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Kinda funny to talk about your team work just as you have three teammates quite obviously racing against each other in a free-for-all
Did we watch the same race? They executed perfectly the same strategy I'd have for that stage. A hard pace throughout the stage, Vingegaard attacks 8 km from the finish, and the better placed teammates marks the opposition before sprinting away near the finish. Vingegaard put the others in a favourable position, and they in turn played the perfect roles behind.

What would you have changed, and how would that have put them in a better position?
 
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Well I have watched like 5 races/stages all year, and like only 3 km of yesterday's stage. I'm not saying they're racing against each other all the time because I wouldn't even know, I'm saying it's not like any of them is being a superdomestique for the others
 
Did we watch the same race? They executed perfectly the same strategy I'd have for that stage. A hard pace throughout the stage, Vingegaard attacks 8 km from the finish, and the better placed teammates marks the opposition before sprinting away near the finish. Vingegaard put the others in a favourable position, and they in turn played the perfect roles behind.

What would you have changed, and how would that have put them in a better position?
I would have allowed Roglič to attack before Kuss because he has less of a time buffer, but other than that they played it perfectly.
 
I saw someone on twitter saying Jumbo tactics is to create chaos on purpose. I believe that's a brilliant observation. It's not coincidental. They know they're powered up yes, but on top of it they want to confuse the peleton on purpose. It's part of the game.
 
I saw someone on twitter saying Jumbo tactics is to create chaos on purpose. I believe that's a brilliant observation. It's not coincidental. They know they're powered up yes, but on top of it they want to confuse the peleton on purpose. It's part of the game.
Well why wouldn't you? You have the strongest two GT riders supporting Kuss, You'll either fail but ruin a lot of peoples races, or your guys are strong enough to recover the situation if it goes wrong, But more likely, you'll ride off into the sunset.

Its basic Sun Tzu: 'Do the thing the enemy doesn't want you to do'

We need more Jumbos rather than more Ineos'. (preferably clean of course)
 
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Did we watch the same race? They executed perfectly the same strategy I'd have for that stage. A hard pace throughout the stage, Vingegaard attacks 8 km from the finish, and the better placed teammates marks the opposition before sprinting away near the finish. Vingegaard put the others in a favourable position, and they in turn played the perfect roles behind.

What would you have changed, and how would that have put them in a better position?
They did execute the tactics very well yesterday but the primary reason they worked was because the riders are turbo charged and able to produce the watts required. It's almost like somebody in the team is controlling the riders with a games console. It is better to watch as a spectacle than the Sky train churning out kilometre after kilometre at tempo but the speeds have been ramped up another level and the other teams have not been able to respond.
 
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Jérôme Pineau (former manager of B&B) said he suspects Jumbo Visma use mechanical doping (he said they're on something 'worse than doping'):



That's quite a claim (certainly from someone who was in the peloton until recently). I think the part which damages his speculative theory the most (other than the obvious lack of evidence) is the fact he said Sepp Kuss shouldn't be able to accelerate & drop 'top riders' like Ayuso, Soler & Uijtdebroeks the way he did on the Tourmalet on Friday.

Two of those riders were still wearing diapers when Kuss was flying up Loze & the Angliru back in 2020, whilst the third (Soler) is not a known climbing GOAT. I think before publicly making such comments, a little homework should be done first (namely don't exaggerate the worth of xyz riders in order to magnify the 'implausibility' of their rival's performance).
 
Should have suspected something when we saw the new team car.

29-racing-team-nederland-oreca.jpg
 
Jérôme Pineau (former manager of B&B) said he suspects Jumbo Visma use mechanical doping (he said they're on something 'worse than doping'):



That's quite a claim (certainly from someone who was in the peloton until recently). I think the part which damages his speculative theory the most (other than the obvious lack of evidence) is the fact he said Sepp Kuss shouldn't be able to accelerate & drop 'top riders' like Ayuso, Soler & Uijtdebroeks the way he did on the Tourmalet on Friday.

Two of those riders were still wearing diapers when Kuss was flying up Loze & the Angliru back in 2020, whilst the third (Soler) is not a known climbing GOAT. I think before publicly making such comments, a little homework should be done first (namely don't exaggerate the worth of xyz riders in order to magnify the 'implausibility' of their rival's performance).

Maybe I'm wrong because my french is super-shitty but I think he doesn't say that Kuss shouldn't be able to drop those riders, he says that he shouldn't be able to attack and go 10km/h faster then them, brake because of a spectator and then instantly accelerate again to the speed of the attack.
 
Maybe I'm wrong because my french is super-shitty but I think he doesn't say that Kuss shouldn't be able to drop those riders, he says that he shouldn't be able to attack and go 10km/h faster then them, brake because of a spectator and then instantly accelerate again to the speed of the attack.

It's equal to the same. The point he makes is Kuss shouldn't be able to just fly past riders of their calibre in the manner he did. It's not just about the 'unnatural' accelerations, he emphasises the quality of adversaries compared to Kuss.

I'm all for speculations (Pineau is an interesting man to make such claims, hence why I posted the link), but I've heard this sort of embellishment for decades, i.e. even on Saturday when Romain Bardet was suddenly portrayed as some sort of climbing benchmark just to further elevate Evenepoel's performance, either for the sheer glorification of it or (because this is the topic) with Floyd Landis clinical comparisons.

The point is I wasn't shocked Sepp Kuss could drop those riders like that. But I am interested in how Sepp Kuss is seemingly performing consistently in this Vuelta in his third GT of the season.
 
Pineau also said that people talk around bus at end of races, and when Jumbo 1-2-3 in Paris Nice 2022, they weren't talking about how did they trained during the winter.

I'm not really surprised by the level of Vingegaard or Roglic. Tbh it's in line with what they did before.
Vingegaard is obviously at 95% of his TDF form, else he'd have 10 minutes on the 2nd by now.
As for Kuss, if we put aside the fact that he did 3 GT, he is climbing as usual when he's on form.
For maybe the first time in his career, he has a huge boost in motivation due to his situation. In fact, the ITT is where he impressed me the most.

Maybe Jumbo are cheating, but if they are, they are always doing it in GT, because nothing here is new.
Vingegaard french ITT still remain by far the most shocking performance of this year.
 
Jérôme Pineau (former manager of B&B) said he suspects Jumbo Visma use mechanical doping (he said they're on something 'worse than doping'):



That's quite a claim (certainly from someone who was in the peloton until recently). I think the part which damages his speculative theory the most (other than the obvious lack of evidence) is the fact he said Sepp Kuss shouldn't be able to accelerate & drop 'top riders' like Ayuso, Soler & Uijtdebroeks the way he did on the Tourmalet on Friday.

Two of those riders were still wearing diapers when Kuss was flying up Loze & the Angliru back in 2020, whilst the third (Soler) is not a known climbing GOAT. I think before publicly making such comments, a little homework should be done first (namely don't exaggerate the worth of xyz riders in order to magnify the 'implausibility' of their rival's performance).
I'm surprised (or perhaps not so much) that apparently the French still hold Pineau in high regard. The way he handled the whole B&B debacle has been an absolute disgrace. But anyway... the French will always come with accusations, usually based on nothing, and the mechanical doping thing is just so nonsensical. They've been saying it for years, first about Roglic based on some very flimsy infrared picture from Strade Bianche or wherever. And then he won the TT in the Giro. A guy they had never heard of! Surely he needed a motor for that. And the myth is still perpetuated by some sceptics on twitter (mainly French, of course).

Everyone with some experience on French teams knows that they still live in the dark ages, comparatively speaking. FdJ are the only French team with some capable staff... but even their riders like a good pint on the rest day ;) It's never "what can we do better?" It's always "the guy who beat us is doping". Or, in this case, "the guy who beat us has a motor in his bike". Sure, dude. Then why didn't Van Aert just turn on the motor in Flanders? It would have saved him a lot of embarrassment and criticism.

I'm not saying that Sepp Kuss doesn't have a motor in his bike with absolute certainty, how should I know. Just that there's no logic at all behind the argument.
 
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