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Teams & Riders Team Movistar-thread

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What happened to Lopez today. Unless too many crashes took the toll. Because performance wise there was nothing to indicate that this would happened.
I think too many crashes. I also think he let go big time when he did let go, so lost more time. Now Mas will be unquestioned leader and Soler is injured, it might be time for Supermán to get Vuelta leadership, regardless of plans for home leaders or whatever.
 
I think too many crashes. I also think he let go big time when he did let go, so lost more time. Now Mas will be unquestioned leader and Soler is injured, it might be time for Supermán to get Vuelta leadership, regardless of plans for home leaders or whatever.

As Enric Mas proved last year he can do well in both the Tour and Vuelta, he'll have at the very east co-leadership if not full leadership at la Vuelat. Erinc is proving he's reliable and consistent again and it currently the one rider they can count on in 3 week GT's. Also unlike the Tour, Valverde has much bigger plans for himself in la Vuelta.
Soler is likely done for the season.
I agree that for Lopez today it was likely too many crashes. Most of Movistar's riders at the Tour are either injured or sick at this point.
 
As Enric Mas proved last year he can do well in both the Tour and Vuelta, he'll have at the very east co-leadership if not full leadership at la Vuelat. Erinc is proving he's reliable and consistent again and it currently the one rider they can count on in 3 week GT's. Also unlike the Tour, Valverde has much bigger plans for himself in la Vuelta.
Soler is likely done for the season.
I agree that for Lopez today it was likely too many crashes. Most of Movistar's riders at the Tour are either injured or sick at this point.
Back to back GTs might be a tougher ask when there's a lot of racing from afar though. Last year's Tour was very conservatively raced, and that suited him well in coming into form later in the race. I don't think it's a stretch to suggest he may have to go deeper to achieve a high placement in this race than he did last year, when Jumbo paced everything but didn't even really try to gain time. And part of the beauty of their conflicting styles is that Mas can race in the Sastre or even Zubeldia method, letting others tire themselves out if López is co-leader and forcing people to respond to attacks, and riding himself into form as the race goes on.
 
Lopez is out of contract. No clue if he plans on staying but there won’t be any deals promising him Vuelta leadership. I love watching him climb and on his day he is as good as anybody in the world, but he wasn’t signed as an undisputed GC leader at the GTs and this is Movistar we are talking about. They’ll have 3-4 leaders at La Vuelta regardless.

At this point in the Tour, there shouldn’t be any deals. Lopez is 26 minutes behind Pogacar and 20 minutes behind Mas. It’s his responsibility as a member of the team to ride for Mas regardless of possible Vuelta leadership.
 
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Thing with MAL is, though, when they signed him, Valverde's contract has an option on salary level depending on whether he's active as a rider or not from 2022, and Telefonica had yet to re-up the sponsorship.

I think MAL was in the market when a lot of teams didn't have the money to pay him what he was worth, and rather than sign a 3 or 4 year deal when he might not be getting what he's worth, Movistar offered him the option of a one-year deal with extension salary TBD. At the time I compared it to Marcus Pettersson, the ice hockey player who reached RFA and took a contract for way below his market value for one year, when his team was in a salary cap crunch, only to then take a higher salary contract to fill out the rest of the deal. He wanted $3,5m x 6 years, they gave him $1m x 1 year followed by $4m x 5 years to make up the total value & duration. He was 26 years old and does not want to commit to a contract across peak years for less than he feels he's worth due to a lack of money in the market following the Covid slowdowns and race cancellations, so the opportunity to kick the can down the road a year when the situation will likely be better was an obvious plus point about the Movistar offering for him.

Of course, this is beneficial for Supermán in multiple ways - they get a year to ascertain whether he meshes well with the team or can work in that environment, and until this Tour, signs had been good in that respect. However, he also gets to hit the market again at the end of the year so if he prices himself out of what Movistar are willing to pay he can jump ship for a better contract elsewhere. I would be astounded if they don't offer him an extension - and a pretty good one - at this point, unless some serious public arguments break out in the interim. However, I would not be astounded if he doesn't take that extension because somebody else is offering him a better contract. After all, we'd be talking his contract through what ought to be peak years, and even if he has a disappointing year, he's nevertheless still a proven talent and a proven winner who will bring a lot of eyeballs to your team through his results and his activities during races, so should still be a valuable commodity in the market to most teams.
 
Last year Movistar did offer a 2 year contract, but MAL wanted a 1 year deal, which is understandable for multiple reasons and obviously Movistar was good with that. Telefonica has renewed their sponsorship for 2 more years. Valverde has also now said publicly to media he plans on racing in 2022. So we have those moving pieces now more or less in place. It sounds like Movistar is bringing G. Izagirre back along with Ananburu (i know I just misspelled his name) in to the team next year. There is a rumor that Soler is going to UAE next year. 1 year gives MAL and the team the ability to know if it's worth pursuing to keep him there or not. Next year teams should have a bit more money than they did last year or this year.
 
They are aiming for the podium, from what I’ve seen and heard. Nobody is going to be happy with a Top 10.


And this:

As for teammate and co-leader, Miguel Ángel Lopez, who also talked to the media on Monday, the Colombian is currently engaged in trying to battle back from a very difficult start to the race. Three crashes in the first week, and nearly failing to make the time cut on Sunday made for a very difficult race.
"I've never had such a hard day as yesterday [Sunday]," López said. "I've never been in the gruppetto before and I'm totally out of the GC fight. But we will do our best to fight for the podium with Enric."

 
Would anyone who defended Movistar chasing down Carapaz, thus keeping Pogacar nice and fresh, care to explain and defend Movistar doing nothing to limit time loss to G Martin yesterday?

If not, I can only assume the team are every bit as petty, vindictive or stupid as I thought to waste resources to punish an old teammate at the same time as helping out their number 1 rival for overall victory.

Enric Kloden has dropped to 9th and Movistar aren't even dominating the thrilling teams competition this year. I usually love watching Movistar and am entertained by their unpredictability (sometimes good, sometimes bewildering) but this Carapaz incident really needs to go down in the annals of TdF history as something especially cretinous.
 
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