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Tour de France 2020 | Stage 20 ITT (Lure - La Planche des Belles Filles, 36.2km)

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I wonder how sure TJV was they had this in the bag, and when.
I read somewhere they already knew Pogacar was their biggest rival, not Ineos, very early?
Then why did they never behave like that? Why all the friendliness towards Pogacar? Because Roglic is friends with him? Because they could not do anything against him anyway? Because they decided to pretend to be extremely strong and out of reach anyway?
Or because after all they felt they were just too strong, nonetheless?

I would never have expected Pogacar to be so far ahead of Roglic in the tt, maybe 20 seconds at best, was my guess. I assume they expected something similar for yesterday. But I wonder about their behaviour earlier.

Would be really interesting to read an honest account of this in the future.
 
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What was expected to be the main action of the day was rather pushed into insignificance, but what happened to Carapaz' slow-slow-quick tactic. Did he simply not have the legs after his efforts on Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday, was there a technical issue, or is a slow 24km not good prep for a 6km mountain assault?
 
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What was expected to be the main action of the day was rather pushed into insignificance, but what happened to Carapaz' slow-slow-quick tactic. Did he simply not have the legs after his efforts on Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday, was there a technical issue, or is a slow 14km not good prep for a 6km mountain assault?
I think at the moment he's just worse than all of the riders who did a better time on the climb. After watching him in the breaks for so many days we automatically assumed his shape was on the rise and he could battle it out with the GC riders. Turns out we were wrong and he's still behind.
 
What was expected to be the main action of the day was rather pushed into insignificance, but what happened to Carapaz' slow-slow-quick tactic. Did he simply not have the legs after his efforts on Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday, was there a technical issue, or is a slow 24km not good prep for a 6km mountain assault?

Probably didn't have the legs, they should know perfectly how to do a proper warm-up for such 16-17min effort, it's pretty much like a FTP test.
 
I wonder how sure TJV was they had this in the bag, and when.
I read somewhere they already knew Pogacar was their biggest rival, not Ineos, very early?
Then why did they never behave like that? Why all the friendliness towards Pogacar? Because Roglic is friends with him? Because they could not do anything against him anyway? Because they decided to pretend to be extremely strong and out of reach anyway?
Or because after all they felt they were just too strong, nonetheless?

I would never have expected Pogacar to be so far ahead of Roglic in the tt, maybe 20 seconds at best, was my guess. I assume they expected something similar for yesterday. But I wonder about their behaviour earlier.

Would be really interesting to read an honest account of this in the future.

Yeah Zeeman said so yesterday, before the Tour they had 2 clear rivals. Bernal and Pogacar. Especially because Roglic kept saying Pogacar is "really really good", explicity repeated a lot of times.
Theyh knew Pogacar was the main rival. However they were also very certain the current gap before the ITT was enough. Zeeman stated yesterday evening they were already really happy with 57 seconds and thought it should be enough. They were simply blown away by how fast Pogacar went in the ITT. Especially his climb were he gained most of the time (after already doing the flat section at the same speed of Dumoulin).
 
It'll definitely be a clip that we see for years and years and a moment that will make its way into a book at or two down the line (we'll wait for what the subjects of those are for another 10-20 years)
History will likely go with things less subtle like the clip of Roglič' skewed helmet, time gaps going crazy at the overtake, Tom's worth-a-thousand-captions-look, and the close up of Wout's masked stare.
 
And Wiggins commentary where he is explaining how Pogacar will slow down any time now. To be fair to him though, nobody expected that performance.
Wiggins commentary is so useless, been using the ffw every day on his inputs. Juan Antonia Flecha had some fun inputs, worth watching, wiggins sounds like some random person from the pub giving his remarks.
 
I watched the race again today to look at the details. It seems like Roglic is definitely losing seconds on several turns early on, as he stops pedalling way earlier than Pogacar, and starts later out of the turn. Is he riding "safe" as he thinks he has the win in the bag ?
Another strange thing is that the helmet on Roglic seems to be shaking. Too hard tyres over rough asphalt ? Watching the helmets on the other guys it's hard to find any of them with shaking helmets, it could of course be that we see them in different places, anyway just a small strange thing.
Amazing performance by Pogacar who seemed to be 100% on and not for 1 second thinking any defensive thoughts, just killing it all the way .-)
 
I watched the race again today to look at the details. It seems like Roglic is definitely losing seconds on several turns early on, as he stops pedalling way earlier than Pogacar, and starts later out of the turn. Is he riding "safe" as he thinks he has the win in the bag ?
Another strange thing is that the helmet on Roglic seems to be shaking. Too hard tyres over rough asphalt ? Watching the helmets on the other guys it's hard to find any of them with shaking helmets, it could of course be that we see them in different places, anyway just a small strange thing.
Amazing performance by Pogacar who seemed to be 100% on and not for 1 second thinking any defensive thoughts, just killing it all the way .-)
I do think the pressure psycologillay got to Roglic. A crash and he was toast. And then when he got the times, he panicked.
 
I think it’s been touched on in a few places, but a very big factor I think is the power meters and data that we have now (or more importantly, that the teams have access to now) that can tell the DS that “hey, this kid is actually your strongest rider, by a long shot too,” where before a 22 year old who came into the peloton would have to “serve his apprenticeship” and “learn his racecraft” by fetching water bottles and eating wind for an aging team leader pushing for a top 10.

It would have to be a truly out-there generational talent like an Ullrich or Armstrong to break through in that system and get team leadership aged 21 (and additionally, be a German/US rider, with a German/US team, specifically looking for that talent).

Case in point, the ‘83 Tour. Fignon was due to be Hinault’s water boy, until Hinault withdrew. And Roche and Anderson had to give up their own chances working in a French team for a French leader who was injured, and never repeated his performance again.

Transport Pogacar‘s career back to those days, and instead of leadership roles at GTs he might have spent last year and this domming for Dan Martin, Aru and Formolo. But instead, somebody at UAE looked at his data, said “y’know, the kid has something,” and gave him his shot.

I get where you're coming from. But every indication out of UAE, and Pogacar himself, is that Aru was expected to be the leader this TDF.

Yes, Pogacar was almost certainly given a free role, but he didn't go into this tour as the undisputed team leader, that only happened after Aru was gone.
 
I get where you're coming from. But every indication out of UAE, and Pogacar himself, is that Aru was expected to be the leader this TDF.

Yes, Pogacar was almost certainly given a free role, but he didn't go into this tour as the undisputed team leader, that only happened after Aru was gone.

Yet it was Pogacar, not Aru, who wore the "1-number" (131 in this case), the number traditionally given to the team leader.
 
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Someone in the other thread mentioned this:
Zeeman added to the story now:

Roglic rode better watts on the flat than last years Vuelta ITT (where he took 1'30 on Pogacar). And still he was 40s behind. On the climb he was slightly below par. But not even equalling his best performance would have saved him, that would just only made him lose with 10/20s instead of 50..
 
Lol I don't know if you guys are serious.
Nobody in the team thought Aru was gonna be the leader, not even him.
A large part of the staff didn't even think he should ride the Tour, because his numbers were bad.
Why did he get in in the first place though? Did he have some clauses in his contract or something which also guaranteed leadership status or so they just sheepishly brought him and talked out of their ass he was the leader?
 

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