Richie Porte Discussion Thread.

[Jelantik]

RG: Richie posted on Twitter a picture of the interior of a double pop-out motor home that he will sleep in during the race. What is the reason behind this?

TK: We are exploring some opportunities around how we operate and testing some things during this race. It is part of that pilot project. We will keep a room for him in the hotel in this initial case, if the parking location isn’t great or if it’s noisy or because of security concern. It’s just a familiar environment he can go back to every night. He has got into a routine where he prefers to be on his own ... skip desert and go back to his room after dinner, speak to Gemma [Nicole Barrett, his fiancé] on the phone and then get to bed early. Sleep and recovery is so important. But we will play it by ear. There may be times where he will prefer to have a roommate.

Well this is a new approach. Is he sleeping in the hotel parking lot? Does this require notification to the UCI for whereabouts?

this is the new richie. all that one bad day talk.. is all gone. He will be tough to beat.. Sky has a history of creating a one year wonder all year peak form with Wiggins and Froome already. Now it's Richie's time. This will be a long Giro and tough challenge for Contador.

 

[Jelantik]

Re: Re:

Contador fans should be afraid. Very afraid.

Yes.We are afraid that Little Richie will be humiliated too early and it will be a long borefest

LOL.. I have a picture in my head.. everyone falls asleep watching mountain stage.

 

[Electress]

RG: Richie posted on Twitter a picture of the interior of a double pop-out motor home that he will sleep in during the race. What is the reason behind this?

TK: We are exploring some opportunities around how we operate and testing some things during this race. It is part of that pilot project. We will keep a room for him in the hotel in this initial case, if the parking location isn’t great or if it’s noisy or because of security concern. It’s just a familiar environment he can go back to every night. He has got into a routine where he prefers to be on his own ... skip desert and go back to his room after dinner, speak to Gemma [Nicole Barrett, his fiancé] on the phone and then get to bed early. Sleep and recovery is so important. But we will play it by ear. There may be times where he will prefer to have a roommate.

Well this is a new approach. Is he sleeping in the hotel parking lot? Does this require notification to the UCI for whereabouts?

ahhh…what a delicate flower. Someone should give Porte a copy of The Princess and the Pea.

 

[Beech Mtn]

RG: Richie posted on Twitter a picture of the interior of a double pop-out motor home that he will sleep in during the race. What is the reason behind this?

TK: We are exploring some opportunities around how we operate and testing some things during this race. It is part of that pilot project. We will keep a room for him in the hotel in this initial case, if the parking location isn’t great or if it’s noisy or because of security concern. It’s just a familiar environment he can go back to every night. He has got into a routine where he prefers to be on his own ... skip desert and go back to his room after dinner, speak to Gemma [Nicole Barrett, his fiancé] on the phone and then get to bed early. Sleep and recovery is so important. But we will play it by ear. There may be times where he will prefer to have a roommate.

Well this is a new approach. Is he sleeping in the hotel parking lot? Does this require notification to the UCI for whereabouts?

1. When Cound hears about this, Froome's gonna have to have one for the Tour. And not Richie's old hand-me-downs either. Sir Dave is going to have a provide an all-new, much better one for those two VIPs

2. What happens if the Italian police show up to raid Richie's camper in the middle of the night

3. Somewhere Fabian is pissed that he and the Schlecks only asked Becca for a private dining room, and not their very own sleeping quarters.

 

[arvc40]

RG: Richie posted on Twitter a picture of the interior of a double pop-out motor home that he will sleep in during the race. What is the reason behind this?

TK: We are exploring some opportunities around how we operate and testing some things during this race. It is part of that pilot project. We will keep a room for him in the hotel in this initial case, if the parking location isn’t great or if it’s noisy or because of security concern. It’s just a familiar environment he can go back to every night. He has got into a routine where he prefers to be on his own ... skip desert and go back to his room after dinner, speak to Gemma [Nicole Barrett, his fiancé] on the phone and then get to bed early. Sleep and recovery is so important. But we will play it by ear. There may be times where he will prefer to have a roommate.

Well this is a new approach. Is he sleeping in the hotel parking lot? Does this require notification to the UCI for whereabouts?

this is the new richie. all that one bad day talk.. is all gone. He will be tough to beat.. Sky has a history of creating a one year wonder all year peak form with Wiggins and Froome already. Now it's Richie's time. This will be a long Giro and tough challenge for Contador.

Sounds to me like they have a massive problem of him raiding the hotel kitchens in the night so they have this trailer that contains no food and a lock on the door ! Lol

 

[hfer07]

Obviously this new "marginal gain approach" is quite unique- and expensive nonetheless - but how the rest of the team would feel about it? a bit discriminatory/segregating? the leader gets the perks while the domestiques are stuck with whatever the hotel provides?

 

[movingtarget]

Tinkoff might hire a gypsy band to play in the car park every night. Not so marginal gains. But don't get a Tasmanian Devil angry !

 

[JRanton]

Now we know why the TTT was bad. Unfit riders. Not exactly a great sign to have only four riders at the end of a stage like that when you haven't even done any work on the front. Still don't understand the Eisel selection and if Henao was sick before the Giro then he shouldn't have been selected.

 

[May0maniac]

Now we know why the TTT was bad. Unfit riders. Not exactly a great sign to have only four riders at the end of a stage like that when you haven't even done any work on the front. Still don't understand the Eisel selection and if Henao was sick before the Giro then he shouldn't have been selected.

Eisel is there to help Viviani and he's also a great road captain and Henao should be fine in the 2nd half of the Giro.

 

[Netserk]

Yeah, it's not like any deep mountain support is needed in the first half. Sky will be fine. Will Ritchie test his legs tomorrow or wait for the day after to win?

 

[JRanton]

Now we know why the TTT was bad. Unfit riders. Not exactly a great sign to have only four riders at the end of a stage like that when you haven't even done any work on the front. Still don't understand the Eisel selection and if Henao was sick before the Giro then he shouldn't have been selected.

Eisel is there to help Viviani and he's also a great road captain and Henao should be fine in the 2nd half of the Giro.

Eisel did nothing yesterday that someone like Kiryienka or Siutsou couldn't have done. There's not much use being a great road captain if you're never actually near your team leader during a stage. Henao might come good but there's no guarantee if you start a Grand Tour in bad condition.

It reminded me a bit of stage 3 of the 2013 Tour when nearly the entire Sky team was dropped (with the exception of Porte, Froome and EBH) on a medium mountain stage that Gerrans won. That was from a group of 90 riders at the finish and I remember reading later that Brailsford said at the time something like ''we don't have a team this year''. Of course it didn't matter because Froome was ridiculously better than any other GC rider in the race.

 

[JRanton]

Re:

Yeah, it's not like any deep mountain support is needed in the first half. Sky will be fine. Will Ritchie test his legs tomorrow or wait for the day after to win?

It's not about having deep mountain support at this stage of the race. It's about not having over half your team dropped on the first Cat 2 climb of the race. Sorry, but that isn't a good sign. I still don't understand why Lopez wasn't selected. He was due to be Giro road captain since January and was in good shape in Catalunya, Trentino and Yorkshire.

 

[Netserk]

What difference does it make on a stage like today if he has three or seven teammates around?

 

[JRanton]

Re:

What difference does it make on a stage like today if he has three or seven teammates around?

It doesn't but it indicates how strong a team he'll have for the rest of the race and the answer is, not very strong at all.

 

[phil-i-am]

Re: Re:

What difference does it make on a stage like today if he has three or seven teammates around?

It doesn't but it indicates how strong a team he'll have for the rest of the race and the answer is, not very strong at all.

I'd say that they could be saving energy or pretending weakness, but that's Sky we're talking about so you might have a point. Let's wait to real mountains though.

 

[T-Nielsen]

That caravan idea seems quite reasonable, but I do have a vivid image of them parking it illegal and the police towing it away in the middle of the night with Porte rolling around inside.

 

[LaFlorecita]

Re:

That caravan idea seems quite reasonable, but I do have a vivid image of them parking it illegal and the police towing it away in the middle of the night with Porte rolling around inside.

 

[Pricey_sky]

Re: Re:

What difference does it make on a stage like today if he has three or seven teammates around?

It doesn't but it indicates how strong a team he'll have for the rest of the race and the answer is, not very strong at all.

You may be right, but we won't know until the first mountain stage. With Tinkoff happy to pull all day why do Sky need all riders in the bunch? Better to rest up and conserve energy. Guys like Henao haven't had much racing so should be much stronger towards the end of the Giro.

 

[SkyTears]

Re:

Yeah, it's not like any deep mountain support is needed in the first half. Sky will be fine. Will Ritchie test his legs tomorrow or wait for the day after to win?

you bet on Sky getting 3 wins didn't you ?

 

[Ryo Hazuki]

Now we know why the TTT was bad. Unfit riders. Not exactly a great sign to have only four riders at the end of a stage like that when you haven't even done any work on the front. Still don't understand the Eisel selection and if Henao was sick before the Giro then he shouldn't have been selected.

the riders are clealry saving their legs for the final part of the giro. it often baffles me how little people understand here about cycling. if you don't feel 100% just drop and save. your leader doesn't need 8 helpers in a semi sprint stage anyway

 

[JRanton]

Now we know why the TTT was bad. Unfit riders. Not exactly a great sign to have only four riders at the end of a stage like that when you haven't even done any work on the front. Still don't understand the Eisel selection and if Henao was sick before the Giro then he shouldn't have been selected.

the riders are clealry saving their legs for the final part of the giro. it often baffles me how little people understand here about cycling. if you don't feel 100% just drop and save. your leader doesn't need 8 helpers in a semi sprint stage anyway

Saving their legs? Did you see the images? Both riders were clearly struggling badly on the first Cat 2 climb of the race. That is not a good sign. If they were able to remain in contact then they would have done. Especially Henao. Porte could crash out/get sick and then Henao could aim for the white jersey/a GC result. Of course, someone who understood a bit about cycling and wasn't a massive Colombian fanboy would realise that.

 

[Ryo Hazuki]

obviously they were struggling and decided to drop to save themselves. that's how it goes

 

[Jelantik]

can it be because this is the first time they got into the mountain? Not everyone deals really well when just racing for 2 days, you suddenly has to climbed 12% gradient. I would wait until the first real mountain this week. Today, they might just take it easy to save themselves. There's no reason to think that if they drop, the world will goes on fire.

 

[ILovecycling]

Re:

can it be because this is the first time they got into the mountain? Not everyone deals really well when just racing for 2 days, you suddenly has to climbed 12% gradient. I would wait until the first real mountain this week. Today, they might just take it easy to save themselves. There's no reason to think that if they drop, the world will goes on fire.

This is Kiri and Henao not a danish neo-pro who never met a serious mountain.

 

[Kwibus]

We'll see how they go when it will really matter.

Kirienka usually isnt the most constant rider of the pack. Super days and moderate days.