Paris-Nice 2017, 5th-12th March

[King Boonen]

Re: Re:

Kittel is so ridiculous... he only wins flat stages with zero history until 300 meters to the finish line.

Your statement is ridiculous. Only wins stages with zero history...take a look at his palmares. You'll find a minor stage finishing on the Champs-Élysées among other things.

can't say the Champs-Elysées stage is a hard stage....

What on earth are you talking about? He said flat races with zero history which is completely untrue. Flat races, sure. No history? Garbage.

"With zero history until 300m to the finish line" i.e. a stage in which nothing happens

This. Lets remember not everyone's first language is English. Although a lot of the time, even if it is, that's no guarantee it'll be good

 

[portugal11]

Re: Re:

Kittel is so ridiculous... he only wins flat stages with zero history until 300 meters to the finish line.

Your statement is ridiculous. Only wins stages with zero history...take a look at his palmares. You'll find a minor stage finishing on the Champs-Élysées among other things.

can't say the Champs-Elysées stage is a hard stage....

What on earth are you talking about? He said flat races with zero history which is completely untrue. Flat races, sure. No history? Garbage.

When i said zero history, was to say that he wins stages and nothing happens in those stages

 

[Valv.Piti]

Could be interpreted either way. Anyways, Kittel has been very good the first two days of the race and has shown some very likeable traits, both personally and psychically.. Disliking a rider once doesn't mean you should continue disliking and bashing whatever the rides does.

 

[LaFlorecita]

Re: Re:

Won't happen. Too short. Did you forget last year TDF climbing TT when Froomey & Tom Dumoulin rode in their TT machine.

I didn't watch that stage but that TT only had a few steep kilometers and they were spread across the ITT. They'd have had to do multiple bike changes, start on TT bike, switch to road bike, switch to TT etc. Here it's more straight forward, but the final climb is perhaps to short to consider it. Still, dragging a TT bike up such a steep climb doesn't seem fun.

 

[dacooley]

Re: Re:

Kittel is so ridiculous... he only wins flat stages with zero history until 300 meters to the finish line.

Your statement is ridiculous. Only wins stages with zero history...take a look at his palmares. You'll find a minor stage finishing on the Champs-Élysées among other things.

can't say the Champs-Elysées stage is a hard stage....

anyway, calling pure sprinters ridiculous just for the reason one dislikes sprint like a cycling discipline doesn't seem mature.

 

[King Boonen]

Baws oot TT the mora!

 

[Forever The Best]

Contador is a very explosive rider as well. If he is on 2014 form I wouldn't be surprised to see him to beat Henao.

Contador is getting to the stage of his career where it's meaningless to say "if he's on the form he had three years ago"

I know. I don't expect that much from him this year. Winning Pais Vasco would be nice. If he manages to win P-N or Catalunya as well it means his season is not that bad. If he wins both along with PV, his season would be pretty good even if he totally fails on GTs. I don't give him much chance to win the TDF unless he shows otherwise on Couillole. But he should be able to top-5 at least in Fayence, maybe even top 3.And as I said Henao is the main favourite for that stage along with Alaphilippe.

Also great wins by Colbrelli and Bennett. Colbrelli likes tough, hilly classics that end with a reduced sprint. And rain usually makes races tougher and more brutal. If it rains he has some chance of winning MSR, though it would have been better for him with Le Manie which should be back on the route for better racing in MSR. About Bennett he finally gets the win in WT many waited from him, including me. So, very happy for these 2 riders

@Libertine The Tour of Turkey last year was the best 1-week stage race in my opinion.

 

[Zinoviev Letter]

That was a great sprint by Bennett, the fastest by a margin today in a quality field. This is a big year for him. He has gone from being the main leader of a small team, expected to get half of the team's wins, to being a secondary option on a much bigger team. In obvious ways that's a demotion and it would be easy to get lost in the Sagan hype, but in other ways it's an opportunity. There's less pressure, because that's all on Sagan now, and the team has a lot more WT race days to split among its leaders. Nice to see him get a big stage win.

 

[Alexandre B.]

Tony Martin 15:15
Richie Porte 15:36
Steven Kruijswijk 15:46
Alberto Contador 15:50
Simon Yates 15:51
Ion Izagirre 15:52
Davide Formolo 15:53
Warren Barguil 15:54
Ilnur Zakarin 15:57
Daniel Martin 16:02
Sergio Henao 16:04
Tony Gallopin 16:06
Julian Alaphilippe 16:09

 

[ferryman]

Re:

Baws oot TT the mora!

You've been living far tooo long in Scotland KB

 

[Zinoviev Letter]

One unsurprising thing from today's stage and one surprising thing:

The least surprising thing in the world was finding out that Sean Kelly has no time whatsoever for riders climbing off because the weather is horrible and they are out of contention. He was pretty firm in his view that you grit it out and use it to improve your fitness. I'm not sure that this view is precisely in accordance with modern sports science, but it's hard to argue with Kelly's palmares.

Much more surprising was finding out that Bennett's final lead out was provided by climbing prospect Patrick Konrad. Apparently the plan was for Kolar and Juraj to drop Bennett off on a good wheel at the front, which they did. But then Konrad got to the front, going faster than the wheels Bennett was following, and provided a final lead out. So apparently if this whole climbing thing doesn't work out for Konrad he can fall back on his unexpected lead out skills.

 

[Netserk]

I thought it was Kristoff, who led Bennett out?

 

[Zinoviev Letter]

Re:

I thought it was Kristoff, who led Bennett out?

I think when Bennett mentioned a final lead out he meant the final deliberate lead out :lol:

 

[Inquitus]

Re:

One unsurprising thing from today's stage and one surprising thing:

The least surprising thing in the world was finding out that Sean Kelly has no time whatsoever for riders climbing off because the weather is horrible and they are out of contention. He was pretty firm in his view that you grit it out and use it to improve your fitness. I'm not sure that this view is precisely in accordance with modern sports science, but it's hard to argue with Kelly's palmares.

Much more surprising was finding out that Bennett's final lead out was provided by climbing prospect Patrick Konrad. Apparently the plan was for Kolar and Juraj to drop Bennett off on a good wheel at the front, which they did. But then Konrad got to the front, going faster than the wheels Bennett was following, and provided a final lead out. So apparently if this whole climbing thing doesn't work out for Konrad he can fall back on his unexpected lead out skills.

Yep he brought Bennett right up to the Katusha wheels like a rocket, Sam defo owes him a pint for that one.

 

[Zinoviev Letter]

Re: Re:

One unsurprising thing from today's stage and one surprising thing:

The least surprising thing in the world was finding out that Sean Kelly has no time whatsoever for riders climbing off because the weather is horrible and they are out of contention. He was pretty firm in his view that you grit it out and use it to improve your fitness. I'm not sure that this view is precisely in accordance with modern sports science, but it's hard to argue with Kelly's palmares.

Much more surprising was finding out that Bennett's final lead out was provided by climbing prospect Patrick Konrad. Apparently the plan was for Kolar and Juraj to drop Bennett off on a good wheel at the front, which they did. But then Konrad got to the front, going faster than the wheels Bennett was following, and provided a final lead out. So apparently if this whole climbing thing doesn't work out for Konrad he can fall back on his unexpected lead out skills.

Yep he brought Bennett right up to the Katusha wheels like a rocket, Sam defo owes him a pint for that one.

Yeah, I just rewatched the finale there to have a look at the approach. You can see Juraj drop Bennett off in a good spot. Then the camera cuts to the front and when it goes back to the overhead, Bennett has been swamped a bit. Then Konrad goes zipping around the peloton on the left with Bennett on his wheel, arcs back to the right and neatly drops his sprinter off right on Kristoff's wheel.

Very good speed and instincts for a neopro climber.

 

[hfer07]

have to recognize: very thrilling sprints we've witnessed in P-R

but now is time to get serious on the GC

 

[King Boonen]

Re: Re:

Baws oot TT the mora!

You've been living far tooo long in Scotland KB

Hahaha, I reckon everyone else just thought that was random mis-spellings!

 

[May0maniac]

Re: Re:

One unsurprising thing from today's stage and one surprising thing:

The least surprising thing in the world was finding out that Sean Kelly has no time whatsoever for riders climbing off because the weather is horrible and they are out of contention. He was pretty firm in his view that you grit it out and use it to improve your fitness. I'm not sure that this view is precisely in accordance with modern sports science, but it's hard to argue with Kelly's palmares.

Much more surprising was finding out that Bennett's final lead out was provided by climbing prospect Patrick Konrad. Apparently the plan was for Kolar and Juraj to drop Bennett off on a good wheel at the front, which they did. But then Konrad got to the front, going faster than the wheels Bennett was following, and provided a final lead out. So apparently if this whole climbing thing doesn't work out for Konrad he can fall back on his unexpected lead out skills.

Yep he brought Bennett right up to the Katusha wheels like a rocket, Sam defo owes him a pint for that one.

Yeah, I just rewatched the finale there to have a look at the approach. You can see Juraj drop Bennett off in a good spot. Then the camera cuts to the front and when it goes back to the overhead, Bennett has been swamped a bit. Then Konrad goes zipping around the peloton on the left with Bennett on his wheel, arcs back to the right and neatly drops his sprinter off right on Kristoff's wheel.

Very good speed and instincts for a neopro climber.

For a climber/gc rider Konrad always had a good sprint, but him working as a leadout man was a big surprise and it's nice to see that he was willing to help his teammate after loosing a huge amount of time on the first 2 stages (according to his fb stage he was supposed to be a part of Bennett's sprint train on stage 3).

 

[Alexandre B.]

Here's a reminder of what Mont Brouilly is (Paris-Nice 2014): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=748roWK68a4

 

[Alexandre B.]

Kittel will start one minute before Contador. Poor guy.

 

[movingtarget]

Nice win by Bennett and a very easy one.

 

[DBotero]

Zakarin ftw! I saw Porte interview yestarday and it seemed he recovered,but i still think the Russian is the favorite for this.

 

[RedheadDane]

Re: Re:

I thought it was Kristoff, who led Bennett out?

I think when Bennett mentioned a final lead out he meant the final deliberate lead out :lol:

Could have been rather fun if he'd just casually talked about how Kristoff did a great lead out.






Also... why do I keep thinking Brouilly sounds like a type of cake?
I don't actually expect anyone to answer that...

 

[Alexandre B.]

Andy Schleck would have loved that TT.

 

[LaFlorecita]

Re:

Kittel will start one minute before Contador. Poor guy.