Tour de France 2020 | Stage 17 (Grenoble - Méribel Col de la Loze, 170 km)

[red_flanders]

Roglič lost the Tour because Pogačar pummeled everyone in the TT with a shocking performance. Tactics had zero to do with it.

 

[hrotha]

Roglič lost the Tour because Pogačar pummeled everyone in the TT with a shocking performance. Tactics had zero to do with it.

There are tactics involved even in an ITT.

 

[VayaVayaVaya]

Roglič lost the Tour because Pogačar pummeled everyone in the TT with a shocking performance. Tactics had zero to do with it.

I mostly agree, but there is a world in which Roglic had a minute more on hand before the ITT due to tactics and thus won.

 

[Red Rick]

I mostly agree, but there is a world in which Roglic had a minute more on hand before the ITT due to tactics and thus won.

This would perhaps be more true if Pogacar hadn't been overall at least as strong in the mountains as Roglic. You can blame Jumbo/Roglic for stage 8, but I don't think Roglic could've followed Pogacar, and I guess you can slightly blame him for stage 18, but then he had a gap in hand that should be enough in 99% of cases on the weaker ITTer.

 

[BlueRoads]

I think it would have been very different had they known how strong Pogacar actually was. They said they knew he was his their strongest rival at least after Bernal dropped, but if they had known from the beginning and if they had known HOW strong he was, it would have been better to not do this train thing at all, but to let Roglic keep up with the others and let Pogacar, who had no real mountain domestique (after de la Cruz crashed, at least), follow every single attack by Lopez or whoever would have been willing, Dumoulin should have been used as an attacker, not part of a train, as well. Roglic should have hung himself on to Pogacar's wheel as long as he could. The Jumbots then should have done everything to isolate Pogacar on the flat/ in the crosswinds - not saying they would have won that way, but that would have been my approach as a Jumbo DS had I known what I was up against.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Now... how might be a good way to find out how strong your opponents are?

 

[BlueRoads]

Now... how might be a good way to find out how strong your opponents are?

Spying on their training?

 

[red_flanders]

There are tactics involved even in an ITT.

I assume you get my point.

 

[BlueRoads]

One thing I forgot to ask: After the Dauphiné I think they (was it Dumoulin?) were asked, whether they would do this train thing in the Tour as well / or whether this was what we would get to see at the Tour as well... I don't really remember, but somewhere in the back of my memory there's something like this... and the answer was like "no, that will look different / we have another approach..." Does someone remember? Because then I thought they were going to play attackers with their leaders and climbers. I'm not sure if I understood wrong or if they were playing with the press or whether they changed their approach again after Kruijswijk crashed?

 

[red_flanders]

I mostly agree, but there is a world in which Roglic had a minute more on hand before the ITT due to tactics and thus won.

I hear ya. I also think most of the critique of Jumbo's tactics has been done with hindsight after the TT. They seemed to be working pretty well until the ITT.

 

[klintE]

Pogatsar ITT display messed things up because you don't take into account what is unthinkable.
It's fluctuation that never should happen
And, IMO, he has zero chances to do that again. I mean, he gonna be a superstar appareently but will never do "out of this world" performance again. For many reasons.

 

[VayaVayaVaya]

Yeah, we obviously all thought Roglic had sealed the win before the ITT, so who can blame them for feeling the same?

However, I read a quote from Roglic saying something to the effect of, "It's never enough time. If you have 1 minute, you want 2. if you have 5, you want 10." And I think the challenge for TJV and other teams is to identify whether there were opportunities to have gained that 1 minute during the race and how they could have executed against those opportunities. There are learnings here through the lens of hindsight that can be used to inform future racing strategy. Just a few that I've seen or am thinking of:

• Attack when you feel stronger than your rivals
• Attack when you don't know the strength of rivals so that you can gain intel (or have a strong dom who is a potential threat attack to draw rivals out)
• Don't ride defensively unless you have a much larger gap on your rivals
• Use the strength of your team for offense, not just defense
• Don't give back time to a dangerous rival if you're strong enough to avoid it
• Get your helmets and sh** in order
• If you have another GC threat on the team, keep them in play as long as possible
• Others?

 

[Leinster]

I hear ya. I also think most of the critique of Jumbo's tactics has been done with hindsight after the TT. They seemed to be working pretty well until the ITT.

I think there was a small minority of us here, at the very least a non-zero cohort, who expressed the opinion that there was, at the very least, a non-zero chance of Pogacar beating Roglic by more than a minute in the TT. Personally, I assumed it would take a mechanical or some sort of non-athletic incident, rather than Pog just blowing him out of the water. But I don't think I was alone in thinking it wasn't a sure thing.

Point being, given Jumbo's superiority in numbers over UAE, some on here were wondering why Jumbo were happy to just have Pog sit in their wheels all the way up every mountain in the Alps. Especially after Bernal cracked on the Colombier, leaving Pogacar, that day's stage winner, as the only realistic GC threat.

 

[red_flanders]

I think there was a small minority of us here, at the very least a non-zero cohort, who expressed the opinion that there was, at the very least, a non-zero chance of Pogacar beating Roglic by more than a minute in the TT. Personally, I assumed it would take a mechanical or some sort of non-athletic incident, rather than Pog just blowing him out of the water. But I don't think I was alone in thinking it wasn't a sure thing.

Point being, given Jumbo's superiority in numbers over UAE, some on here were wondering why Jumbo were happy to just have Pog sit in their wheels all the way up every mountain in the Alps. Especially after Bernal cracked on the Colombier, leaving Pogacar, that day's stage winner, as the only realistic GC threat.

Yup, understood. This is why I said "...most of the critique...".

 

[Leinster]

Yeah, we obviously all thought Roglic had sealed the win before the ITT, so who can blame them for feeling the same?

However, I read a quote from Roglic saying something to the effect of, "It's never enough time. If you have 1 minute, you want 2. if you have 5, you want 10." And I think the challenge for TJV and other teams is to identify whether there were opportunities to have gained that 1 minute during the race and how they could have executed against those opportunities. There are learnings here through the lens of hindsight that can be used to inform future racing strategy. Just a few that I've seen or am thinking of:

• Attack when you feel stronger than your rivals
• Attack when you don't know the strength of rivals so that you can gain intel (or have a strong dom who is a potential threat attack to draw rivals out)
• Don't ride defensively unless you have a much larger gap on your rivals
• Use the strength of your team for offense, not just defense
• Don't give back time to a dangerous rival if you're strong enough to avoid it
• Get your helmets and sh** in order
• If you have another GC threat on the team, keep them in play as long as possible
• Others?

• Never miss a chance to make your rival do some of the work.

Dumoulin was never so far back that he didn't represent a threat to enough of the other contenders that it could have drawn some work out of them had he gone up the road. And any little bit of work that they could have got out of Pogacar, even if he still finished ST as Roglic every day, would have helped.

 

[Leinster]

Pogatsar ITT display messed things up because you don't take into account what is unthinkable.
It's fluctuation that never should happen
And, IMO, he has zero chances to do that again. I mean, he gonna be a superstar appareently but will never do "out of this world" performance again. For many reasons.

I think the eventual margin was unthinkable. But Pogacar turning over Roglic's 1 minute lead definitely wasn't out of the realms of possibility.

 

[Brumdog66]

I honestly think Jumbo rode a near tactically perfect race and were just beaten by a stronger rider who put in two superhuman performances. Possibly they could have put more time into him on the crosswind stage?

 

[Tonton]

I know it sounds counterintuitive but apparently it makes more sense in Dutch.

I knew that one could say "excuse my French" when saying something rude. Now I know that one can say "excuse my Dutch" when saying something wrong .

 

[JosephK]

Yeah, we obviously all thought Roglic had sealed the win before the ITT, so who can blame them for feeling the same?

However, I read a quote from Roglic saying something to the effect of, "It's never enough time. If you have 1 minute, you want 2. if you have 5, you want 10." And I think the challenge for TJV and other teams is to identify whether there were opportunities to have gained that 1 minute during the race and how they could have executed against those opportunities. There are learnings here through the lens of hindsight that can be used to inform future racing strategy. Just a few that I've seen or am thinking of:

• Attack when you feel stronger than your rivals
• Attack when you don't know the strength of rivals so that you can gain intel (or have a strong dom who is a potential threat attack to draw rivals out)
• Don't ride defensively unless you have a much larger gap on your rivals
• Use the strength of your team for offense, not just defense
• Don't give back time to a dangerous rival if you're strong enough to avoid it
• Get your helmets and sh** in order
• If you have another GC threat on the team, keep them in play as long as possible
• Others?

In hindsight, besides the possible use of Dumoulin to apply pressure, TJV might have been more aggressive with their strongest climbing domestique, Sepp Kuss. I'm wondering whether Kuss himself could have been in the top 8 or so riders on GC. He dumped time on a couple stages to recover and keep the legs fresh, but he looked so good in the mountains on week 3, that maybe this could have been another card? Hard to say. We know Kuss would have lost a bit of time on the ITT, and of course if he had tried to stay closer on GC, then his legs might not have been so good in week 3.

 

[Tonton]

Nothing wrong on that stage, Kuss was given, it seems, the go-ahead to get a prestigious stage win and in the end, Robic grew his lead. Most here were thinking "40 seconds was do-able, 57, no way that Pogba-car gets the yellow card in Paris." Nothing wrong with stage 17.

Now things can be said about JV riding super hard and hurting their leader as much as the opposition. Sky or USPS would ride at a calculated pace, high, but something that the leader felt comfortable with. Or do so to launch an attack from said leader. It didn't feel that way with JV. I get that. Maybe they fell victim of the hype, media chanting how strong they are, all that reinforced by Ineos' subpar performance.

 

[Escarabajo]

I think JV did all the best they could. Of course now we are double guessing their work because they lost the Tour. But I never thought for a minute that he would lose the Tour. Even if he climbed better or his time was at Dumoulin level he still would have lost the Tour.

I believe the only thing that fell on Pogacar favor and worked against Roglic was the following:

• The cross wind time loss to Pogacar gave him more freedom to attack and to allow him to just follow wheels. A coincidence. Fate.
• The camaraderie between Roglic and Pogacar came back to bite him in the a$$ at the end. He felt his enemies were the Colombians and focused too much in distancing them. To the point of refusing to work with Quintana one day. He even said that he had the strength to go with Pogacar but he didn't have to chase his fellow countryman.

Nothing could be done about the first one. He must feel bad about the second one.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Nothing wrong on that stage, Kuss was given, it seems, the go-ahead to get a prestigious stage win and in the end, Robic grew his lead. Most here were thinking "40 seconds was do-able, 57, no way that Pogba-car gets the yellow card in Paris." Nothing wrong with stage 17.

Now things can be said about JV riding super hard and hurting their leader as much as the opposition. Sky or USPS would ride at a calculated pace, high, but something that the leader felt comfortable with. Or do so to launch an attack from said leader. It didn't feel that way with JV. I get that. Maybe they fell victim of the hype, media chanting how strong they are, all that reinforced by Ineos' subpar performance.

Stage 15 is the big question mark for me, because they basically rode the whole thing in formation and gave Kuss the day off.

Reason being: it was clear quite some way from the finish that Dumoulin had ditched everybody he was going to ditch and everybody left was fine with the tempo Dumoulin was tapping out. Was that because Roglič could do no more, or were Jumbo simply happy to save energy (despite there being, you know, a rest day following)? The rest of the group seemed to be content to just ride along with Dumoulin's tempo because Jumbo would have a totally fresh domestique to chase them down if they did something and they were all benefiting from the downfall of Quintana and Bernal.

If Roglič could go faster than Dumoulin was riding, why did he not ask Dumoulin to up the tempo or sacrifice Tommy D and put Kuss on the front? He can't be that scared of being isolated, since Mas and Landa were the only other riders with a teammate in that group and would Bilbao and Valverde really be able to pressure Kuss?

If Roglič could not go faster than Dumoulin was riding, once they had satisfactorily put enough time into Bernal and Quintana, why did they not sit up and see if anybody else would be bluffed into taking up the pace (plus slowing the pace for a bit might give Roglič a bit of recovery time?) - I find it difficult to believe that the same team that believed they had no reason to push for a bigger advantage than 50 seconds on Pogačar were so scared of Bernal that they had to keep riding and towing everybody else in case their 7 minute lead over him shrank to a 6 minute lead or something. See if one of the Zubeldias genuinely wants this.

 

[Red Rick]

Stage 15 is the big question mark for me, because they basically rode the whole thing in formation and gave Kuss the day off.

Reason being: it was clear quite some way from the finish that Dumoulin had ditched everybody he was going to ditch and everybody left was fine with the tempo Dumoulin was tapping out. Was that because Roglič could do no more, or were Jumbo simply happy to save energy (despite there being, you know, a rest day following)? The rest of the group seemed to be content to just ride along with Dumoulin's tempo because Jumbo would have a totally fresh domestique to chase them down if they did something and they were all benefiting from the downfall of Quintana and Bernal.

If Roglič could go faster than Dumoulin was riding, why did he not ask Dumoulin to up the tempo or sacrifice Tommy D and put Kuss on the front? He can't be that scared of being isolated, since Mas and Landa were the only other riders with a teammate in that group and would Bilbao and Valverde really be able to pressure Kuss?

If Roglič could not go faster than Dumoulin was riding, once they had satisfactorily put enough time into Bernal and Quintana, why did they not sit up and see if anybody else would be bluffed into taking up the pace (plus slowing the pace for a bit might give Roglič a bit of recovery time?) - I find it difficult to believe that the same team that believed they had no reason to push for a bigger advantage than 50 seconds on Pogačar were so scared of Bernal that they had to keep riding and towing everybody else in case their 7 minute lead over him shrank to a 6 minute lead or something. See if one of the Zubeldias genuinely wants this.

Roglic wanted to win the stage. Without risking getting countered.

As for Kuss, I'm pretty sure he was talking of his ass on stage 6 and Jumbo were just hiding that they were bad.

 

[Skele]

Roglic was just suffering in his Kuss' wheel until he decided to let him go, and Kuss just kept pacing according to plan.

 

[gregrowlerson]

Heal: Sepp Kuss
Hurt: Weather