• The Cycling News forum is looking to add some volunteer moderators with Red Rick's recent retirement. If you're interested in helping keep our discussions on track, send a direct message to @SHaines here on the forum, or use the Contact Us form to message the Community Team.

    In the meanwhile, please use the Report option if you see a post that doesn't fit within the forum rules.

    Thanks!

Tour de France Tour de France 2021, Stage 11: Sorgues – Malaucène, 198.9 km

Page 30 - Get up to date with the latest news, scores & standings from the Cycling News Community.
WvA in play for mountains jersey...

and in so doing, he might climb up the green jersey competition as well...

green jersey used to be not a specifically "sprinter's" jersey. The points were not so weighted to flat stages. this is why riders like Merckx, Van Springel and (quite frankly) Kelly could win it. It was more of a "consistent" jersey.

WvA would be an excellent recipient of a "consistent" jersey.

:)
"maillot de la regularidad" in Spain. The Vuelta is the only GT that has resisted the sprint-weighting, although the Giro's change is only recent, hence seeing people like di Luca '09, Evans '10, Contador/Scarponi in '11 and Purito in '12 winning it. The Vuelta is of course also helped not just by parcours but by withdrawals for Worlds prep in balancing out the entrants as pure sprinters often aren't as interested in it on current routes, though Degenkolb won it on even the most MTF-biased of all Vuelta routes.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Big Doopie
Facts? This is the internet. That he won a GT with a pretty high level of competition and was very close to winning the Vuelta against a decent level with a eads m

fair enough.

but the giro he won, rog crashed and ran out of juice. nibali, despite all the trophies in his closet, was already on the downhill. vuelta, he got beat by rog who had done the TDF full-on and was also having a bit of his usual third week swoon. and carthy was a fairly close third...

nothing that carapaz has done has shown that he could ride away from his present competitors in any meaningful way.

and this is the tdf -- not the giro or vuelta. the competition is firing at all cylinders and he has never before competed in the tdf at that level, so i am still not sure how anyone expected him to be much above what he is doing now...he has a chance of making the podium which is good, and as good as i would expect at the start.
 
I don't think they could go much faster, but this is a warning for Ineos. Kwiatkowski is now their best dom on Mt V. It's very confusing, especially when you have a team with Thomas, TGH and Porte.
Quickstep considered Kwiatkowski a possible GC rider early on; he is capable of huge days in the mountains, he just can't back it up day after day. When he is on it, like today, or in 2017, or for his stage win last year, he can drop anyone, on any terrain. The next mountain day he'll lose 15-20 minutes.

Expect him to be prominent on the road to Quillan or Andorra, but not both.
 
fair enough.

but the giro he won, rog crashed and ran out of juice. nibali was already on the downhill. vuelta, he got beat by rog who had done the TDF full-on and was also having a bit of his usual third week swoon.

nothing that carapaz has done has shown that he could ride away from his present competitors in any meaningful way.

and this is the tdf -- not the giro or vuelta. the competition is firing at all cylinders and he has never before competed in the tdf at that level, so i am still not sure how anyone expected him to be much above what he is doing now...he has a chance of making the podium which is good, and as good as i would expect at the start.

Agree a lot with this.

I have grown to really really like Carapaz as a rider and a racer because he tends to constantly try to do things, but his big performances have tended to have some caveats about the opposition.

I think over 3 weeks he pretty much will be the 2nd best climber in the race here (maybe 3rd if JV continues to be miraculous) but his strengths tend to be unexpected attacks and being able to do them from stage 1 to 21.
 
fair enough.

but the giro he won, rog crashed and ran out of juice. nibali, despite all the trophies in his closet, was already on the downhill. vuelta, he got beat by rog who had done the TDF full-on and was also having a bit of his usual third week swoon. and carthy was a fairly close third...

nothing that carapaz has done has shown that he could ride away from his present competitors in any meaningful way.

and this is the tdf -- not the giro or vuelta. the competition is firing at all cylinders and he has never before competed in the tdf at that level, so i am still not sure how anyone expected him to be much above what he is doing now...he has a chance of making the podium which is good, and as good as i would expect at the start.
I think we're seeing where Carapaz's ceiling is, which wasn't a 100% defined thing after the Vuelta last year. He still has a team as strong as anyone's in the race behind him in this Tou, so 2nd is definitely not out of the question, and even at that it presumes that Pogi won't have a bad day.

He's still Ineos' best GC option for this year's race. But as each stage passes, Bernal moves into pole position for Tour leadership for 2022.
 
nothing that carapaz has done has shown that he could ride away from his present competitors in any meaningful way.

His present competitors are Vingegaard, Lutsenko, Keldermann and Urán. At least the first two have never shown this kind of level before, so based on previous results you should definitely expect Carapaz to ride away from them.

Agree a lot with this.

I have grown to really really like Carapaz as a rider and a racer because he tends to constantly try to do things, but his big performances have tended to have some caveats about the opposition.

I agree that Carapaz is not the type of rider who will totally dominate the climbs compared to his competition. But the point with the caveats about the opposition is nonsense to me. This can be said about like half of the GTs in the last few years. In fact, this discussion reoccurs at each GT nowadays.
 
  • Haha
Reactions: Big Doopie
His present competitors are Vingegaard, Lutsenko, Keldermann and Urán. At least the first two have never shown this kind of level before, so based on previous results you should definitely expect Carapaz to ride away from them.



I agree that Carapaz is not the type of rider who will totally dominate the climbs compared to his competition. But the point with the caveats about the opposition is nonsense to me. This can be said about like half of the GTs in the last few years. In fact, this discussion reoccurs at each GT nowadays.

...irony lost somewhere...?
 
Ineos‘ tactics were absolutely fine unless people would have preferred the break to get 20 minutes and UAE to soft tap until the second time up Ventoux.
The annoying part for me and I brought this up a few days ago is how it's considered acceptable and smart when Ineos do it but when Movistar chase someone down despite not being in yellow you have the British on ES laughing at them and Kwiatobot starting fights.
When it was Froome going nuts on GC other riders were slated for hunting podiums but for Ineos it's intelligent
 
  • Like
Reactions: SHAD0W93 and Carols
The annoying part for me and I brought this up a few days ago is how it's considered acceptable and smart when Ineos do it but when Movistar chase someone down despite not being in yellow you have the British on ES laughing at them and Kwiatobot starting fights.
When it was Froome going nuts on GC other riders were slated for hunting podiums but for Ineos it's intelligent

I’m not interested in all the Movistar nonsense. The only realistic way for Ineos to win this race is for Pogacar to crack badly in the third week and that means making the stages as hard as they can. They have nobody to send up the road who is a threat so using the team to make a hard tempo all day is the next best option.
 
I agree that Carapaz is not the type of rider who will totally dominate the climbs compared to his competition. But the point with the caveats about the opposition is nonsense to me. This can be said about like half of the GTs in the last few years. In fact, this discussion reoccurs at each GT nowadays.

This is fair and I really don't want to re-legislate his performances - nobody flukes consistently good GT results and he did them on merit. I just think it's fair to suggest that he has proven to be a really good rider but not really to be a blow everyone away on his day rider. I think his climbing times tend to back that up too if we're looking for a more objective frame of reference.

I am confident we'll continue to see him going at people over the remainder of the race and that he'll end up on the podium at the end of it anyway. His persistence is his charm
 
I’m not interested in all the Movistar nonsense. The only realistic way for Ineos to win this race is for Pogacar to crack badly in the third week and that means making the stages as hard as they can. They have nobody to send up the road who is a threat so using the team to make a hard tempo all day is the next best option.
Sorry I didn't mean to disagree with you. I have no problem whatsoever with Ineos tactics today I just hate that if it was anyone else certain people would be loling all the way up Ventoux
 
Nonsense, he was acting. Been practicing his painface with Formolo all week in the hotel.
image.jpg
 
I think we're seeing where Carapaz's ceiling is, which wasn't a 100% defined thing after the Vuelta last year. He still has a team as strong as anyone's in the race behind him in this Tou, so 2nd is definitely not out of the question, and even at that it presumes that Pogi won't have a bad day.

He's still Ineos' best GC option for this year's race. But as each stage passes, Bernal moves into pole position for Tour leadership for 2022.
A healthy Bernal is definitely better than Carapaz, but not light years ahead. At this point, he should be the Tour leader next year.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Sandisfan
Sorry I didn't mean to disagree with you. I have no problem whatsoever with Ineos tactics today I just hate that if it was anyone else certain people would be loling all the way up Ventoux

It's just the result of established trends really right. A team like Movistar have turned bad teamwork into something of an artform at points, which is why they get jeers when they do early work to control a 'rival'.

Astana might have received a few sneers, but they were hardly ridiculed for drilling it at the Giro when they blew apart a stage only for Vlasov to crumble on the final climb. Similarly most people felt pretty excited about EF trying to animate things for Carthy despite him not pulling through.

Whether you enjoy them or hate them, Ineos have a track record of getting riders into places to win races.
 
...irony lost somewhere...?

No, I just think you did not get my point.

The point about the caveats came up at this year's Giro, at last year's Giro, at last year's Vuelta, at the 2019 Vuelta etc. If more or less every GT is said to have weak contenders, than maybe the expectations what makes a great field are wrong. I do not think that the competition against which Carapaz won the Giro or finished 2nd in the Vuelta was particularly weak.

I also think that he has a good level at this TdF, but is not at his absolute best. Therefore, in contrast to you, I think that him not being able to drop Lutsenko or Keldermann lately does not take away from his climbing ability in peak shape.

But as I already mentioned (and with that I agree with Eclipse): Carapaz has never been the type of climber distancing his competition on every climb.
 
2016 Formigal, 91 riders (55,4% the race péloton at that point) missed the time cut by a huge margin. They were 54 minutes behind on a stage which took 2h 54 minutes for the leaders to complete, 31% outside the winner's time - a level that would see you cut from most time trials. That group included people who've top 10ed many a Grand Tour, like Robert Gesink, Tejay van Garderen, Leopold König and Pello Bilbao. The issue is, once the gruppetto is big enough, they know they're safe and won't get bounced from the race, so they don't need to work hard. Only occasionally (one time in Tirreno-Adriatico in the 90s, for example) will the organisers go hard on the autobus when they're deemed not to have respected the race. The problem is the penalties, if the riders aren't thrown out of the race, only impact a small number of riders (those contesting the points classification) since a time penalty means nothing to guys already missing time cuts, and points penalties only impacts those who are contesting the points classification - and ironically, the guys contesting the points classification are probably the guys trying hardest in that gruppetto to honour the race anyway.

The Giro has been getting increasingly generous with their time cuts, but then they've often presented longer and harder stages and are at a time of year which means a higher risk of bad weather.
That's easy to monitor now though since we know most of the riders' HR, watts, etc. 'Your HR' is only 115, pick it up or there will be no relaxing of the time cut.'
 
  • Haha
Reactions: SHAD0W93

TRENDING THREADS