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Tour de France Tour de France 2024, Stage 13: Agen > Pau, 165.3 km

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Even when I saw it the first time, Van Gils' move looked reckless. The gap was very small. And he had time to react when he saw the gap shrink even further. If we want less crashes, we can't always be so tolerant towards riders taking exaggerated risks.
The gap was about a third of the width of the road when he went for it to begin with, but he did have time to react when Capiot moved.
 
Path is clear. Decides to go. Sees Arkea rider moving over. Anticipates contact because otherwise he is in the barriers.

If this move is cause for punishment I don't know how there can be sprint stages, to be honest.
It wasn't even important for him to go there, he wasn't going to win the sprint anyway. Risky moves far away from the front should be punished. Notice how certain riders are very rarely causing crashes (Mads Pedersen for instance). Most crashes don't simply occur by bad luck.
 
Arkea rider pulled off when Van Gils was going 15kph faster and didn’t seem to see Van Gils with his look back. Van Gils could’ve hit the brakes hard but probably judged it easier to try going through the gap.
This is exactly what I saw when watching it live. If you go back and watch it full speed you can see that Van Gils was the fastest moving rider in the field and would have had De Lie in the front but Capiot either didn't see him or didn't realize how fast he was coming. Van Gils definitely should have just hit the brakes hard but that might have even called a crash. A bit of a tough one.
 
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Maybe, although this was more a matter of the guy in front of him moving away too early. Laporte had to start from too far out.

And still I felt Laporte was closer to the stage win today than Van Aert, however strange that may seem. He's a way smarter rider.

It was obviously always gonna be a stretch to keep the pace high until 200 m to go, but he would have had a better chance of making it without the move. But I agree that an early move might have been the best choice. Have Laporte try it, and then have Van Aert join the next one.
 

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