Vuelta a España Ninja of La Vuelta

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Stage 8

A hstorical moment as Nicolas Edet ninjas himself into the leaders jersey!
Guerreiro drops out after finishing fourth, but Stetina delivers a stellar performance as well to move into a virtual podium.

RiderManagerBest placingCurrent GCGap
Wilco KeldermanRed Rick121206:37
Pierre LatourHayneplane111406:56
Peter StetinaTigerion121708:09
Herman PernsteinerSafeBet111809:09
Dani MartinezJoeD1997232613:18
Louis MeintjesWirral162713:44
Kilian FrankinyHakkie203015:07
Sergio PardillaArmchair Cyclist364731:19
Matteo FabbroCian465635:49
Antonio PedreroLibertine Seguros515937:24
Felix GrossschartnerAnderis447945:18
Sergei ChernetskiStarlord268449:07
Tao Geoghegan-HartShadow93519651:44
Robert PowerLaarsland6015901:33:02
Nicolas RocheLogic is your friend2 (st 2)
Alex AranburuScarponi9 (st 2)
Victor de la ParteTobydawq17DNF
David de la CruzDel19629 (st6)
Jesus HerradaPantani lives1 (st6)
Rafal MajkaKoronin5 (st7)-
George BennettSalvarani9 (st7)
Oscar RodriguezCarton10 (st7)
Ruben GuerreiroDJSprtsch4 (st8)
 
Kelderman, Latour, Stetina and Pernsteiner have all been very close to a top10 and will eventually find a way to get one. Dani Martinez will 99% get in a break later in the race so I'm not betting on him either. All signals point to Meintjes winning the Ninja competition and he would sure be a deserving winner.
 
If someone had picked Edet would he still be in the race or does the race lead disqualify him
I would say that he wouldn't be disqualified if yesterday were the last stage, but I haven't seen proper coverage of yesterday's stage to see if he was as anonymous as could be in the break. A break with enough men in it need not expose a ninja.

Given that the whole point of a leader's jersey is to make him visible, being in red might negate ninja status. He could just try to pass himself off as a Sunweb rider though.
 
Nice ninja work by Latour again. Gets in the break but is never witnessed on the front of the group and gets eclipsed by his own relatively unknown teammate.

There is a chance he might knock me out of contention by doing a strong time trial as there are not many specialists in the race and it is a moderately hilly course.
 
Will definitely have to actually think about this competition for next year. Who do I want to manage for this one next year....of course will need official lineups.

In Latour's case, he manages to remain a Ninja in the break and his unknown teammate gets the attention. Due to Movistar's antics, almost forgot about Latour's teammate having had a nice stage.
 
Stage 9

A new exciting day in this competition. Carl Fredrik Hagen, who ninjad himself into a professional contract at age 27, takes a commanding lead after his main competitors fail. Kelderman, Pernsteiner and WeirdName leave the competition through their top-10 finish. Latour and Stetina took their day off 24 hours too early.
Hagen now has a 12 minute margin on Martinez and Frankiny, who showed lots of ninja-potential today by dropping out of the breakaway.

Will Hagen hold on?

RiderManagerBest placingCurrent GCGap
Carl Fredrik HagenLeinster11601:46
Dani MartinezJoeD1997222213:50
Kilian FrankinyHakkie202415:39
Pierre LatourHayneplane112517:08
Peter StetinaTigerion122620:38
Louis MeintjesWirral162823:56
Matteo FabbroCian404945:56
Antonio PedreroLibertine Seguros375046:03
Felix GrossschartnerAnderis335450:04
Sergio PardillaArmchair Cyclist365952:46
Sergei ChernetskiStarlord269401:17:47
Robert PowerLaarsland6015701:59:58
Nicolas RocheLogic is your friend2 (st 2)
Alex AranburuScarponi9 (st 2)
Victor de la ParteTobydawq17DNF
David de la CruzDel19629 (st6)
Jesus HerradaPantani lives1 (st6)
Rafal MajkaKoronin5 (st7)-
George BennettSalvarani9 (st7)
Oscar RodriguezCarton10 (st7)
Ruben GuerreiroDJSprtsch4 (st8)
Tao Geoghegan-HartShadow9310 (st9)
Herman PernsteinerSafeBet6 (st9)
Wilco KeldermanRed Rick8 (st9)
 
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Kelderman, Pernsteiner and WeirdName leave the competition through their top-10 finish.

Thanks for taking this on.

However, at risk of going off-subject, I must object to Geoghegan -Hart being rendered "WeirdName". Double barrelled surnames have been part of British naming tradition for centuries, and in the last 50 years or so has moved away from being an upper-class habit linked to inheritance.

Geoghegan is an Irish name that traces back to a 5th century High King of Ireland. It follows the phonetic rules of anglicised Irish just as much as any other rider's name follows the rules of its language.

But where Tao comes from as a forename, and why it is pronounced to rhyme with mayo, rather than cow (loose anglicisation of Chinese metaphysical concept), I have no idea.
 
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With the greatest of respect to Leinster and their cheeky attempt to ninja their way into the competition close to halfway through I must protest that it is far too deep into the race for new entrants to be allowed when we have already had three hard summit finishes.
 
With the greatest of respect to Leinster and their cheeky attempt to ninja their way into the competition close to halfway through I must protest that it is far too deep into the race for new entrants to be allowed when we have already had three hard summit finishes.
I completely agree, hence why I asked the same question. I do feel that Hagen’s spectacular efforts need to be noted in this thread. I’m happy to have my name removed as his “manager,” or to have an asterisk or something by my name to indicate that I was a late entry.