Tour de France Tour de France 2021, Stage 3: Lorient - Pontivy, 183.9 km

[Pirazziattacks]

Maybe that would happen. I don't know. That would not be a great look but I think something needs to be done and between doing nothing and at least TRYING a time check at 10k or whatever is worth a shot.

At this point, why not. I understand the "it's not racing" complaints, but as it stands this isn't racing either. It's a demolition derby.

 

[Savant12]

Roglic crashed with 10km to go. At the time, it was unclear if he would be able to even continue the race. Adding vanAert's considerable engine to the chase would have got him to the finish 10, maybe 20, seconds sooner, but it took him more than a minute to even get back on his bike. WvA has a realistic chance of getting yellow after the TT, Roglic has a realistic chance of abandoning the race before the TT, it would make no sense to sacrifice the one for the sake of the other.

It does if you're there to ride primarily for the team leader. It doesn't make sense for another team leader to wait i.e. Carapaz waiting for Thomas but WvA is there first as a domestique with opportunities for stage victories if the road situation allows it. Until Roglic abandons then your team domestiques wait up. Most people thought Thomas was done after his crash but he got back on and was led back up to the peleton by the Ineos domestiques.

 

[Pirazziattacks]

Sure, but nothing about this route was particularly unusual.

I mean, the road where Roglic crashed was like 3 cars wide, if that is suddenly "dangerous", we will have to restrict racing to motorways.

Why does anyone bother to take anything this poster has to say seriously? Page after page of utter foolishness in this thread.

 

[Rackham]

On the topic of WvA:

I don't believe van Aert is contractually in the Tour as a domestique for Roglic.

We're talking about a a rider who had loads of big offers elsewhere (from Ineos notably) & Jumbo Visma had to do quite a bit to keep him in the team. I'm just speculating here of course (obviously), but I'd hazard a guess it's not a simple case of just telling WvA to hold back & ride for Roglic after the crash.

At least I hope so, because "if" it was really decided to leave him up front because there's a chance to take yellow with the TT on Wednesday, it's pure madness. A/Jumbo Visma don't have the team to control the race right now (Gesink out & the rest all nursing minor to serious injuries) & B/WvA will lose the jersey at the weekend anyway (he's already said he doesn't have climbing legs).

Even if a yellow jersey is worth loads so money to the sponsor (even for a day or two, which I seriously doubt), it makes no sporting sense. I mean I noted that yesterday i.e. WvA not dropping back to pull (& we even saw Roglic himself pulling at the end, so he could certainly have helped), I didn't want to react in the heat of the moment because I was too gutted about the whole thing anyway.

But after sleeping on it, I don't like it.

 

[Leinster]

It does if you're there to ride primarily for the team leader. It doesn't make sense for another team leader to wait i.e. Carapaz waiting for Thomas but WvA is there first as a domestique with opportunities for stage victories if the road situation allows it. Until Roglic abandons then your team domestiques wait up. Most people thought Thomas was done after his crash but he got back on and was led back up to the peleton by the Ineos domestiques.

It doesn't make sense if the team leader has just had the crash that puts him out of the race. Which, for a good 5 minutes after Roglic's crash, was a distinct possibility. And at that stage, vanAert would have been another 3-4 km up the road, so to help Roglic chase, he probably would literally have had to go backwards on the road.

Thomas crashed at 142km to go, and chased on his own for a long time after. It was almost 10km before Ineos sent Castroviejo and vanBaarle back to him. The 2 situations do not compare.

Obviously getting vanAert into yellow for a couple of days before he gets dropped in the mountains isn't worth as much as Roglic winning the whole thing. But for a few kms after his crash, that couple of days of yellow was genuinely looking like all J-V would get out of this Tour, and vanAert WAS the team leader. Until they knew Roglic would start the next day, there was no sense in hampering vanAert's chances.


All that said, where I do agree with Horner is that Roglic really should not have been on his own fighting with the likes of Colbrelli for tarmac space there. He should have been glued to vanAert's wheel for the duration of that finale.

 

[Jan the Man]

The final descent was a bit risky but some of the other crashes were self inflicted, on roads which were a little narrow but not dangerous.

It’s a balance, the final descent looked a little narrow but ridden in a different context/race probably no problem.

you move the point from where the time is taken and you just move the carnage for positioning elsewhere. Anyhow all the best to everybody caught up in the crash.

 

[Volderke]

when i play it at .25 speed looks like cobrelli begins to be pulled down and to his left by roglic's fall but manages to get out of it. which could be explained by Cobrelli's assertion of handlebar tieup

Thanks for saying so, because this is exactly what I think happened, and it's also how Colbrelli described it.

And if you see Colbrelli's exact movements, you see him going right to left (for whatever reason), and the moment they make contact, he moves back just a little bit to the right and you can see his steering go right a bit (untangling?) and when Roglic goes down just after, you see Colbrelli correct his balance going left (where Roglic was), probably swerving after he got untangled.

It all makes sense, it's all very possible, and I'll stick with this most plausible scenario. Some see it (very) different, and that's fine (I'm not going to argue about it anymore, and hope Roglic explains his detailed version of what happened).

 

[Hugo Koblet]

You know something's up when Broccolidwarf for two posts in a row doesn't mention a random Danish rider or commentator. And in this thread, they haven't done that for like 50 posts in a row

Anyway, what on earth happened with Van Aert? Why didn't he help Roglic get back on?

 

[SafeBet]

You know something's up when Broccolidwarf for two posts in a row doesn't mention a random Danish rider or commentator. And in this thread, they haven't done that for like 50 posts in a row

Anyway, what on earth happened with Van Aert? Why didn't he help Roglic get back on?

Targeting the yellow jersey tomorrow.

 

[Hugo Koblet]

Targeting the yellow jersey tomorrow.

Excactly, it doesn't make sense. I wonder if that was a DS decision or his own decision.

 

[18-Valve. (pithy)]

Van Aert was free to target the yellow jersey in the first week. The team said as much. No mystery here ...Rackham is right in that it took ages before Van Aert re-signed. They had to do the most in order to keep him.

 

[Hugo Koblet]

Van Aert was free to target the yellow jersey in the first week. The team said as much. No mystery here ...Rackham is right in that it took ages before Van Aert re-signed. They had to do the most in order to keep him.

That's fine, and he probably should be. But only if everything else goes as planned of course. I certainly don't understand the decision to not call him back to help Roglic, unless he just decided to keep the yellow dream alive himself.

 

[Lequack]

A word from Philippe Gilbert

View: https://youtu.be/ARiPxP4an3A

 

[Savant12]

It doesn't make sense if the team leader has just had the crash that puts him out of the race. Which, for a good 5 minutes after Roglic's crash, was a distinct possibility. And at that stage, vanAert would have been another 3-4 km up the road, so to help Roglic chase, he probably would literally have had to go backwards on the road.

Thomas crashed at 142km to go, and chased on his own for a long time after. It was almost 10km before Ineos sent Castroviejo and vanBaarle back to him. The 2 situations do not compare.

You've countered your own point. Thomas had the time to pace back on his own but Ineos still sent riders back to help him as any team should do for their leader. We've seen many instances before of crashes bringing down a team leader close to the finish and their team-mates wait around to see if that rider continues in the race or abandons.

Jumbo riders have been down a lot in just 3 stages so everyone should have been available to assist Roglic.

 

[gregrowlerson]

Nibali not in top 10 afterall but only 3 seconds outside top 10

He's just giving the top ten riders a false sense of security.

P.S. How will I ever catch up on this thread?

 

[Bolder]

It's not really about "should we have twisty roads in a GT", right? It's about at which point in the tour do they come, and also about the number of riders.

Yep, I agree. I thought a bit about the crashes today rather than comment after watching them live.

Only the crash that took out Haig etc was due to course design. That run-in should not be in an early TdF stage. Fine to have a later stage, when everyone's role has already become clear, with it. But in the first week, everyone is fighting for their place, on GC, in sprints, in whatever. (And also, it would have been truly disastrous if the full pack had been involved rather than having a few chase groups coming thru later)

The physics of that left where Mohoric was drilling it practically ensured a crash unless the peloton was going 20 kmh. Any slight deviation from a line in the pack is going to cause a chain reaction of successively larger deviations until wheels or handlebars touch, or someone hits the brakes.

If that part really had to be in the stage, surely there could have been gendermes 200 meters before the turn mandating that everyone slow down. I've seen that in a few races with construction sites etc.

The earlier crashes with GT and Roglic, and Ewen's crash, were just racing incidents. They could have been prevented by the riders racing smarter, but the UCI/ASO isn't to blame.

Anyway, what on earth happened with Van Aert? Why didn't he help Roglic get back on?

It was actually unclear to me that Roglic would be able to continue, and WvA is a protected rider -- he might have contested the sprint and can take yellow in the ITT -- no point in burning him out. He's one of TJV's 2 marqee riders in any event.

 

[Broccolidwarf]

why dont we just make the Tour de France be Calvinball instead of cycling next year at this point?

I dunno what that is.

 

[Broccolidwarf]

Why does anyone bother to take anything this poster has to say seriously? Page after page of utter foolishness in this thread.

Right after the moderator warned against personal insults?

Good job buddy

 

[thiscocks]

A word from Philippe Gilbert

View: https://youtu.be/ARiPxP4an3A

No one speaks French

 

[Põhja Konn]

What has to change the most is the attitude with which riders and DS-s approach those first week flat stage finales. There's far too much nervousness in the Tour peloton, too much fear of stupid small time losses, which often leads to losing the race altogether in some stupid and completely avoidable crashes. Too often this is accepted as inevitability and most of the attention turned to ASO-s road planning even if out of all the crashes so far, only one can be attributed to roads being too twisty and narrow for a sprint stage.

Riders and specially DS-s need to take a hard look at themselves, and find ways to cut down this nervousness. Specially the GC teams have very little to gain and everything to lose in those flat stages first weeks. Maybe the 10k rule would help a bit, as the sprint leadouts and fight for the position are usually yet to get going at that point. But more important is to change the attitudes like that of a GC team having to fight for position with sprint teams in the lead up to the neutralisation line in order to keep their leaders safe.

Some changes in the rules may help, but I don't believe that those alone can do enough. The teams need to sit down and come to some kind of working agreement on how to approach those flat stages, if only for the Tour, as other races aren't usually this kind of demolition derby. They have the responsibility to do so for their own riders and the sport of cycling as well.

Crashes have always been part of this sport, but when the biggest race of the year turns regularly into a demolition derby due to excessive nervousness of the peloton, then that peloton has no excuse of doing nothing about that nervousness. Concentrating only on road planning issues is no solution.

 

[Lequack]

No one speaks French

That's why the video has subtitles

 

[thiscocks]

That's why the video has subtitles

haha, didnt come up for me, ill try again

 

[RedheadDane]

No one speaks French

That's why the video has subtitles

Okay... I'm confused. I'm pretty sure he's speaking French, and that there are in fact a lot of people who speak French and the subtitles available are in French, and everything is just FRENCH!

 

[Broccolidwarf]

you move the point from where the time is taken and you just move the carnage for positioning elsewhere.

No you don’t

The point is to move it, to where the sprinter trains are not yet fighting hard, thereby decreasing the pressure of being in front significantly.

Most sprint trains switch on between 5K and 3K, depending on the route.

 

[18-Valve. (pithy)]

That's fine, and he probably should be. But only if everything else goes as planned of course. I certainly don't understand the decision to not call him back to help Roglic, unless he just decided to keep the yellow dream alive himself.

I really do think it was set in stone. Meaning Roglic knew that he couldn't count on WVA until after the first TT (at least)

I don't think WVA went rogue.

WVA is the (only) other star rider on the team. He's on a bigger and better contract now. His star has risen even further. That comes with a cost.