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Tour de France Tour de France 2022: Stage 7 (Tomblaine – La Super Planche des Belles Filles, 176.3k)

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Right, but the steep gravel section is what makes it poor ( that and overuse) because after the roughly 4-5 km of 10% or more, it levels off before then the last k of 20% or whatever. That tends to take away the incentive to attack on the first section and instead wait till the final ramp. But will be happy to be proved wrong tomorrow.
Yeah, well thats exactly my point hence I wrote just remove the steep part
 
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Lets turn it around. With each good performance and win the confidence will build up. Lets undertake this hill as initially planned. Now that van Aert is contained. If that means finishing second that is still a good start. But lets aim for the win. Kuss says it's steep enough. Jonas can play along if he can. Rogla for the win.
 
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I assume the hatred for this climb is satire.
If this was, like, the Tour of Oman or something where they use the same climb every year because of the paucity of actual alternatives, they'd get a free pass. The regular climb (not Super Planche) is OK, it's basically a less good version of Peña Cabarga or Basilica di Supergà, that is never chained to anything good. But it's now reached complete saturation point, and this isn't the Vuelta in the 80s anymore. They're climbing to Hautacam later in the race - that climb has been used in the Tour the same number of times as PDBF and less overall since PDBF has been used in several other races too. It has now been seen more times in Grand Tours than the Col de la Bonette, one fewer times than Angliru, two fewer times than Zoncolan (from all sides combined), and is now over halfway to catching up with the Stelvio (from both sides combined). In ten years. And only counting usage in GTs, not including the multiple other races that have used it.

I am so freaking sick of seeing the same climb used in every race that goes within 1000km of the Vosges that whatever value it may actually hold, I never, ever want to see it again and now that it has its historic moment, it needs a long layoff to build up some suspense and intrigue before they use it again, until which time it's just the epitome of SSDD ASO laziness. Like when Unipublic - hardly known for their innovation, like in the 80s when almost every edition had the same damned mountain stages - went six years without Angliru in the 2000s, only that climb was actually a spectacle to begin with rather than a middling, OK-ish week 1 cat.1.

That's why it gets slated so much, nothing to do with the characteristics of the climb itself other than that it isn't anything special to justify the fixation and fascination with using it every five minutes, and more to do with the fact that France is a big country which has a lot of mountains in it, and ASO continually serve up the same small number of 'name' climbs every year, and the fact that PDBF is at complete saturation point but without having the tradition or historic value of, say, Mont Ventoux, Alpe d'Huez or even Tourmalet (another climb that I hate for similar reasons), and unlike most of the other overused climbs in the Tour doesn't have the flexibility to offer different design options to at least give a bit of variety (at least with things like Tourmalet, Aspin, Croix de Fer and their likes there are a multitude of approaches and uses you can put them to, keeping things at least slightly fresher).
 
I don't know why people are mentioning Quintana here. Clearly small irrelevant hills like the Vosges are of no significance for El Condor de los Andes. I reckon he just sits on.

He'll obviously wait until Granon before he'll unleashes his powers in high altitude. Pog won't know what hit him and he'll be gasping for breath above 2000 waiting for Bettiol to bring him an inhaler from the team car similar to how Porte had to save Froome in 2013 when Nairoman meant business.
 
Hoping for a big break of okay climbers (think 10-20 on GC standard) to get a huuuuge gap as everyone tells UAE to chase. At least then Pog will have some competition over the next two weeks as he eats into the gap before eventually winning without a hair ruffled in his helmet hole
 
The sprint points will be interesting as it comes in the middle of a cat 3 climb. I'm guessing someone way down in La Generale will take the stage: maybe
Vermeersch or Izagirre. I wonder if Cort will go for some more mountain points.
 
The sprint points will be interesting as it comes in the middle of a cat 3 climb. I'm guessing someone way down in La Generale will take the stage: maybe
Vermeersch or Izagirre. I wonder if Cort will go for some more mountain points.
Vermeersch must be one of the worst picks anyone can take for this stage. The guy is a giant.
 

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