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National championships June 2021

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I choose to believe Pogacar didn't gift anything today (I didn't see the race), because to do so would be borderline patronizing, i.e. like a benevolent despot gifting stuff he gives no sh*ts about compared to winning the Tour.

It would be that moment when magnanimous non-selfish riding becomes insulting. Just my opinion. So as I said, I believe Pogacar probably didn't gift anything at all.
He did not gift anything, I did not say that. I said he was clearly not riding full gas. whether it is for Polanc or to save himself for the Tour, it is clear he is not giving it all. He did not even sprint for bronze.
 
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I'm not saying that Evenepoel couldn't have won I am only saying that Lombardia 2020 wasn't a done deal because of this. Sure Evenepoel has done many amazing solo's but he hasn't shown much when it comes to dropping someone with an acceleration.
Like his win in Clasica San Sebastian the peloton allowed him to get ahead.

In the case of Lombardia the likes of Fuglsang had just received a nasty wake-up call in Poland. So I think many of them will have been glued to his wheel. Sure perhaps he would still have been the strongest by a large enough margin to simply ride them off his wheel on a climb but that was an open question. Imo it couuld have been a case of him being too much of a marked man and not enough of a kick to deal with the wheelsucking.
You can grind someone off your wheel on a climb without attacking/accelerating. You can't drop someone on a flat course without a decent acceleration/attack. And i seriously think you need to watch San Sebastian again, and read the post-race interviews with the guys of Astana and Movistar.
 
They left the better climbing Hermans at home, just to get 30 secs of screentime in every mountain stage when Froome unavoidably drops.
Yeah, that's also pretty bad.
I get that they mainly want to go for stages, but they don't have a single rider on the Tour team who is good at bringing Woods and Martin near the front on stage 1 and 2, a guy like Schmidt or Impey could have been really useful on this kind of terrain.
 

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