And on Saturday, they can't do a worse job before Cipressa than 2025 MSR. I still think they will fail but it's not their fault Narvaez and Wellens had severe injuries.
- Jun 17, 2024
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about selecting people for positioning etc its not that easy for UAE since everyone and their grandma look at them and the onus is on them to make the selection and you cant do that with many big guys on ompaa loompa %.Catch 22.
- Jun 17, 2024
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Good theyre trying something different, especially with key people injured. I still expect it to be close to mission impossible, but you cant fault anyone for trying.
If the goal is to brute‑force everyone off the wheel on the Cipressa which it seems, that process needs to start on Berta anyway. They will clearly try that this year. The peloton will already be significantly thinned out there now.
Not having Narvaez is major loss for Pog trying to drop MVDP. The others don't have that punch. Yes, they can set a hard tempo but they did that last year and MVDP looked very good holding on; he looks even better this year.
UAE only has to pull hard a bit more than half of the flat between Berta and Cipressa because teams will start fighting for position and entrance into the climb and increase the pace then anyway
Cipressa has 4% gradients. It's very shallow for Pogacar to drop MVP (specially when MSR is so flat before Cipressa).
I think they will go all out with Felix on Berta, McNulty takes over and does the first part of flat, Vermeersch leadout into Cipressa and forst few hundred meters then Christen and Del Toro and nuclear attack. Will it be enough, we don't know
- Feb 12, 2025
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If you want to use berta use it to hurt or at least put the lactate on vdp, & grobschartener isn’t the one who can do that. IMO if your plan is to make the race as hard as possible, use either christin or deltoro to go all out on berta which would hurt vdp & wait at the top for everyone to comeback. Uae isn’t responsible to control the race from berta to cipressa so they just need to reorganize themselves for the position battle of cipressa.
The main issue I see with this team is they lack firepower for the first 250k.
Any other team should try to go in the early break and any other team should put the burden on UAE to chase.
Any other team should try to go in the early break and any other team should put the burden on UAE to chase.
The burden will be on Alpecin because they have a favourite - MvdP
- Jul 7, 2013
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Yup, no Wellens and Narvaez complicates things on Cipressa and earlier: they won't be able to nuke those climbs like they would like to.
Agreed MdvP is the favourite, Alpecin will control for him.
The problem will be the positioning before cipressa. Everbody wants to be at the front.
If they are in front with 2 or 3 riders and one of them is del toro they have a chance.
The best case would be if van der poel is in a position like pogacar last year. But van der Poel is one of best rider in positioning himself and he will probably be in the best possible position in front of the cipressa.
If they are in front with 2 or 3 riders and one of them is del toro they have a chance.
The best case would be if van der poel is in a position like pogacar last year. But van der Poel is one of best rider in positioning himself and he will probably be in the best possible position in front of the cipressa.
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