Tour de France Tour de France 2021, Stage 2: Perros-Guirec - Mûr-de-Bretagne Guerlédan, 183.5 km

[Koronin]

Congratulations to Mathieu van der Poel for taking the stage win and maillot jaune in a way it for sure made his grandfather proud. Woman from yesterday should take a cue.

Day two and we got to see two classics already. Both won with style. Now i guess sprinters will take over in the next two days. Competition for green should be very open this year hence i feel we are going to enjoy watching it.

Slovenians confirmed again they are in great form. It looks like it won't come down to bonus seconds. Both had a good team support. JV was a bit better in this regard. Mainly due to van Aert looking after Roglič. Martin was injured still managed doing his best. Kuss went ahead of Ineos train for a while to say hi.

Ineos i guess has to decide who is the leader and go with one. Other teams will only profit from it if they won't decide up front. In between Thomas and Carapaz.

GC standings. I could see on why some are already saying it's in between the Slovenians. Realistically this is day 2 and up to position 21 the differences are not all that big. Anyway, two days of healing all the injuries from stage 1 ahead for GC guys and after i guess the first TT should provide additional pointers for adapting potential strategies, when it comes to GC.

There are a number of those in the top 21/22 that aren't GC riders and won't be riding for GC to begin with and another group who aren't good enough GC riders to be anywhere near the top GC riders. So no it's not 21 or 22 riders in the mix here in anyway. It's more like maybe 8 at best. As long as Pogacar and Roglic are on there isn't anyone competing with them for the top two spots.

 

[Roku]

So happy for Van Der Poel and the memory of Poulidor.

My dad, who got me into cycling, used to watch Poulidor on TV and talked me a lot about him. I wish I could tell him the grandson of PouPou managed to take the maillot jaune.

 

[CyclistAbi]

I nearly forgot to say Quintana way to go!

There are a number of those in the top 21/22 that aren't GC riders and won't be riding for GC to begin with and another group who aren't good enough GC riders to be anywhere near the top GC riders. So no it's not 21 or 22 riders in the mix here in anyway. It's more like maybe 8 at best. As long as Pogacar and Roglic are on there isn't anyone competing with them for the top two spots.

It's true that not all 21 have a realistic chance. But the time difference is not that significant in this group. And it's like 10% of the job done ATM. No TT, no mountain, no week 3 ... just yet. And if it will come down to Slovenians in the end. The difference is small and the fight will be till the last drop of blood. Hard to complain about that and in general and in my opinion hard to be pessimistic after such two stages.

 

[Koronin]

I nearly forgot to say Quintana way to go!



It's true that not all 21 have a realistic chance. But the time difference is not that significant in this group. And it's like 10% of the job done ATM. No TT, no mountain, no week 3 ... just yet. And if it will come down to Slovenians in the end. The difference is small and the fight will be till the last drop of blood. Hard to complain about that and in general and in my opinion hard to be pessimistic after such two stages.

There's a TT in a couple of days in which Pogacar and Roglic should put more time in the other GC guys and some will be half a minute or less and some it will possibly over 2 minutes.

 

[Escarabajo]

Valverde was at the front for two reasons: because he's the only one from the team who can contest for the win, and for taking care that Mas doesn't lose any time. Mas is at the moment protected rider No.1, cause Superman lost significant time. I think that Lopez is gonna finish higher despite this, but it is what it is. Valverde did nothing wrong imo.
And what about Giro?

Lopez in two occasions at the Giro when the mountains came was almost out of it.

And about Valverde, I did not see what you saw. Mas is riding comfortable with his protection guys. Not Valverde. And it is not like Valverde needs someone to Shepperd him. As long as I remember he can ride on his own on these kind of stages and that's what I saw. I understand you and valvpiti get emotional when someone talk about Valverde, But those are facts. I don't defend Lopez for his bad positioning. That's just a fact. That's why he needs probably more coaching and more help from teammates or even Valverde if he wants to help someone. My 2 cents. If you don't agree we can agree to disagree.

 

[gunara]

Oh how wrong you are

The guy's already too much without the full polka dot

 

[Blanco]

Lopez in two occasions at the Giro when the mountains came was almost out of it.

And about Valverde, I did not see what you saw. Mas is riding comfortable with his protection guys. Not Valverde. And it is not like Valverde needs someone to Shepperd him. As long as I remember he can ride on his own on these kind of stages and that's what I saw. I understand you and valvpiti get emotional when someone talk about Valverde, But those are facts. I don't defend Lopez for his bad positioning. That's just a fact. That's why he needs probably more coaching and more help from teammates or even Valverde if he wants to help someone. My 2 cents. If you don't agree we can agree to disagree.

If I saw correctly, Mas was up front with Cortina prior to the Mur, Valverde and Lopez both came from behind, riding close to each other, so I guess Lopez was the reason for Valverde being behind, cause as you said we know he can ride this finishes on his own pretty successfully. They, all 3, were in the first 20-30 positions at the bottom. Then with approx. 1km to go, when first Nairo attacked, and then Colbrelli, Lopez started to drop, together with Nibali and Thomas. Now, up front you have Mas who is protected rider atm, you have Valverde who can maybe win the stage, and you have Lopez behind, who already lost 2 minutes the day before. What to do? We saw what they did, and I say I would do the same. Imagine if Valverde drops to pull Lopez. First he can't recover much time, cause Lopez can't go much faster, he could save 5-10 sec max. Second he loses the chance of a stage win (ok he wasn't anywhere near that, but you don't know that at the time). And third, what if Mas also starts to lose ground. Then we will have both leaders losing time, and the guy who should go for the stage helping them. I like Lopez much more than Mas as a rider, but I must say I would do the same thing as they did.

 

[Kaptain Kool]

Look back at the 2019 Tour results. Valverde finished just ahead of Quintana on almost every flat stage. There was a reason for that. But you can't help position 2 riders at once.