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Tour de France 2020 | Stage 16 (La Tour-du-Pin - Villard-de-Lans, 164 km)

Page 23 - Get up to date with the latest news, scores & standings from the Cycling News Community.
I have asked myself the same question. I find it very hard to rate the tts of the top10, even more so since it's a mtf.
I expect Roglic and Pogacar to be about the same level, who's better will depend on the day. They both should be a good deal above the others except Dumoulin in the top10.
Lopez did an unexpectedly strong itt at the Algarve. Maybe he improved that by a lot. Or maybe he just had a super-good day.
Mas is a decent time trialler, but nothing more.
Landa: really not great
Urán: very inconsistent, but could be good if he's in form
Adam: not too great
Dumoulin: great
Quintana: bad
Porte: no idea, really, like very inconsistent, could be great, could be terrible?

So, I suppose I'd go:
1 Dumoulin
2 Roglic
3 Pogacar
4 Lopez
5 Porte
6 Uran
7 Mas
8 Yates
9 Landa
10 Quintana

I think none of these guys should rely on the tt.

Lopez has also lost 4 minutes on time trials. I'd put Lopez below both Porte and Uran. Remember the ITT at last year's Vuelta? He and Quintana were both really bad. It's also very possible Quintana falls out of the top 10 before the ITT. Martin and Valverde aren't that far behind him at this point. As for Martin I have no idea about his time trialing abilities either.
 
I have asked myself the same question. I find it very hard to rate the tts of the top10, even more so since it's a mtf.
I expect Roglic and Pogacar to be about the same level, who's better will depend on the day. They both should be a good deal above the others except Dumoulin in the top10.
Lopez did an unexpectedly strong itt at the Algarve. Maybe he improved that by a lot. Or maybe he just had a super-good day.
Mas is a decent time trialler, but nothing more.
Landa: really not great
Urán: very inconsistent, but could be good if he's in form
Adam: not too great
Dumoulin: great
Quintana: bad
Porte: no idea, really, like very inconsistent, could be great, could be terrible?

So, I suppose I'd go:
1 Dumoulin
2 Roglic
3 Pogacar
4 Lopez
5 Porte
6 Uran
7 Mas
8 Yates
9 Landa
10 Quintana

I think none of these guys should rely on the tt.

I'm in 2 minds about the TT.

The first 30 k is pretty flat, in some ways very similar to the Imola route at Worlds, so all the guys aiming for TT at worlds are going to gun the first 30 k, as it is their last rehearsal.

Question is how much the lose going up the final 6 k with steep gradients?

I also expect we will see most riders change bikes, and getting the logistics of that right will be key.

I think Dumoulin, Roglic and Pogacar, are going to put a lot of time into the rest on the flat part.
 
Lopez has also lost 4 minutes on time trials. I'd put Lopez below both Porte and Uran. Remember the ITT at last year's Vuelta? He and Quintana were both really bad. It's also very possible Quintana falls out of the top 10 before the ITT. Martin and Valverde aren't that far behind him at this point. As for Martin I have no idea about his time trialing abilities either.

It's really not easy to say what they all can do, since most of them are pretty much the same type: climbers who are not too bad, but not great either in time trials. They should all profit more or less the same from the mtf - in theory.
Martin's time trial, I think, is bad. Valverde has a good chance indeed to climb up here. Quintana seems to be in a bad state and the tt won't help.
About Lopez, like I said, I don't really know what to do with his Algarve performance, whether he worked a lot on this or whether he just had the perfect day.
 
24 Big Photos from Stage 16 (more to come) — corvos/aso/bettini
http://www.steephill.tv/2020/tour-de-france/photos/stage-16/

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215-20200915TDF2002-A.S.O.%20Thomas%20Maheux.jpg


260-20200915TDF0029-A.S.O.%20Alex%20Broadway.jpg
 
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It's really not easy to say what they all can do, since most of them are pretty much the same type: climbers who are not too bad, but not great either in time trials. They should all profit more or less the same from the mtf - in theory.
Martin's time trial, I think, is bad. Valverde has a good chance indeed to climb up here. Quintana seems to be in a bad state and the tt won't help.
About Lopez, like I said, I don't really know what to do with his Algarve performance, whether he worked a lot on this or whether he just had the perfect day.


With the way this TT is most of it is flat and I wouldn't be a lot into that MTF for the guys who are bad with flat TTs. Roglic, Pog, Dumoulin should be time into just about everyone. Uran, when in form usually has a good TT. Porte can do good one when on form as well. I haven't seen Mas do enough to have a clue about his, although his body type would say he should be decent at them to good at them for a GC guy. In a way similar to Soler who can put down very good TTs when he needs to. Come to think of it, he may need to put down a good TT for the team title. I would go with what Lopez did at Algarve being what he can possibly do when it top form and on a great day. Quintana likely falls out of the top 10 before the TT due to his current issues and the TT is just going to be salt on the wound for him. I suspect even if Martin is ok at the TT he likely loses the few seconds to Valverde that Valverde needs for yet another GT GC top 10. The crazy part is Movistar could come out of the Tour with decent results compared to what was expected due to how bad they were when the season restarted.
 
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My hopes for the KotM being a contest rose with Barguil and Carapaz in the break, but no, leave it to Rolland (who has no chance overall) to mop up the points. It must be close to impossible for the KotM not to go to a GC contender by default now, very disappointing.
This is, it must be said, a travesty. Benoît Cosnefroy is the KOM the race needs.
 
This is, it must be said, a travesty. Benoît Cosnefroy is the KOM the race needs.

The way that the KOM could be a good/great competition would be to find a way to artificially increase it's importance with maybe with extra World Tour points for the team winning it and/or a much larger money prize or some other idea i haven't thought of, so that teams with no real GC ambition who have riders good enough to be top mountain domestiques but who on the first flat stage intentionally lose near the max amount of time and then go for the breaks. I don't know that there is a combo of things that can be done to achieve this but it would be worth a try. I just thought of another thing if there is a combo that works extend the incentives through the top three places in the competition.
 
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The way that the KOM could be a good/great competition would be to find a way to artificially increase it's importance with maybe with extra World Tour points for the team winning it and/or a much larger money prize or some other idea i haven't thought of, so that teams with no real GC ambition who have riders good enough to be top mountain domestiques but who on the first flat stage intentionally lose near the max amount of time and then go for the breaks. I don't know that there is a combo of things that can be done to achieve this but it would be worth a try. I just thought of another thing if there is a combo that works extend the incentives through the top three places in the competition.

I almost think higher prize money might be enough incentive to get more competition for it.

Not sure there is anything that can be done about getting more interest into the team competition though.
 
And he was only a TTT ahead when they did an Ax 3 Domaines.

When you know you're better risky attacks aren't risky. They knew Froome would drop Valverde like a brick that day.

I agree with and enjoy 95% of your posts, Red Rick, but I think your anti-Froome bias clouds your analysis a bit, causing you to selectively conflate what we know after the fact with what was known before the fact. This has allowed you to create an unbreakable process flow that invariably confirms Froome's lack of panache. A non-comprehensive selection:
  • 2013 Tour stage 8 - despite never having won a GT on the road, a poor lead up to the 2013 Tour, an all-time opponent in Contador, who we did not yet know would be so weak in that Tour, Froome risked nothing by going flat out from 5km on Ax3 because he and the team somehow knew, without a doubt, that he was by far the strongest
  • 2013 Tour stage 18 - with almost no incentive to do so, Froome attacked at~11km and ~9km once Porte dropped, meaning he had no team; ultimately, this backfired, as he bonked, and could have potentially lost the Tour if Quintana hadn't ridden harder or if Richie hadn't miraculously reappeared and secured an illegal feed
  • 2014 Vuelta stage 20 - despite performing worse than not only Contador but also Valverde in the TT the day before, and being only 13 seconds ahead of Valverde, Froome risked nothing by repeatedly attacking Contador because he knew that he "would drop Valverde like a brick that day" (of course on Alpe d'huez in 2013, when they might have expected to dominate, it hadn't worked out that way...)
  • 2018 Giro stage 14 - after starting in 12th position 3:20 back and with no reason for anyone to believe it would succeed, Froome attacked from 4.3km on a climb on which it is very easy to blow up, but, because it succeeded, the team must have known it would succeed; i.e., there was no risk because we have knowledge that it worked, meaning the probability of success was 100% all along
  • 2018 Giro stage 18 - Froome starts 3:50 down after losing more time on Yates after Zoncolan but attacks 2km out to take back some time; no risk there, despite having had his team in breakaways the day before and having lost time on several stages and gained on only 1
  • 2018 Giro Stage 19 - Froome starts 3:22 down and attacks solo from 80km out to win; even though he had performed worse than Yates and Dumoulin on most of the climbing stages, and by a more significant margin that the gap to Yates performance the day before, there was no risk involved in the attack because, of course, we know it worked, therefore, it had to work. Setting aside demonstrated form, the fact that Yates blew up spectacularly (indicating there was also that potential for Froome), the conventional wisdom regarding the superiority of riding in a group over solo, etc...
All this really is to say that, man, people should stop waiting and go for it! We know this all worked for Froome and that he was the strongest, because he tried! Who knows, maybe if MAL or Pogacar or Porte was going from 2km, 5km, 11km, 80km out like Froome did in those examples, and others, we'd be saying, well, MAL didn't risk anything because he was obviously the strongest person in the race...
 
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I can't quite believe I'm saying this, but Porte is one of the more likely guys to attack. By contrast, Rigoberto Urán... what happened to the guy? I mean, I know he knows he's only moving up from 3rd now if disaster befalls one of the Slovenes. But this is a man more Zubeldia than Zubeldia. He's done the ultimate silent assassin job. He's in 3rd place overall, but you could literally remove him from the race overnight and nobody would notice he was gone. Possibly not even Vaughters.

"You're invisible now, you've got no secrets to conceal."
 
Lopez has also lost 4 minutes on time trials. I'd put Lopez below both Porte and Uran. Remember the ITT at last year's Vuelta? He and Quintana were both really bad. It's also very possible Quintana falls out of the top 10 before the ITT. Martin and Valverde aren't that far behind him at this point. As for Martin I have no idea about his time trialing abilities either.

I was thinking exactly the same thing about Lopez (vs. Uran/Porte).
 
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I agree with and enjoy 95% of your posts, Red Rick, but I think your anti-Froome bias clouds your analysis a bit, causing you to selectively conflate what we know after the fact with what was known before the fact. This has allowed you to create an unbreakable process flow that invariably confirms Froome's lack of panache. A non-comprehensive selection:
  • 2013 Tour stage 8 - despite never having won a GT on the road, a poor lead up to the 2013 Tour, an all-time opponent in Contador, who we did not yet know would be so weak in that Tour, Froome risked nothing by going flat out from 5km on Ax3 because he and the team somehow knew, without a doubt, that he was by far the strongest
  • 2013 Tour stage 18 - with almost no incentive to do so, Froome attacked at~11km and ~9km once Porte dropped, meaning he had no team; ultimately, this backfired, as he bonked, and could have potentially lost the Tour if Quintana hadn't ridden harder or if Richie hadn't miraculously reappeared and secured an illegal feed
  • 2014 Vuelta stage 20 - despite performing worse than not only Contador but also Valverde in the TT the day before, and being only 13 seconds ahead of Valverde, Froome risked nothing by repeatedly attacking Contador because he knew that he "would drop Valverde like a brick that day" (of course on Alpe d'huez in 2013, when they might have expected to dominate, it hadn't worked out that way...)
  • 2018 Giro stage 14 - after starting in 12th position 3:20 back and with no reason for anyone to believe it would succeed, Froome attacked from 4.3km on a climb on which it is very easy to blow up, but, because it succeeded, the team must have known it would succeed; i.e., there was no risk because we have knowledge that it worked, meaning the probability of success was 100% all along
  • 2018 Giro stage 18 - Froome starts 3:50 down after losing more time on Yates after Zoncolan but attacks 2km out to take back some time; no risk there, despite having had his team in breakaways the day before and having lost time on several stages and gained on only 1
  • 2018 Giro Stage 19 - Froome starts 3:22 down and attacks solo from 80km out to win; even though he had performed worse than Yates and Dumoulin on most of the climbing stages, and by a more significant margin that the gap to Yates performance the day before, there was no risk involved in the attack because, of course, we know it worked, therefore, it had to work. Setting aside demonstrated form, the fact that Yates blew up spectacularly (indicating there was also that potential for Froome), the conventional wisdom regarding the superiority of riding in a group over solo, etc...
All this really is to say that, man, people should stop waiting and go for it! We know this all worked for Froome and that he was the strongest, because he tried! Who knows, maybe if MAL or Pogacar or Porte was going from 2km, 5km, 11km, 80km out like Froome did in those examples, and others, we'd be saying, well, MAL didn't risk anything because he was obviously the strongest person in the race...

Have you read Red Rick's profile pic? :laughing:

I think that he sees 2013-18 Froome attacking as like peak Mick Jagger hitting on Scarlett Johanson's grandmother.

There is no risk; you just know that they're going to end up in pink....

What I am saying is that I don't think you can change his mind when it comes to Chris.

Nevertheless, you made some very good points.
 
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