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Richie Porte Discussion Thread.

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In which year will Porte win the GT Treble?

  • He will only manage the double

    Votes: 9 100.0%

  • Total voters
    9
Re:

Valv.Piti said:
Disappointing. If he doesn't feel like he can drop Froome here, I don't think he will be able to drop him anywhere. Odds are against him since Froome can dictate the tempo AND is in yellow.

Unfortunately I agree. Plus Froome also has the advantage on descents. Also it seems Porte has to deal with Aru as well who nobody was considering before the Dauphine. But you can only control your own performance nothing Porte can do about the much stronger (since June) Aru and Froome. Porte was still better than AC, Quintana Yates and Bardet. Plus BMC are stronger than expected and Sky need to hold the yellow candle for the rest of the race and they are not looking as impregnable as previous editions. There is still hope but yes it is diminished after today.
 
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Not amazing signs from Richie but they were not awful either. It wasn't exactly a climb that suited him.

Plus if you want to be positive Roche finished 13th and Caruso not long after as well as Kung & Schar controlling a 7 man break solely by themselves. Team is looking good despite the pre tour concerns.
 
Re:

deValtos said:
Not amazing signs from Richie but they were not awful either. It wasn't exactly a climb that suited him.

Plus if you want to be positive Roche finished 13th and Caruso not long after as well as Kung & Schar controlling a 7 man break solely by themselves. Team is looking good despite the pre tour concerns.

Yes BMC were much better than expected and no repeat of last stage Dauphine ambush looks likely. The problem for Richie is this race has limited opportunities and today he needed to take back time. His strength is climbing and there are only two more MTFs but plenty of descents where he could be vulnerable to Froome as we saw in the Dauphine.
 
Re:

deValtos said:
Not amazing signs from Richie but they were not awful either. It wasn't exactly a climb that suited him.

Plus if you want to be positive Roche finished 13th and Caruso not long after as well as Kung & Schar controlling a 7 man break solely by themselves. Team is looking good despite the pre tour concerns.

Quite opposite, it was exactly a climb that suited him!
 
Re: Re:

Blanco said:
deValtos said:
Not amazing signs from Richie but they were not awful either. It wasn't exactly a climb that suited him.

Plus if you want to be positive Roche finished 13th and Caruso not long after as well as Kung & Schar controlling a 7 man break solely by themselves. Team is looking good despite the pre tour concerns.

Quite opposite, it was exactly a climb that suited him!

I think it was too short. Why do you think it was one that suited him?
 
Re: Re:

Son of Amsterhammer said:
Blanco said:
deValtos said:
Not amazing signs from Richie but they were not awful either. It wasn't exactly a climb that suited him.

Plus if you want to be positive Roche finished 13th and Caruso not long after as well as Kung & Schar controlling a 7 man break solely by themselves. Team is looking good despite the pre tour concerns.

Quite opposite, it was exactly a climb that suited him!

I think it was too short. Why do you think it was one that suited him?

I think he's much better on this one climb stages, or two at most, then on multi-mountain ones. And I saw him this year ripping the field apart on shorter climbs than this.
 
I think BMC in an effort to make the race hard and somewhat stick it to SKY in fact may have made it too hard for themselves and Richie

Porte usually has a belting kick on climbs like today but I think riding at the front all day may have fatigued him....I know he is on the wheel but he still got the wind ...no side shelter ,etc ...not to mention the pressure

Dan Martin was great but he is great on very hard stages ....

I think their objective was to tire SKY and to an extent they did that ...but a better strategy might been to bring Porte to the last climb as fresh as possible and see then if he can out climb Froome & Aru....I don't think there si anyone in the SKY train that could follow a Richie attack except Froome (or indeed an Aru attack)...They have no Poles and the rest are good but not that good at the moment
 
Re:

HelloDolly said:
I think BMC in an effort to make the race hard and somewhat stick it to SKY in fact may have made it too hard for themselves and Richie

Porte usually has a belting kick on climbs like today but I think riding at the front all day may have fatigued him....I know he is on the wheel but he still got the wind ...no side shelter ,etc ...not to mention the pressure

Dan Martin was great but he is great on very hard stages ....

I think their objective was to tire SKY and to an extent they did that ...but a better strategy might been to bring Porte to the last climb as fresh as possible and see then if he can out climb Froome & Aru....I don't think there si anyone in the SKY train that could follow a Richie attack except Froome (or indeed an Aru attack)...They have no Poles and the rest are good but not that good at the moment

Regarding the bolted part: I always wonder when I see these mountain stages, why the teams ride like they do in single file, because that is sure to be harder than if they ride in a regularly shaped peloton. Today, for long periods of time, BMC, Sky and Trek were riding single-file in the first 27 (or so) positions of the field, and the peloton was - at times - almost strung completely out without it being due to high speed. Why do it like that?
 
Re:

Valv.Piti said:
Maybe because its reduces the stress and possibility of crashes, I personally like when they do that as I always fear crashes, but I think you guys have a point. It must have zapped Porte a bit.

Yeah, that's undoubtedly the reason, and I guess that drafting is a little less important in rolling terrain but it must still be better to at least have two riders diagonally in front of you than to ride single file.

I'm not sure, though, that that was why Porte didn't shine brightly today. I tend to think that he, like Fuglsang, has peaked too soon.
 
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Re:

Brullnux said:
Reading Porte and Piva's comments on Aru, I can only gather that they are clearly idiots.
Saying Aru "hardly figured" in the Dauphine is just crazy considering it was Aru and Valverdes attack that cost him the win
 
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Re: Re:

tobydawq said:
Regarding the bolted part: I always wonder when I see these mountain stages, why the teams ride like they do in single file, because that is sure to be harder than if they ride in a regularly shaped peloton. Today, for long periods of time, BMC, Sky and Trek were riding single-file in the first 27 (or so) positions of the field, and the peloton was - at times - almost strung completely out without it being due to high speed. Why do it like that?
I think they were going up that mountain at a pretty high speed. Aru was faster than Froome in 2012. The pace they set was very fast, and when it's fast like that you focus on the wheel in front of you.
 
Re:

deValtos said:
Not amazing signs from Richie but they were not awful either. It wasn't exactly a climb that suited him.

Plus if you want to be positive Roche finished 13th and Caruso not long after as well as Kung & Schar controlling a 7 man break solely by themselves. Team is looking good despite the pre tour concerns.

Yeah I don't think it was the best climb for him. Evans in 2012, and Porte both ride high gears and both got caught out on the 20% ramp. Porte got back to Froome's wheel but both Aru and Froome were riding much smaller gears. But everyone made the mistake of letting Aru go and reacting too late. Dan Martin does well on those finishes and he always has the punch to finish off the stage like Valverde does. I don't think the performances on that climb will be the same as on later climbs. Aru won't be give the same leeway on the climbs to come. Porte obviously thought he could win because his team rode all day and he was after the time bonus which makes sense. Sky did not impress me that much. They did their best work at the bottom of the climb.

I don't think Porte would be unhappy with his position on GC but probably would have hoped to be 30 seconds or so closer. The time gap doesn't really change his approach to the race and not having yellow is still better for Porte as far as pressure goes and pressure on his team who were good yesterday. Early days yet and I still think there are question marks about how good Froome will be later in the race. It's obvious that his team are not as good as in previous years. I think selecting Landa after the Giro was a gamble maybe a fresh Poels would have been better even without the racing. Would have made more sense for Landa to team lead at the Vuelta which is what he wanted to do.
 
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Re: Re:

movingtarget said:
Eagle said:
Brullnux said:
Reading Porte and Piva's comments on Aru, I can only gather that they are clearly idiots.
Saying Aru "hardly figured" in the Dauphine is just crazy considering it was Aru and Valverdes attack that cost him the win

He meant the overall.
5 seconds off the podium and the virtual leader for much of the final stage
 
Re: Re:

Eagle said:
movingtarget said:
Eagle said:
Brullnux said:
Reading Porte and Piva's comments on Aru, I can only gather that they are clearly idiots.
Saying Aru "hardly figured" in the Dauphine is just crazy considering it was Aru and Valverdes attack that cost him the win

He meant the overall.
5 seconds off the podium and the virtual leader for much of the final stage

Right. I thought he was further back than that.
 
Re:

HelloDolly said:
I think BMC in an effort to make the race hard and somewhat stick it to SKY in fact may have made it too hard for themselves and Richie

Porte usually has a belting kick on climbs like today but I think riding at the front all day may have fatigued him....I know he is on the wheel but he still got the wind ...no side shelter ,etc ...not to mention the pressure

Dan Martin was great but he is great on very hard stages ....

I think their objective was to tire SKY and to an extent they did that ...but a better strategy might been to bring Porte to the last climb as fresh as possible and see then if he can out climb Froome & Aru....I don't think there si anyone in the SKY train that could follow a Richie attack except Froome (or indeed an Aru attack)...They have no Poles and the rest are good but not that good at the moment

I can't imagine that BMC could work on the front for the purpose of tiring Sky without tiring themselves even more. It seems like a strategy destined to fail if in fact that was their plan. Is it that you think that BMC believes that they have a stronger team than Sky? :eek:
 
Re: Re:

Angliru said:
I can't imagine that BMC could work on the front for the purpose of tiring Sky without tiring themselves even more. It seems like a strategy destined to fail if in fact that was their plan. Is it that you think that BMC believes that they have a stronger team than Sky? :eek:
They might have believed that going hard on the flat would tire Sky more than it would tire them, because they believed they have better rouleurs, while Sky has better climbers.
 
Re: Re:

shalgo said:
Angliru said:
I can't imagine that BMC could work on the front for the purpose of tiring Sky without tiring themselves even more. It seems like a strategy destined to fail if in fact that was their plan. Is it that you think that BMC believes that they have a stronger team than Sky? :eek:
They might have believed that going hard on the flat would tire Sky more than it would tire them, because they believed they have better rouleurs, while Sky has better climbers.

Or they didn't care how fried they were, because they just wanted Froome to be less than fresh when he kicked. If so, it probably worked. Because his burst definitely had less bite than in years past. He usually creates significant distance when he goes all out. Hard to know for sure though.
 
Re: Re:

shalgo said:
Angliru said:
I can't imagine that BMC could work on the front for the purpose of tiring Sky without tiring themselves even more. It seems like a strategy destined to fail if in fact that was their plan. Is it that you think that BMC believes that they have a stronger team than Sky? :eek:
They might have believed that going hard on the flat would tire Sky more than it would tire them, because they believed they have better rouleurs, while Sky has better climbers.


Yes this is exactly what I meant ....SKY are stronger in the mountains but put in the speed and hard day and SKY riders are bound to get tired and they did looking at Henao & Landa But like my original post on this they probably tired Richie too much too

A Nicolas Roche said they had to try something because of lack of MTFs...they will need to be more creative at the weekend
 
Re: Re:

Son of Amsterhammer said:
shalgo said:
Angliru said:
I can't imagine that BMC could work on the front for the purpose of tiring Sky without tiring themselves even more. It seems like a strategy destined to fail if in fact that was their plan. Is it that you think that BMC believes that they have a stronger team than Sky? :eek:
They might have believed that going hard on the flat would tire Sky more than it would tire them, because they believed they have better rouleurs, while Sky has better climbers.

Or they didn't care how fried they were, because they just wanted Froome to be less than fresh when he kicked. If so, it probably worked. Because his burst definitely had less bite than in years past. He usually creates significant distance when he goes all out. Hard to know for sure though.

Yes, especially since he's been showing much less form this year than usual. His performance seems more a result of his delayed peak for the Tour/Vuelta double than anything that the BMC domestiques had done. Had it been Sky's domestiques drilling it so that they could wear down Porte prior to the steep grades of the climb, where maybe he has an advantage over Froome, it seems to me the results would be the same.
 
I don't think the climb answered many questions after five stages. The weekend will be much different. The time gaps were small but I was surprised that Froome and Porte didn't eat into Aru's lead by much but he was in full flight and they were stopping and starting which also allowed some of the riders behind to get closer. If Froome and Porte had chased hard immediately the gaps for Contador and Quintana would have opened up.
 

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