So they don't backload the route and instead of everybody jostling for position tentatively because they're scared of what's to come, we get a great first week. Now I know that in 2020 they had every opportunity to create action in week 1 too and it was a complete and utter disaster, but 2020 was also a very weird year in terms of the pandemic and everything as well. For so much of my cycling fandom, the Giro was where it was at because you had all those guys that wanted to win, whereas at the Tour a placement was so important that not losing time was more important than gaining it. In recent years that's just turned completely around.
Now, of course, the optimism for the rest of the race is kind of contingent on both of the big two being there, because it's a clear two-horse race again with a secondary battle to be best of the rest and complete the podium. Races can have some great stages at least and be decent races even if it's a one-horse race (take the 2011 Giro, for example, and also a number of stages especially in the first half of the 2021 Tour when Pogačar was stomping everybody but leaving carnage in his wake), but it's a breath of fresh air that the race could totally die down to predictability from here and it's still already been decent. All too often we get backloaded races where everything simmers away and you're still operating on the hope that it will ignite for the last few stages. But stage 6 has just finished and we've already almost as much racing as the 2022 and 2023 Giri put together.
Jumbo continue to be basically male SD Worx. The tactics vary considerably, occasionally they are superb, sometimes they're OK, and all too often they're extremely questionable... but the insane strength in depth of their team is such that it becomes a moot point because they can bludgeon their way to victory with the legs they have, and sometimes they win because of themselves, and sometimes they win despite themselves. They finally seem to have learned how to deploy Sepp Kuss as the race-breaking force he can be if utilised to his strengths, but at the same time the use of van Aert still sends mixed messages and confuses. If he was going to be domestiquing for Jonas then why was Wout pulling the break for kilometre after kilometre? Either way, I'm not going to complain about the spectacle it gave us especially as in the end Pogačar proved the stronger man on the day and keeps it tight going into Puy de Dôme.
And though I may joke about us seeing August in July nowadays with the insane speeds that are being put out, and I may compare Wout to Cândido Barbosa, and I may criticise the Jumbo DSes plenty... they have shown the capacity to do something great once in a while, and unlike the lunatics that inhabit team cars in Portugal they weren't spending Jonas to domestique for Wout like Liberty Seguros losing the Volta by making Héctor Guerra tow Cândido's fat 80kg behind up the HC mountains (while he drops a dozen Operación Puerto guys in the process).
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