The thing I'm now wondering, the more I think about it, is we keep talking about how super-strong Jumbo is, and how nobody can attack and how pointless trying to ride against them other than the last 700m is... but do we actually know precisely how strong they are? Nobody has tested them with attacks to find out how strong Dumoulin or Kuss really are, and so far they haven't really put down a tempo to absolutely shred everybody like Sky typically would, because we've still been riding to the last 500m with a dozen riders or more in the group, and on more than one occasion the GC battle has climbed the battlegrounds slower than the breakaway.
So the question is, why is that? After all, we've seen on stage 8 that actually Jumbo weren't all that strong, after a hard day in the saddle on stage 7 and with Kuss still recovering from a crash. Now they're apparently recovered enough to control everything, but they're still not able to go hard enough to drop a couple of helpers like Bilbao and Valverde - is that because the Jumbo helpers aren't that strong? Or is it because Roglič himself isn't as strong as he was earlier in the race, but the illusion of strength that having his men ride the tempo (especially on Grand-Colombier with Kuss not even used) produces means that everybody's just fallen into line? Is this a pure Giro 2012 situation, with an ageing Szmyd setting a false tempo for an undercooked Basso, and his reputation as an elite climbing helper causing everybody to overestimate how hard he was working?
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