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Romain Bardet Discussion Thread

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A tour to be proud of. Gave his all, got the absolute maximum he could possibly have done, and attacked sensibly. Problem for him, and for aggressive racing in general, is the sky train going at a pace as fast as he would ride if he attacked out of the bunch and went solo, making attacking long distance very hard. Seems as though a case for budget constraint on total rider wages or something similar is perhaps needed, to lessen ability of super strong teams to stifle all attacking riding.
 
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hrotha said:
That Vuelta had been fought largely through short efforts, but on the Angliru Nibali tried near the beginning of the hard section and forced a situation where Horner had to give his all for a longer period of time, to see if that changed the power dynamics from previous days. By contrast, in this Tour no one has had to keep it up for longer than the sadly now standard 3 km effort. We already knew how strong everybody is on that kind of effort. We don't know how the contenders deal with, say, 10-15 km uphill full gas. That's what Bardet needed to try, if he wasn't willing to attempt any long-range team manoeuvres.

Not sure I agree with this. For sure Froome hasn't risen solo 10-15km full gas, but the pace set by the sky train, as demonstrated by the climbing times being set this tour, has been very high, meaning Froome has done the final climb full gas on pretty much every climb, just exhausting himself behind wheel than in the open air.
 
Aug 12, 2009
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Tonton said:
DFA123 said:
What is obvious is that one weak attack close the summit was never going to be anywhere near enough to take over a minute out of Froome.

He talked the talk before hand, got his team to set up the potential attack, but then cowed when it was decision time and settled for a podium position. A disappointing outcome.
This.

It's still a great TdF for Romain, though. But his reputation as a fearless attacker has taken a serious hit. He ain't no Contador, he ain't no Vino... The morale of the story is: if you run your mouth, you'd better deliver. Otherwise, shut up and pedal. :cool:

He tried.

However, after expending all his team, he needed to do what he didn't do on stage 15 and just gun it.

Barguil made the jump. When Vuillermoz went off the front, that was the time to attack.

How many riders were left? Froome, Landa, Uran, Bardet and Barguil.

Everyone else was dropped.

The fact Barguil stayed away and started the climb with the GC boys, shows, that yes, they could have gone faster.

Ask yourselves, was Barguil truly the strongest and fastest? Of course not.

All these comments are accurate. Romain needs to hope for echelons today/tonight (I have no clue if that's possible), and hopefully some time gains there. He also needs to rethink how he attacks for the future.

If he doesn't want to risk second...then sorry, but he'll have to settle for not winning. They had Sky on the ropes and he didn't throw the knockout punch.

I know he had a set plan to attack at a particular point, but when your team sets such a pace, and it does actually finally drop every Sky rider, then you go. He didn't. Nieve and Kwiatkowski got back on...that's the proof he didn't continue the pace coupled with the fact Barguil got away.

He went too low. So what if Uran follows. Go for it. Train for it next year. Longer range attack. It might have worked. Aru clearly wasn't going to bridge him and Landa was clearly going to stay with Froome (lots of evidence of that). Want proof Bardet could have gone harder earlier?

Landa attacked. Had zero reason to attack, but he did. When Sky played that card, it tells me they had the whole situation won.

So well done for trying Bardet, just rethink the strategy. Don't wait for the exact point to attack...do what Barguil did then and there.
 
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Robert5091 said:
Bardet needed a couple more MTF's and a stronger team.

Don't see what a couple more MTF's would have done. Froome was fine and Romain just doesn't have the legs to beat him at this stage in their respective careers

He's ridden a great race and cemented himself as a quality GT rider but at this stage he doesn't have the extra quality needed to win on strength alone (as the lack of a defining stage race win on his Palmares would suggest)
 
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Brullnux said:
Dekker_Tifosi said:
He will never win a grand Tour time trialling like that. He is worse than Andy Schleck and Quintana. No chance in hell he is ever going to win a GT against Froome, or Dumoulin in the future, or anyone else who has a TT
Quintana isn't that bad, come on. It was his climbing which let him down in the Giro.
It wasn't his climbing, it was the combined four minutes that he lost in the ITT.

Close call today, atrocious ITT for Romain, but looking at the three weeks, it's a well-deserved podium. An excellent TdF for him. This 3rd place, going toe-to-toe is more of an accomplishment than last year and the ninja attack that landed him on the podium, with Sky not bothering to chase.
 
Nov 29, 2010
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I will say one small thing in Bardets defense which is that Froome has about 15 vans following him so everytime they went around a U bend and rode on the opposite side of the road Bardet always gets hit by the wind from the Froome cavalcade. Ok not a big difference but that would not have helped.

Then again I have to wonder if they made the TT so technical and adding the double backs to help Bardet so ey ...
 
It lookes like he really panicked on the climb and also on the descend and flat afterwards. No rhythm at all. Maybe the DS told him that he was far down after the first check and he coudn't react appropriately? You certainly have to be careful with the instructions you give the rider from the car.
 
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Tonton said:
Brullnux said:
Dekker_Tifosi said:
He will never win a grand Tour time trialling like that. He is worse than Andy Schleck and Quintana. No chance in hell he is ever going to win a GT against Froome, or Dumoulin in the future, or anyone else who has a TT
Quintana isn't that bad, come on. It was his climbing which let him down in the Giro.
It wasn't his climbing, it was the combined four minutes that he lost in the ITT.

Close call today, atrocious ITT for Romain, but looking at the three weeks, it's a well-deserved podium. An excellent TdF for him. This 3rd place, going toe-to-toe is more of an accomplishment than last year and the ninja attack that landed him on the podium, with Sky not bothering to chase.
Yeah but he lost those 4 minutes over 70km to the best in the world, and only lost 1:15 to Nibali who is a respectable time triallist in most people's mind. Bardet lost nearly 3 minutes in 34km. Enormous difference. Quintana is OK at time trials. Not that good but never atrocious.

Anyway, happy for Bardet that he got a podium because losing it would have been incredibly heart-breaking for him, and despite my criticism over the past week or so, he did deserve a podium, and I still like him as a rider (just a lot less than three weeks ago). Hopefully he'll use this Tour as a lesson, and see that he is able to win the yellow jersey, but to do so he needs to attack from further out than 3km and lay everything on the line, Contador or Nibali style. No more settling for a podium.
 
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silvergrenade said:
He should do the Giro-Vuelta double..
He has the caliber to probably win if the TT miles are less
The Giro tends to have at least 40km of TT every year as they haven't gone completely mental like ASO, so I think he'll struggle there (as long as his main competitor is better than Aru in a TT). The Vuelta too has a midlength TT every year, but is better suited to him with the muritos and such. However, he is French riding for a French team, so it will be Tour every year
 

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