Teams & Riders Team Visma - Lease a Bike

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They have been riding above their paygrade for a few years, and now that some of the people who were responsible for those successes behind the scenes have moved to greener (better paying) pastures it seems that the performance has gone down the drain as well. Not entirely, they did after all still win the Giro, but something about the preparation for this Tour is obviously not quite right. They've been focusing on all the wrong things, as well as that some of their riders are just past their peak, Van Aert being the most obvious one.
 
I really hate to see Vingegaard suffer like that, really hoped he could've put up a fight.

But as they say, always finish on a positive note:

I really enjoyed seeing VLAB implode like they did.
Benoot did nothing from the break, didn't see WvA, hope he enjoyed his breakway yesterday, Kuss dropped Yates and Jorgenson just before he dropped himself.
Vingegaard completely isolated on the first 1000meters of Hautacam.


Absolutely comical. Bunch of clowns and I'll never stop enjoying their clowning.
 
I really hate to see Vingegaard suffer like that, really hoped he could've put up a fight.

But as they say, always finish on a positive note:

I really enjoyed seeing VLAB implode like they did.
Benoot did nothing from the break, didn't see WvA, hope he enjoyed his breakway yesterday, Kuss dropped Yates and Jorgenson just before he dropped himself.
Vingegaard completely isolated on the first 1000meters of Hautacam.


Absolutely comical. Bunch of clowns and I'll never stop enjoying their clowning.
Trine, is this you?
 
Thinking back, the saddest thing is that Vingegaard didn't even get ridden off the wheel. He was dropped immediately. He cannot produce that kind of wattage, after that lenght of a stage. It wasn't a fight, it was a slavage mission, and he lost that as well.

Pog's attack was delirious. He made Armstrong's attack on Pantani on those same slopes 25 years ago look like a slow motion geriatric race by comparison.
 
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I really hate to see Vingegaard suffer like that, really hoped he could've put up a fight.

But as they say, always finish on a positive note:

I really enjoyed seeing VLAB implode like they did.
Benoot did nothing from the break, didn't see WvA, hope he enjoyed his breakway yesterday, Kuss dropped Yates and Jorgenson just before he dropped himself.
Vingegaard completely isolated on the first 1000meters of Hautacam.


Absolutely comical. Bunch of clowns and I'll never stop enjoying their clowning.

Yeah, that was unbelievable. On the lower slopes of Soulor they looked impeccable: Remco dropped, other suffering, would Pogi survive after the crash? Then Kuss grilled his own teammate (Jorge), then on Borderes Yates was in trouble. An acceleration by hills specialists (Wellens, Narvaez) totally isolated Vingegaard on Hautacam. His climbing army shredded to pieces. Then Pogi ends it all with incredible acceleration (crash? what crash?).

It kinda reminded me of AdH'01 stage: Telekom ruled (USPS and Armstrong pretended to be in troubles) only to be crushed by Armstrong's attack on AdH.
 
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I think they made a lot of good moves yesterday. Just turns out, that some other riders were stronger and some Visma riders not 100 % top, top shape.
Benoot in the Break, can come back from the Break and hand over some bottles/ice or deliver one big turn between the Mountains. Haven ´t seen this, maybe it didn ´t Happen or Not on Camera. They wanted to pace high and isolate Pogacar from his domestiques. Good try but they had to slow down because Jorgenson and Yates got dropped. Thats why Yates and Narvarez survived. In the end Pogacar decided to attack, and we all know Nobody can follow him - sad but thats the truth. Visma tried and the plan was good, but some riders were to weak - no shame for that. If they haven ´t tried the outcome would have been the same and we would blame them for not trying.
 
The Rabo curse is real and returned alongside the name...
It wasn't a curse from an old Slovakian crone....It was one of their own making that most could see slowly developing.
Yesterdays' stage started to show the problem early:

Niermann: "We didn't expect this"​

“We didn't expect this. But it is what it is; we have to deal with it, Niermann summed up his team's day. “The best rider won in the end, we have to be honest about that. I haven't spoken to Jonas yet, so I don't know exactly how he felt. It probably wasn't his best day, but he's still the best of the rest.

Problem is; they could see the inevitable but kept up the same self-defeating aggression in the wrong places.
One Positive: if Remco finally decides to leave his current team he has plenty of data to compare the strategies he'll deal with on his next choice.