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State of the peloton 2022

Page 14 - Get up to date with the latest news, scores & standings from the Cycling News Community.
What I find most interesting about this current TdF is the style of racing. It‘s more like in the 90s and 00s with early attacks and irregular pacing. Sure, that‘s somewhat down to the weakened teams of the two top contenders but there‘s an immense contrast between Pogačars seemingly random attacks and a consistent Sky paceline
Thank you. I've been wondering about this as on of my eurosport commentators constantly talks about how cycling is back to how it used to be. And they are very thankful for it as it's much more fun to watch. (According to them the controlled cycling started with Armstrong.)

He says it's the youngsters and thank guys like Wout, MvdP, Pog etc.

It's so much more fun to watch than a sky train! (And I haven't even watched more than one sky train and it still was enough (giro 2021 Bernal).
 
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What I find most interesting about this current TdF is the style of racing. It‘s more like in the 90s and 00s with early attacks and irregular pacing. Sure, that‘s somewhat down to the weakened teams of the two top contenders but there‘s an immense contrast between Pogačars seemingly random attacks and a consistent Sky paceline
Agreed but it’s still hard to pinpoint why the style has changed. Is the racing more chaotic because there are less teams capable of pulling an Ineos or because they’re trying different strategies because they’re not sold on the train? As boring as it may be, it’s a proven strategy and a team that has the capability of pulling it off will still do what they see is the most likely to yield success. Or are the riders really just given more free reign?
 
During the years when there were no trains or long distance attacks it was sold as: They need to preserve and save energy because it will bite you, hence the peleton is cleaner because nobody can sustain or keep attacking without paying the price.

Now we are again at the: attack as you please phase. yes to entertainment... but no to more plausible :)
 
Agreed but it’s still hard to pinpoint why the style has changed. Is the racing more chaotic because there are less teams capable of pulling an Ineos or because they’re trying different strategies because they’re not sold on the train? As boring as it may be, it’s a proven strategy and a team that has the capability of pulling it off will still do what they see is the most likely to yield success. Or are the riders really just given more free reign?

Jumbo are very train-like and 2020 was more or less controlled excessively until the conclusion. I think the difference is that in 2021, UAE had the jersey for much of the way and UAE have shown a chronic inability to control races in the way that Jumbo and Sky did. Just contrast the racing in the first few Alps stages (obviously Granon) with ADH.
 
Are we full-90s or something like early 00s? But yeah, we could have a few really fun years ahead of us the way things are going. Time for Quickstep, Movistar and the Italians to catch back up again!
Looking at how well the Italians have been doing in swimming, track and field and weight lifting over the last 2 years I demand the same for cycling.

About the state of the peloton, we're going straight back to the 90ies!
 
I am fearing JV a bit. Next year Vingegaard is the favorite and he will have not only WvA and Kuss but two more extremly strong climbers. I see some train riding incoming actually.

Yes I think we have peaked on excitement for this cycle.

Bora showed it at the Giro. Keep your powder dry and just crush the race with a concentrated mega watt effort.

After this edition Pog will ride more conservatively but now JV know they have the recipe right they will trust that they can just crush enough people to tee up JV to go full cyborg whenever needed.
 
They are a quite shitty team though apart of 2 outliers (Pogacar and Almeida) and one great day for their domestiques this TdF (where JV had 3 weeks of great days for WvA and 2 weeks for Kuss).
And you can make a case that Almeida was actually better before joining UAE.
As was Hirschi.

Plus UAE has cut a lot of its Italian ties in the past few years.
 

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