.

I can see Dumoulin taking over a minute on Thomas in the TT but not enough to overhaul him. I think he has got enough to overhaul Froome on GC (only needs 11 seconds).

Is he happy finishing second though? I don't think so, hopefully not for the spectacle as otherwise we will see a load more defensive riding for the remaining stages.

On a similar length TT in last year's Giro, Dumo put 49secs into G.
 
Re: Re:

ontheroad said:
happytramp said:
Everyone's hands are tied. Froome isn't allowed attack. Dumolin can't risk an attack. Thomas doesn't need to attack. They're all waiting for the TT and have been this past week.

Roglic is more than happy finishing 4th and he is out of contention for the overall, outside chance of a podium if one of the top 3 crack.

I can see Dumoulin taking over a minute on Thomas in the TT but not enough to overhaul him. I think he has got enough to overhaul Froome on GC (only needs 11 seconds).

Is he happy finishing second though? I don't think so, hopefully not for the spectacle as otherwise we will see a load more defensive riding for the remaining stages.

Dumoulin's best chance, though, will be to play Thomas and Froome against each other. Hard to see him dropping both tomorrow except in a final K attack which won't net huge amount of time. You know Froome is going to attack at some point. Follow his wheel and he might win the whole thing.
 
Re: Re:

ontheroad said:
happytramp said:
Everyone's hands are tied. Froome isn't allowed attack. Dumolin can't risk an attack. Thomas doesn't need to attack. They're all waiting for the TT and have been this past week.

Roglic is more than happy finishing 4th and he is out of contention for the overall, outside chance of a podium if one of the top 3 crack.

I can see Dumoulin taking over a minute on Thomas in the TT but not enough to overhaul him. I think he has got enough to overhaul Froome on GC (only needs 11 seconds).

Is he happy finishing second though? I don't think so, hopefully not for the spectacle as otherwise we will see a load more defensive riding for the remaining stages.

Unfortunately I think Dumolin is willing to roll the dice in the TT rather than risk losing time on a steep climb. It's like two teams clearly waiting for a penalty shootout rather than risk losing in extra time.
 
Jul 22, 2017
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Re: Re:

MatParker117 said:
ontheroad said:
happytramp said:
Everyone's hands are tied. Froome isn't allowed attack. Dumolin can't risk an attack. Thomas doesn't need to attack. They're all waiting for the TT and have been this past week.

Roglic is more than happy finishing 4th and he is out of contention for the overall, outside chance of a podium if one of the top 3 crack.

I can see Dumoulin taking over a minute on Thomas in the TT but not enough to overhaul him. I think he has got enough to overhaul Froome on GC (only needs 11 seconds).

Is he happy finishing second though? I don't think so, hopefully not for the spectacle as otherwise we will see a load more defensive riding for the remaining stages.

On a similar length TT in last year's Giro, Dumo put 49secs into G.
On a similar length TT when Thomas was injured. After one mountain stage, rather than at the very end. There are enough variables to make it far from a sure bet, but more than a minute seems unlikely...
 
Re: Le Tour 2018 stage 16:Carcassonne - Bagnères-de-Luchon 2

Escarabajo said:
guncha said:
Grand Bornard and Luchon, two mountain stages with decents had no GC action. Why to include such kind of stages in TDF? MTFs bring at least some kind of action.
I have always complained about finishes on descends and people in here gets very animated that are more fun and bring more action. It could very well be (when that happens) but if we play the statistics it will always be better to go with MTF. It just assures us of some action.

Agree 100 % - There is never any justification for a descent finish in a multi mountain stage - After all you've already done two or three descents - Will also add the ITT should have been today - Otherwise when you have TTer's they ride conservatively until stage 20.
 
Re: Re:

rlntlssly said:
MatParker117 said:
ontheroad said:
happytramp said:
Everyone's hands are tied. Froome isn't allowed attack. Dumolin can't risk an attack. Thomas doesn't need to attack. They're all waiting for the TT and have been this past week.

Roglic is more than happy finishing 4th and he is out of contention for the overall, outside chance of a podium if one of the top 3 crack.

I can see Dumoulin taking over a minute on Thomas in the TT but not enough to overhaul him. I think he has got enough to overhaul Froome on GC (only needs 11 seconds).

Is he happy finishing second though? I don't think so, hopefully not for the spectacle as otherwise we will see a load more defensive riding for the remaining stages.

On a similar length TT in last year's Giro, Dumo put 49secs into G.
On a similar length TT when Thomas was injured. After one mountain stage, rather than at the very end. There are enough variables to make it far from a sure bet, but more than a minute seems unlikely...
Thomas is in the shape of his life, expecting him to pull a subpar ITT doesn't seem logical at all to me.
 
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There was nothing wrong with the stage profile - I mean, its not a monster tough stage but not every stage should be - blame the attitude of the riders and the strength of Sky.

A long non-technical descent can be bad, but on this sort of finish you've got every chance of keeping or extending your gap over the top.
 
Re:

William H said:
There was nothing wrong with the stage profile - I mean, its not a monster tough stage but not every stage should be - blame the attitude of the riders and the strength of Sky.

A long non-technical descent can be bad, but on this sort of finish you've got every chance of keeping or extending your gap over the top.
If you're only going with 4 mountain stages that are not junior distance, please make them raceable.

As for MTFs vs descents, it barely matters when you use weak cat 1 climb without a possibility of using any other climb. But since we're using the same 5 towns in the Pyrenees every freaking year there's barely any option