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Tour de France 2020 | Stage 19 (Bourg-en-Bresse - Champagnole, 166.5 km)

Page 19 - Get up to date with the latest news, scores & standings from the Cycling News Community.
There was no easy stage win there because as soon as Kragh is chased down, if he even can be, a dozen of the other classics guys would be lining up to go. Not one rider in that group was going to ride to the line with Bennett Because they are not insane.
Seems ridiculous to have anyone back collecting bottles when it was obvious there would be constant attacks off the front of that group in the last 20k. I know hydration is important, but if Bauer was going to be the one to chase down attacks, he needed to stay close to the front of the group. If the DS told him to get bottles that poor decisionmaking.
 
Nicolas Roche said it the other day in an interview about Sunweb when he said that there is no hierarchy ..they ride for whoever is strongest on the day and so there is np grand leader which means unlike GVA and Trentin they ride for each other

Also said coming in without a star rider(though Hirschi is probably one now ) they can be more versatile and open in their approach

Sure SK and Hirschi are strong but that is not only why they are successful
GVA, Sagan , Stevyn Naessan are strong and Trentin is very strong imo
 
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Pulling out of the Tour jeopardizes his chances of winning on the Champs Elysees, though.

Ewan last year got half of Lotto's wins so he is an important rider - Keep him fresh for the Giro and you may get another 2 or 3 wins on a sprinter friendly course - Lotto have limited options for the Giro with possibly Wellens if he forgoes the classics - It must be a dilemma for the team.
 
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There is prestige in winning Giro stages, especially in a more stacked field - He'll need to recover well to be competitive in the Giro.
I just had a look at the Giro profiles. Unless there's a mistake in the y-axis, there are 3 stages in the whole race where Ewan can even hope to be close at the finish. Maybe 4, if he can get over the 2 cat4s near the finish of stage 13. And none of them before stage 7. WHY is he going?

DeGendt should've skipped the Tour and gone to the Giro. He could win the whole thing just on solo breakaway days.
 
I really dont know how people are proposing that DQS could have got a stage win from that break. What do they think happens if Devenyns somehow brings back Kragh, something he probably can’t do anyway? It would just be ten classics guys going one after the other and everyone else sitting on Bennett waiting their turn
It certainly wasn't going to be easy. Bennett maybe hasn't got the experience in that situation to read the race but probably the only rider who had any chance at all to follow the move of SKA was himself. He'd actually been in perfect position on Sagan's wheel as Sagan had taken a long time to get across to Trentin's attack (that alone should have told him that Sagan was dead and most likely everyone else was in trouble too). That is often the case in a small group - the fastest sprinter has to chase down at least one attack - it won't be the winning move but it will discourage further attacks
 
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Well, just watched today's winner escape once again. This was certainly no coincidence.
Søren Kragh Andersen sticked the knife in just when all in the group was á bloc after pulling on the hill. This is Kragh Andersen speciality. Watched this first time in Denmark in a prestigious post Tour criterium Hadsten Grand Prix in 2015 (tour winner Froome participated, 3k circuit with small 450m@7% climb to pass each round for an hour plus three rounds). Kragh counter-attacked on third round atop of the hill and kept distance to a chasing field with 25-40 sec distance for the rest of the race. Most impressive performance for a young semi-pro I've seen.

So call the chasers 'dumb' but that's what happens when you have a strong escaper in front. The risk/chance for the chasers to f*ck it up is almost 1:1.
And don't forget he actually won the TT stage in this years Paris-Nice.
Too easy to call the chasers 'dumb'.
This is a Søren Kragh Andersen top competence and habit.
 
It certainly wasn't going to be easy. Bennett maybe hasn't got the experience in that situation to read the race but probably the only rider who had any chance at all to follow the move of SKA was himself. He'd actually been in perfect position on Sagan's wheel as Sagan had taken a long time to get across to Trentin's attack (that alone should have told him that Sagan was dead and most likely everyone else was in trouble too). That is often the case in a small group - the fastest sprinter has to chase down at least one attack - it won't be the winning move but it will discourage further attacks

But in that group attacks couldn’t be discouraged! You’d have to be lobotomised to ride to the line with Bennett. Every single classics type in the group knew they had to get away from him to win and if any of them were particularly hard of thinking they’d have had a DS shouting it in their ear. A move by Bennett to cover Kragh doesn’t discourage attacks, it just prompts the next one to instantly go over the top of him. His only real chance was that Sagan would be so desperate for a win that he’d cover moves and that was a very slander chance.

If you are Sagan and you are the fastest sprinter present in a group you can hope to discourage attacks because everyone knows you are a strong classics rider who can chase and cover with the best of them and, crucially, quite a few guys will think they have some chance against you in a small group sprint. If you are Bennett, neither of those things is true. Pretty much everyone in that group thinks that (a) you will murder them in a sprint but (b) they have your number in a classics finale type situation where you have to chase.
 
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Well, just watched today's winner escape once again. This was certainly no coincidence.
Søren Kragh Andersen sticked the knife in just when all in the group was á bloc after pulling on the hill. This is Kragh Andersen speciality. Watched this first time in Denmark in a prestigious post Tour criterium Hadsten Grand Prix in 2015 (tour winner Froome participated, 3k circuit with small 450m@7% climb to pass each round for an hour plus three rounds). Kragh counter-attacked on third round atop of the hill and kept distance to a chasing field with 25-40 sec distance for the rest of the race. Most impressive performance for a young semi-pro I've seen.

So call the chasers 'dumb' but that's what happens when you have a strong escaper in front. The risk/chance for the chasers to f*ck it up is almost 1:1.
And don't forget he actually won the TT stage in this years Paris-Nice.
Too easy to call the chasers 'dumb'.
This is a Søren Kragh Andersen top competence and habit.

Hadsten GP is a cool criterium; 15 years ago I got an autograph of Di Luca there!
 
But in that group attacks couldn’t be discouraged! You’d have to be lobotomised to ride to the line with Bennett. Every single classics type in the group knew they had to get away from him to win and if any of them were particularly hard of thinking they’d have had a DS shouting it in their ear. A move by Bennett to cover Kragh doesn’t discourage attacks, it just prompts the next one to instantly go over the top of him. His only real chance was that Sagan would be so desperate for a win that he’d cover moves and that was a very slander chance.
You have to know what is a race-winning move and what likely isn't. If someone comes over the top when everyone is at or over their limit as SKA did then clearly that is a race-winning move. If Bennett was able to get over to him I doubt there is another race-winning move coming for a while (nobody would have the legs at that point) and then Devenyns comes to the front and it settles down for a few minutes until it starts over again
 
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I just had a look at the Giro profiles. Unless there's a mistake in the y-axis, there are 3 stages in the whole race where Ewan can even hope to be close at the finish. Maybe 4, if he can get over the 2 cat4s near the finish of stage 13. And none of them before stage 7. WHY is he going?

DeGendt should've skipped the Tour and gone to the Giro. He could win the whole thing just on solo breakaway days.

Ideally, Ewan would ride the Vuelta but I don't ride the team - By my reckoning there are seven stages which Ewan could go for at the Giro, though I don't expect him to finish the race.
 
Nicolas Roche said it the other day in an interview about Sunweb when he said that there is no hierarchy ..they ride for whoever is strongest on the day and so there is np grand leader which means unlike GVA and Trentin they ride for each other
they also got lots of homework to do during the pandemic break, as Kragh mentioned yesterday. Maybe finding the perfect points to attack in the Tour was part of it ;)
 
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Ideally, Ewan would ride the Vuelta but I don't ride the team - By my reckoning there are seven stages which Ewan could go for at the Giro, though I don't expect him to finish the race.
Same thoughts here. Ewan doesn't need to finish the Giro. Just some stage wins. At the other hand, what else can he ride this year after the Giro? There isn't much for him, he could as well stay ther until the end.
 
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