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Tour de France Tour de France 2020

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No GC team is going to ride hard on climbs 100 km+ from the finish. There are too many flattish km between Turini and Col d'Eze. No team will care if Aru is dropped or not. I guess teams would care about Froome but would it leave only Jumbo-Visma to ride. The drama on this stage will be who is in the break and will it be allowed to stay away.
 
No GC team is going to ride hard on climbs 100 km+ from the finish. There are too many flattish km between Turini and Col d'Eze. No team will care if Aru is dropped or not. I guess teams would care about Froome but would it leave only Jumbo-Visma to ride. The drama on this stage will be who is in the break and will it be allowed to stay away.
I can see that happening, but disagree—I think some GC hopefuls will be found lacking because of weird prep and perhaps due to the willingness of non-big-team GC hopefuls taking an early flyer to gain time any way they can. I’m not saying it will decide the race —just that it will add some drama for stage 2 (and when do we get that in the Tour?).
 
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Yeah I don't think anyone is planning to make GC attacks, but the stage hunters will be out for blood and that will probably draw in a lot of opportunistic moves.

The main problem is simply that Turini is not a climb where an elite breakaway group will put 2 minutes into the 3rd best domestique on some teams and still have numbers to retain their advantage after.
 
As much as I hope for an exciting stage 2 I have a suspicion that we are all just desperate to see some racing action, this year more than ever. Well, but I'd like to be proven wrong.

Another thing I've been thinking about is whether there will be so many stage hunters on stage 2 already. A lot of people/teams are going for GC this year, some very good riders will be tied as domestiques, since many teams are so willing to put everything but GC aside.
If Higuita, Landa, Pogacar, Quintana... are going for GC, and guys like Bennett, Teuns, Gaudu are fulltime helpers as long as their leaders are in contention, who are the first class stage hunters "left"? De Gendt. Adam Yates. Alaphilippe. Benoot. Well, is that just my impression?
I'm not sure what Valverde will do.
(And if Bardet, like I never mentioned before, should go for stages, Latour and Cosnefroy could be free as well.)
Of course you can send out a domestique to test the waters, but I think the teams will be careful not to burn their guys on an early stage.
 
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As much as I hope for an exciting stage 2 I have a suspicion that we are all just desperate to see some racing action, this year more than ever. Well, but I'd like to be proven wrong.

Another thing I've been thinking about is whether there will be so many stage hunters on stage 2 already. A lot of people/teams are going for GC this year, some very good riders will be tied as domestiques, since many teams are so willing to put everything but GC aside.
If Higuita, Landa, Pogacar, Quintana... are going for GC, and guys like Bennett, Teuns, Gaudu are fulltime helpers as long as their leaders are in contention, who are the first class stage hunters "left"? De Gendt. Adam Yates. Alaphilippe. Benoot. Well, is that just my impression?
I'm not sure what Valverde will do.
(And if Bardet, like I never mentioned before, should go for stages, Latour and Cosnefroy could be free as well.)
Of course you can send out a domestique to test the waters, but I think the teams will be careful not to burn their guys on an early stage.
There’s no question we’re all desperate to see some racing!!!!
 
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As much as I hope for an exciting stage 2 I have a suspicion that we are all just desperate to see some racing action, this year more than ever. Well, but I'd like to be proven wrong.

Another thing I've been thinking about is whether there will be so many stage hunters on stage 2 already. A lot of people/teams are going for GC this year, some very good riders will be tied as domestiques, since many teams are so willing to put everything but GC aside.
If Higuita, Landa, Pogacar, Quintana... are going for GC, and guys like Bennett, Teuns, Gaudu are fulltime helpers as long as their leaders are in contention, who are the first class stage hunters "left"? De Gendt. Adam Yates. Alaphilippe. Benoot. Well, is that just my impression?
I'm not sure what Valverde will do.
(And if Bardet, like I never mentioned before, should go for stages, Latour and Cosnefroy could be free as well.)
Of course you can send out a domestique to test the waters, but I think the teams will be careful not to burn their guys on an early stage.

Adam Yates will not be given a second of liberty. The way he climbed in UAE was insane.
 
I hope the weird nature of this season leads to some favorites struggeling early and some others feeling like they have peaked early meaning they want to gain time in the first week. If that happens, the first week could be great, if it doesn't five more or less mountain stages all either going to the break or causing at least a bit of gc action is still waaaaaay better than the sort of rubbish we usually get in the first week of the tour.

On another note, what are the chances for crosswind on stage 5? If I remember correctly that valley can get quite windy and has led to echelons in the past. They cross it towards the end of the stage so I imagine this could spice things up?
The chances of crosswinds on stage 5 are actually not bad, if the Mistral is blowing it's gonna be brutal once they cross the valley. The route really needs strong winds on stage 5 and 10, if some gc riders already loose 1-2min on that stage (looking at MAL and Landa) we could get some action earlier than expected.
 
I know it is still too early to be sure of anything, and that what I am about to post is dependent upon some assumptions and gross simplifications, but if the 2020 Tour should end up being a Bernal/Roglic match-up, then I think the parcours for the last week lend themselves to some seriously compelling viewing. Stage 16 has a finish that seems to advantage a punchy finisher like Roglic, but Stage 17 would seem to be more for the sustained effort kind of climber that I think Bernal is closer to the model for. And Stage 18 seems to be a fairly unusual design that is going to ask these two riders to do things that are not reliably strengths for them. And then there is the time trial, in which Roglic would have the advantage on the bulk of it, but is the climb at the end long enough for Bernal to take back enough time to compensate for what he lost in the first section? Again, this speculation assumes a number of things, but if the Ineos and Jumbo Visma teams are as evenly matched as seems possible now, and if Bernal and Roglic are the top two riders going in to the last week of the Tour, and if the time difference between the two going in to the last week of the Tour is sufficiently small, I can see a scenario where they alternate putting time into each other in Stages 16 and 17, leaving Stage 18 for them to have at it with no safety net.

I may be dreaming here, but I think this is a realistic scenario.
 
When you analyse the stages one should also have in mind that we are living in corona times.
We all hope that it will not happen, but there will always be the possibility that the tour will aborted in the middle of the race like in Paris Nice or the UAE tour.

Has there been any announcement about a miimum number of stages that must take place if it is to be considered a true TdF result if this happens? Is there any standing rule for stage races about the minimum completed stages for the race to be said to have been run? Obviously we all hope that it wouldn't happen, but if stage one takes place and then there is a closedown, would we have Bennett or Viviani recorded as a Tour de France winner?
 
Has there been any announcement about a miimum number of stages that must take place if it is to be considered a true TdF result if this happens? Is there any standing rule for stage races about the minimum completed stages for the race to be said to have been run? Obviously we all hope that it wouldn't happen, but if stage one takes place and then there is a closedown, would we have Bennett or Viviani recorded as a Tour de France winner?
I don't really like putting a number on it cause there's so many different situations possible, and the frigging ITT is on the penultimate day.
 
He always climbs good in spring but disappoints in TdF. His spring last year was also insane.

He will have an interesting preparation - No longer wants to ride for GC at GT's but the nature of this year's route is if he's in form early he'll be up there in GC - Also he's making his seasonal debut in the Dauphine so he'll be fresh for the TDF - He was in sparkling form in his first race of 2020 in the UAE tour.
 
He will have an interesting preparation - No longer wants to ride for GC at GT's but the nature of this year's route is if he's in form early he'll be up there in GC - Also he's making his seasonal debut in the Dauphine so he'll be fresh for the TDF - He was in sparkling form in his first race of 2020 in the UAE tour.

I see you're considering the 2020 post-lockdown season a totally different season than the pre-lockdown season.
 
Anyone else who has traditionally not been keen on Froome going to change stripes for this year? I'd like to see him win. And I never, even thought I could give rise to such a sentiment....
I’d like to see him win next year.

I’m all-in for Quintana 2020, unless Tibopino can somehow stay upright, avoid contracting Coronavirus, stay with the leaders in crosswinds, not get food poisoning, not eat imported South American steak, and not create some other, hitherto unimaginable way of losing a bike race.
 
I’d like to see him win next year.

I’m all-in for Quintana 2020, unless Tibopino can somehow stay upright, avoid contracting Coronavirus, stay with the leaders in crosswinds, not get food poisoning, not eat imported South American steak, and not create some other, hitherto unimaginable way of losing a bike race.
Quintana was climbing so well pre-covid. I would be very happy to see him on the top step. Likewise Pinot. These guys better take some wins before the Remco era begins.
 
My heart says Pinot, seeing him fail only to bounce back everytime is really appealing to me.
For Bernal the strategy is pretty clear, limit your losses to Roglic on the punchy stages durning the first 2 weeks, stay with the best climber on stage 15 (if possible) and strike hard on stage 17 and 18, where one can gain or loose minutes.
 
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