Miburo said:
lejarreta said:
Miburo said:
Stop saying landa was the strongest in this giro. He lost more than 4 min in the ITT.
And he wheelsucked a contador who was 50 sec behind on mortirolo in this stage.
Up Montirolo Landa was pulling Aru and all the rest up front, and he could have done more but Aru was not at his finest. It was a cronoescalada Landa vs Contador. He did wheelsucking AFTER Aru let him go, cause Contador already left them behind.
It seems you have only watched the stage highlights.
Ok he was pulling aru but it's a fact contador had to ride mortirolo 50 sec behind them and closed the gap.
Fact that landa didn't do anything in the last 40 km.
I don't really get all the defense that is pulled in to make everyone aware that Bertie was the best at the end. I did watch the whole race from 10km before Mortirolo and what I see happened was:
- Bertie mechanical - Katusha and Astana attacked (not fair, but reality)
- Bertie was reported to be max 50 sec behind, the highest gap I saw in Eurosport was 48 sec
- After mere 500m on the climb, Landa was already pulling Kruijswijk and Aru, just 3 of them left, Landa doing all the work
- Bertie came back to Landa/Aru in a range of 6km climbed, so he did 6km ~50 sec quicker than Aru (which pace Landa was forced to ride)
- Landa and Bertie took on Kruijswijk in about 500m later and the trio was formed
Now - for the remaining 40km odd before the attack, Landa indeed wheelsucked. But to be completely fair, I saw Bertie doing the pull for maybe around 1km total during that 40km. Maybe all the Bertie fans here thinks that riding in 2nd place in 3 mans trio is not wheelsucking, but hey, be fair if you blame Landa for wheelsucking, Contador was not doing like a whole lot either. Kruijswijk did 95% of the work once the trio was formed.
I agree that Mortiloro pullback probably took lot of energy from Bertie, but reality is that he did 6km ~50 odd sec. faster than Landa and then did lose 38 sec. in last 4km. That is the fact for this stage. I know you will say that he didn't have to respond and he had what it would've took to respond and he was just controlling the race. It might well be true, but hey, I guess we will never know.