Tour de France Tour de France 2021 - Enthusiastic laymen's thread

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Which team has the winner of the Tour de France 2021?


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Chavito probably has to go out of his way to loose 20min or so early on, so that nobody will see him as a danger for the gc. With not many of the stages having a climb early on he probably needs a teammate who is good on the flat to help him.

Absolutely - He could do this on stages 3 to 6 - Should stay up there in stage 1 and 2 just in case.
 
Forget the youngesters! This is the Tour of the Oldies!
Greipel, Cavendish, (Sagan), Valverde, Gilbert, Froome...
Van Avermaet, Fuglsang, Thomas, Porte, Rolland, Roche, Nibali, Tony Martin...
I took a look, on the startlist are 39 riders of 34+. 14 are younger than 24. (Of those 4 are from UAE...)
 
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Will we get to see some train vs. train action?

Of course - and I think the last 5-10K of the sprint stages are going to be crazy hectic, because there are so many contenders.

Lotto, DQ, FDJ, DSM, ISN, Alpecin, Intermarche are all certain to run big trains IMO.... 5-6 riders.

On top of that, teams like Bora, Trek, Arkea, Qhubeka, BEX, Jumbo, EF, and B&B will invest anywhere from 2 to 4 riders in bunch sprints.

Wild times ahead :cool:
 
Stage 7 is also good to loose lots of time, take it easy on the long hilly stage before the first 2 mountain stages and ride in the Froometto (yes, I'm gonna use that term for the whole Tour).

There are rumours that Froome hit great form just before the Tour. Even Ukrainian Beast Mark Padun prefered staying home to racing there...
The Slovenians will likely focus on stage hunting or withdraw from the race after his demonstration of power on stage 5.
 
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Of course - and I think the last 5-10K of the sprint stages are going to be crazy hectic, because there are so many contenders.

Lotto, DQ, FDJ, DSM, ISN, Alpecin, Intermarche are all certain to run big trains IMO.... 5-6 riders.

On top of that, teams like Bora, Trek, Arkea, Qhubeka, BEX, Jumbo, EF, and B&B will invest anywhere from 2 to 4 riders in bunch sprints.

Wild times ahead :cool:
Plus the GC teams trying to keep their guys near the front up to the 3k to go point.
 
Of course - and I think the last 5-10K of the sprint stages are going to be crazy hectic, because there are so many contenders.

Lotto, DQ, FDJ, DSM, ISN, Alpecin, Intermarche are all certain to run big trains IMO.... 5-6 riders.

On top of that, teams like Bora, Trek, Arkea, Qhubeka, BEX, Jumbo, EF, and B&B will invest anywhere from 2 to 4 riders in bunch sprints.

Wild times ahead :cool:

I'll be tempted to leave out Qhubeka, and I would definitely add Cofidis and Bahrain to the list. I doubt that EF will work a lot on the flat stages, but on the harder ones they might fancy Cort's chances, if they don't send him out in a breakaway.
 
I'll be tempted to leave out Qhubeka, and I would definitely add Cofidis and Bahrain to the list. I doubt that EF will work a lot on the flat stages, but on the harder ones they might fancy Cort's chances, if they don't send him out in a breakaway.

I'm certain Qhubeka will dedicate a couple of guys to Walcheid - why else is he in the team?

You are right on Cofidis, even if I don't really think of Laporte as a power sprinter, he is more like Cort, a fast puncheur.

As for Bahrain, of course, I forgot Colbrelli :rolleyes: - I have him pegged as someone that can go for green, and Fred Wright (said Fred) was probably selected to help Colbrelli in bunch and intermediate sprints.
 
I'm certain Qhubeka will dedicate a couple of guys to Walcheid - why else is he in the team?

You are right on Cofidis, even if I don't really think of Laporte as a power sprinter, he is more like Cort, a fast puncheur.

As for Bahrain, of course, I forgot Colbrelli :rolleyes: - I have him pegged as someone that can go for green, and Fred Wright (said Fred) was probably selected to help Colbrelli in bunch and intermediate sprints.

Of course they will try to get Walscheid into a good position, but in some of the flat finales it could perhaps make better sense to have Campenaerts or someone else attack, rather than going all in for the German, when he and the team are up against pretty hard competition.

Laporte is obviously better in harder terrain, but I still see him as being a better bunch sprinter than Cort, though that doesn't say much, cause he's obviously not going to win a flat stage, and even a podium seems unlikely.
 
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Of course they will try to get Walscheid into a good position, but in some of the flat finales it could perhaps make better sense to have Campenaerts or someone else attack, rather than going all in for the German, when he and the team are up against pretty hard competition.

Laporte is obviously better in harder terrain, but I still see him as being a better bunch sprinter than Cort, though that doesn't say much, cause he's obviously not going to win a flat stage, and even a podium seems unlikely.


Well, Cort is faster than Laporte on flat road, but he is terrible at positioning for bunch sprints, he always gets boxed out of position and loses wheels..... I simply don't think he is crazy enough, for those last 3K run ins for the big sprints.

So by "better" you mean positioning, you are right, but not on pure speed.
 
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