Tour de France Tour de France 2021, Stage 5: Changé – Laval Espace Mayenne, 27.2 km (ITT)

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Feb 1, 2011
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GC
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Ooh, Lutsenko, who's quietly sneaking up into the top ranks of the GC there...? Uran too, and maybe Vingegaard if Roglic can't continue fully.
 
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Dec 10, 2009
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Pogacar doesn't have Heras, Landis or Hamilton with him, as long as enough riders don't conserve their top 10s then it could still be interesting.

I've never understood the strategy of contenders not attacking the leader with some cohesion. It's the only way to break him, especially with a weak team. Yeah, you might have to let a guy ahead of you or behind you go up the road but make Pogacar work more every day and wear him down. It's the only way to win the race - which I think is the goal.
 
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Big Doopie

BANNED
Oct 6, 2009
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Kudos again to Rog and G for fighting thru.

Glad Uran and Gaudu stayed “in the game” for a high finish. Would have liked Chavez to resist better, but…

ineos abandoned Porte waaaay too soon. Had him work on Mur (dropping G in the process). He would definitely have been able to stay with the Ala group if not better and would not have added more time to his stage 1 deficit. Ineos panicked. Porte is climbing better than G, and maybe as well (or better?) as Carapaz.
 
Jul 16, 2015
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Roglic only 44 seconds slower than Pog on this TT. Pretty amazing grit, there.

Legendary performance from Roglic, IMO.

And it only makes the decision to leave van Aert ahead on Monday after the crash all the more stupid. Honestly, I'm even angrier right now. What were JV thinking? van Aert's dreams of temporary yellow were totally detrimental to the real fight for the podium & GC.
 
My brain is hardly able to process the results.
Apart from Pogacar:
Vingegaard faster than everyone except for Pogacar and Küng.
Van der Poel faster than Asgreen and Porte.
Alaphilippe faster than most GC guys but still a lot slower than Vingegaard and van der Poel.
Guys like Hamilton, Nibali and Bilbao practically nowhere to be seen.
(And I'm not even talking about guys like Roglic and Thomas because we know their injuries.)
o_O
 
Oct 2, 2020
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If Vingegaard hadn't been caught up with Primoz in that late stage 3 crash, who knows where he would be right now on GC?
 
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Mar 27, 2010
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This and last year healthy Roglic was evenly matched with Pogacar. Gaining 1:40 is likely 99% impossible barring additonal any crashes.

Roglič was not healthy last year. He was still very much affected by his crash in the Dauphiné. Of course Pogačar is stronger than he was last year. So I agree that even a healthy Roglič would not be able to take back 1:40 unless Pogačar has a bad day for some reason.
 
Mar 27, 2010
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Someone is just going to need to be brave, I think both Carapaz and a Roglic not interested in 2nd both have it in their locker.

The problem is they are already too far behind, and Roglič is not going to get back to 100% this Tour. Those wounds just take too much energy to recover from.

I do think that both Carapaz and Roglič (if he can recover somewhat) will attack Pogačar, I just don't think they can challenge him unless he has a truly bad day, worse than he's had for a few years now.