If he can, he will.
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If he can, he will.
Vingegaard been stronger in the mountains in 2022.. that has been quite clear....just as we also saw at certain moments in last year's TdF where Vingegaard as the only one - also were able to drop Pogacar on the Mount Ventoux stage and took a significant chunk, like 40 sec... but sadly with a downhill where he was alone and where Pogacar could lean on others to close the gap.
= vid _ 2021 TdF Mont Ventouz Pogacar dropped.
Also been the judgment from Pogacar.. Jonas Vingegaard sofar been the strongest rider in the mountains.
He seems more comfortable than Pogacar . even today..where Pogacar was cooked and had to take a Depp-nap on the pavement after the stage and Vingegaard would have wanted a tad harder pace, and felt the early mountains today.. were actually road harder, than the final, but his main focus is to keep it tight, and first and foremost monitor Pogacar.. not least when Pogacar got such strong helpers with him, after all, this is fr3aking Pogacar - as potent an opponent' as it gets.. it's mindboggling that Jonas again and again - is able to hold Pogacar going all out..
Vingegaard also seemed like he could have dropped Roglic in Dauphine, but obviously had no bearing to do so, as they were on the same team, and why we saw that loyalty-ride..
Sofar Vingegaard has been in control and impressive to see how well he manages it.. often all alone at these critical final climbs.
he ain't in a position' where he needs to take much more, and risk cracking in this European record-heat..all focus is on defending a superb gain on the champ Pogacar.
Pogacar also made it clear after his "revenge" stage at Alpe D Huez' that he want Jonas to "counter" on his attack, so he can lean on his biggest force - his explosiveness and counter Jonas's counter, but Jonas played it smart and wouldn't counter.
Tomorrow would be interesting.. as Vingegaard can perhaps start to see the finish and perhaps go deeper.
If he can continue it tomorrow... a lot has to go wrong at the TT, for him & team to not to get their first TdF victory and something Jumbo Vista so badly need in their historical portfolio..
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Roglic usually won any stages he contested at the finish. He can sprint. Jonas looks back and wonders to himself if he'll win.
Yet again a brilliant GC nountain stage battle.
Yet again huge gaps on moderate gradient mountain.
Yet gain proof that new school cycling fans are so wrong.
Yet again huge gaps on moderate gradient mountain.
Yet gain proof that new school cycling fans are so wrong.
who are the "new school cycling school" fans here, pretty much all the "old school" fans were talking about how bad this route was
Vingegaard has really impressed me so far:
Impressive stuff so far. Can't wait for tomorrow and saterday.
- more solid in the mountains
- perhaps a better TT-er -> might still be a question mark
- while Vingegaard seems to be marginally better in climbing and TT's, Pogacar is a better all round rider. Looking back it's in hilly, cobbly and crosswind sections he can take the edge but in those stages Vingegaard has Van Aert/solid Jumbo team policing him
Impressive stuff so far. Can't wait for tomorrow and saterday.
It's more about the lack of super controlling teams. UAE were struggling to control the race but Pog was strong enough to do it on his own... until he wasn't. Then Jumbo were able to control the race with their strength in depth, until a demolition derby completely took their team apart.
That and that larger time gaps require bigger risks to make up; bigger risks mean bigger chance of fatigue in later stages - that is why there is the hope for more rouleur challenges or time trial mileage to force gaps that necessitate racing from distance. I don't think anybody can realistically complain about what the Tour's mountain stages this year have delivered, as an overall package compared to pretty much any Tour in the last 10-15 years. PDBF was meh until the very end, but it was a Unipuerto stage as the first real mountain stage and it had a super steep final kilometre that prevented people from risking anything until then - and then it was a great final kilometre. Sepp Kuss has done some work, and Louis Meintjes might retreat back into his shell but he's earned the right to do that by making this prospective top 10 infinitely more memorable and interesting than his entire career to date. We are one step away from genuine insight from Adam Blythe and Andrea Guardini winning a medium mountain stage.
This is like the polar opposite of the Giro. Like at the Giro, there are 2 top riders and a clear 3rd best. But whereas in the Giro you had two guys playing it safe and the third guy trying to attack them but failing to mak any inroads, only making the attempts by anybody else futile, here you have two guys who are - with their teams' help - shredding everybody early; the clear 3rd guy, instead of being a climber who was trying to attack but just couldn't, is a diesel who is strong in the TT so, although he hasn't actually really done anything himself other than answer others' attacks, serves as a looming threat that the others have to distance before the TT to buy themselves enough room for a mechanical or a jour sans - especially since until today he was within 20 seconds or so of Pogačar.
That and that larger time gaps require bigger risks to make up; bigger risks mean bigger chance of fatigue in later stages - that is why there is the hope for more rouleur challenges or time trial mileage to force gaps that necessitate racing from distance. I don't think anybody can realistically complain about what the Tour's mountain stages this year have delivered, as an overall package compared to pretty much any Tour in the last 10-15 years. PDBF was meh until the very end, but it was a Unipuerto stage as the first real mountain stage and it had a super steep final kilometre that prevented people from risking anything until then - and then it was a great final kilometre. Sepp Kuss has done some work, and Louis Meintjes might retreat back into his shell but he's earned the right to do that by making this prospective top 10 infinitely more memorable and interesting than his entire career to date. We are one step away from genuine insight from Adam Blythe and Andrea Guardini winning a medium mountain stage.
This is like the polar opposite of the Giro. Like at the Giro, there are 2 top riders and a clear 3rd best. But whereas in the Giro you had two guys playing it safe and the third guy trying to attack them but failing to mak any inroads, only making the attempts by anybody else futile, here you have two guys who are - with their teams' help - shredding everybody early; the clear 3rd guy, instead of being a climber who was trying to attack but just couldn't, is a diesel who is strong in the TT so, although he hasn't actually really done anything himself other than answer others' attacks, serves as a looming threat that the others have to distance before the TT to buy themselves enough room for a mechanical or a jour sans - especially since until today he was within 20 seconds or so of Pogačar.
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"The riders make the race" still requires a course for them to make the race on, though. Riders wanting to make the race given 21 flat stages with no obstacles, wind, cobbles or anything will fail, but riders not wanting to make the race can ruin even the best of routes - see the 2012 Giro Passo Giau stage for a particularly obvious example.
The thing is, the parcours is one of the only things the organisers can control ahead of time, so that's one of the things they should maximise. In fairness to ASO, they have massively stepped up their game in terms of the flat and rolling stages in recent years. It's also a domino effect, racing the first stage of a mountain block hard means that there are more tired domestiques on the ensuing stages, hence the whole overreliance on the short mountain stage because of one great stage in 2011 (which was so good because of the fatigue and the GC gaps created by the even better 200km stage the day before) that plagued GT design for a period. This stage being short - and none of the climbs being particularly hard - mean that riders weren't afraid of it, so they didn't all shut up shop and race defensively yesterday. I feared that stage 18 being as tough as it was would neuter racing this last two days but thankfully that hasn't been the case. The mountain stages have become a bit too identikit with these 50km flat then 3 huge climbs type stages they seem to like at the moment, and the pacing of mountain blocks (usually the result of geography) has been a problem, but if the riders really do want to make the race, they at least have the tools at their disposal to do so, and thankfully lately they have - but we also have to consider that riders have to feel that making the race is worth the effort expended to be able to make it, and when there is a totally dominant team with several riders in the group, it tends to disincentivise others from attacking, as we've seen in recent years with Jumbo spending the whole day riding to the pace of their third best climber, using their numerical advantage and, usually, Kuss' freshness to scare others out of attacking, or before them with the Sky train tapping out a tempo that can haul back speculative moves even from elite GC men like Vincenzo Nibali and Cadel Evans.
If Jumbo had their entire train intact and were able to flood the front with van Aert, Kruijswijk, Roglič and Kuss all day, we probably don't see the attacking from deep, and fewer guys close on time get allowed into breakaways to make the bunch have to control them, and the tighter the GC mix the more risk is involved in attacking, which tends to lead to conservative racing (this I believe is the 'new school cycling' mindset that BR refers to, the idea that a close GC mix is automatically a good GC mix, when from the perspective of the racing, quite often the opposite is true because the need to make up bigger time gaps means the need to attack from further out to achieve that). Lots of riders who are just outside the top 10 or are at the bottom of it are far enough back that they need to get into the breaks, but Jumbo's depleted resources means they can't just chase everybody down all the time, and the fact that these riders are 10 minutes or more down mean that there isn't the urgent need for Jumbo to chase them immediately either - but for teams of riders at the bottom end of the top 10 whose position is threatened, maybe there is.
I mean, we certainly can't complain about that, it isn't great that crashes, illnesses and injuries have caused the weakness of the top 2 contenders' teams, but the effect for the race has been positive as the leaders have had to race mano a mano far more frequently than has been seen in most GTs for a long, long time. Even a single super-dominant rider can head up interesting races, if they are strong enough to not worry about having a weaker team, such as last year's Tour or the 2011 Giro. It's never just "the course rules/the course sucks" or "the riders make the race". The two are dependent on one another, and there's a lot more variables involved on top of that too.
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Wasn't the stage only 120 kilometres? Isn't that too short for mano a mano action?
Apart from that, yes, this Tour has been so great on so many levels.
But when the route for next year is unveiled, it will still be smashed to pieces for having too short mountain stages, too few ITT kilometees, too far from the starts to rhe first mountain, etc. Even though, we have seen this year that it can work perfectly finely.
Congratulations to Jakobsen for making the time limit. Highlight of the cycling day for me.
according to tracker data he was pretty fast up the last climb
View: https://twitter.com/velofacts/status/1549822158947377153
He was one of only a few riders to ride hard on that last climb. Most were probably taking it easy.
I just noticed looking at the results that Sepp Kuss took his first KOM point this TdF today. Truly an amazing climber.
Sorry but I don't doubt it, you're wrong. Yeah it's more attractive with attacks all over the place but this isn't a friggin Hollywood movie. To me it's clear a lot of people don't realise just how fast they rode this stage. It was a staggering pace. They were both completely at their limit imo. This was as mano-a-mano as it gets. Don't confuse that with blistering accelerations.
Bonimenier
BANNED
Why do you think neither of them attacked on Peyragudes? Obviously because they heard Jakobsen was close to OTL
For sure for sure...they want to make him suffer another day, and put him OTL tomorrow
I was kind of wondering why I got so many messages. But now I see the confusion. By far away I mean the last mountain but not wait for the sprint. Like Granon. I though it was obvious. Why would he attack from further away than the last mountain. Only an idiot would do that. Again I thought it was very, very obvious.
The carnage that we saw on a relatively short stage 17 suggests smaller sized teams is the way to go; 6 being probably the best number for balance imo.
Agree for other races, maybe not for grand tour, too few riders remaining in third week will not be too pretty either.
I dont need no blistering accelerations, but my read on the race is that Vingegaard was stronger and they raced a 8 km, 8% at the end where you can force the issue if youre a truly stronger (which I think he was).
Yes WAS a track rider. As for the rest of your post - perfect definition of a diesel
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