benpounder said:
Yes, but not nearly as much. Also, there are only a handful of daily stage presentations, and the world champ isnt one of them.Not necessarily. As BMC Team manager
John Lelangue explains:I'm not saying that there isn't a downside to holding on to Yellow, just that the upsides are more significant.
I am with you - not sure why JV is so off about having yellow. I would have thought he would be dancing jigs and screaming his happiness from the mountaintops.
they dont realistically have a good shot at winning it .... so controlling the race isnt going to cost them that much. Not saying Hesjedal isnt good - but he isnt a podium chance really, so using up some of the helpers to keep yellow as long as possible might only mean he gets 9th instead of 6th kind of thing.
As for BMC - I actually think they did ok. They didnt chase down the break - just controlled it and kept it steady. Garmin didnt really care that much if the break got 20 mins, so it was up to the GC contenders to make sure that didnt happen. BMC used 2 guys to set a reasonable pace.
When it came time to bring back the break, they said no and Astana came to do it. Yeah they used some effort to control things, but certainly a lot less than if they had got yellow a few days back.