Tour de France Tour de France 2024, Stage 9: Troyes > Troyes, 199.0 km

[Libertine Seguros]

That tour is a bit different. There they didn't attack when terrain and numbers were in their advantage.

Today the terrain is so vastly not in their advantage when it comes to Vingegaard vs Pog that the objective is not to lose time.

Last time I checked, two is a larger number than one.

I think saying "you know what, 12km is too far out to risk a domestique taking a turn" is just embarrassingly negative, especially for a team who have lost the Tour in dramatic fashion due to not taking advantage of their numerical benefits in the recent past.

With one of the same DSes in the cars in that race, too.

This was a fantastic stage. I'm sorry that the Pog Cult can only find a race entertaining when Pog wins, but to everyone else today was an incredible bike race.
Better than any stage of the Giro this year, better than Flanders/Roubaix/Liege this year.

Please let me know when I joined the Pog cult. Last I checked, I hadn't.

Today was a very entertaining stage from way out, but very disappointingly tame from an outcome point of view, largely stemming from Visma-LAB's negativity and fixation with not losing time to the point of refusal to even consider gaining time.

 

[AmRacer]

Rogla didn't do much.
Jonas was saved by VLAB super domestiques.
Remco did almost all work by himself, and saved by VLAB

Tadej tried but couldn't drop VLAB super domestiques.

 

[gunara]

Smaller teams keeps winning with bigger teams still racing hard most days, without the racing being ***, not too bad a Tour so far.

 

[Izzyeviel]

De Lie lost 11 minutes today by riding the way some people here want Vingegaard to ride.

what makes you think we want Vingo to win?

 

[AmRacer]

De Lie lost 11 minutes today by riding the way some people here want Vingegaard to ride.

Who wants Vingegaard to ride like that? I must have missed a few posts.

 

[ppanther92]

Jonas said he had another puncture in the final 3k, but was able to ride it to the line.

Couldn't he just changed bike? Or no 3km rule today?

 

[ChewbaccaDefense]

This was a fantastic stage. I'm sorry that the Pog Cult can only find a race entertaining when Pog wins, but to everyone else today was an incredible bike race.
Better than any stage of the Giro this year, better than Flanders/Roubaix/Liege this year.

This

 

[Mayomaniac]

Good to see than Gall didn't loose time after all.
Who impressed me today was Ciccone, always well positioned when the gc teams made a dig and that with Pedersen no longer being in the race. I mean, we know that Bernal knows how to ride on sterrato, but today Ciccone looked nearly as good.

 

[Oldermanish]

at which point then he waits just till Jorg drags Ving back up, because that group wasnt just going to all pitstop to wait for him, and goes immediately on the attack again or does the code say no you must wait for them, and then wait for them to recover?

and it doesnt matter whether he would or not, thats the thinking the Visma command squad have got to consider whether a bike change is worth it or not, on gravel terrain like that youre not really connected to the bike in the same way you would be on the road anyway, youre moving around too much trying to keep upright, so the fact its not perfect doesnt really impact you as much, because its not a perfect ride setup at that point even on a perfectly fitted bike

Jorgenson said afterward that Tratnik's seat height was the same as Jonas and he was assigned to stay with him for exactly this circumstance. Maybe not ideal but between the variable conditions you mention above and that the bike was that close of a setup the impact was managed excellently. Mateo also noted that this stage was well suited to JVs talents; Jonas was never at a loss for wheels and did a great job of not drifting out of Pogacar's attack zone. Primoz could've done a much better job, by contrast.
Mateo also noted what many have said: "not really a fan of adding this kind of stage into....Tour(para)". It was great for the carnival aspect but pointless risk for a GT.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Of course it is. But who would have expected him to gain time today?

Who expected Froome to gain time riding with Sagan in 2016? Who expected Quintana to gain time in the crosswinds in 2019? Who expected Indurain to gain time into Liège with Bruyneel burning energy the day before the ITT?

Just because we didn't expect them to gain time, doesn't mean it's against the rules to extract maximum benefit from the situation at hand - or at least try.

Come to think of it, that's the issue here: that they didn't even try. If they gave it a go, then decided it wasn't working so knocked it off, then that'd be one thing. But it's the fact they didn't even think it was worth trying that is most galling.

 

[Brullnux]

It pretty much is

You had Roglic losing almost 40s with 100km to go; Evenepoel losing the wheel and about 15s on a sector; and Pogacar's second to last attack looked like it was about to finally break the elastic but for Jorgensen's monster turn.

there was tension and excitement from like 120km out, on a stage where a lot of people were predicting a sprint. I feel the revisionism has already started just bc it ended up s/t

 

[ppanther92]

Jorgeson interview. He really saved Vinge today

While he did great today and in that particular moment, I think Pogacar would have went nowhere. Still too far to bridge to the group in front, and Laporte and WvA also in the group. With 3 domestiques, they would have reeled Pogacar in.

 

[AmRacer]

Jorgenson said afterward that Tratnik's seat height was the same as Jonas and he was assigned to stay with him for exactly this circumstance. Maybe not ideal but between the variable conditions you mention above and that the bike was that close of a setup the impact was managed excellently. Mateo also noted that this stage was well suited to JVs talents; Jonas was never at a loss for wheels and did a great job of not drifting out of Pogacar's attack zone. Primoz could've done a much better job, by contrast.
Mateo also noted what many have said: "not really a fan of adding this kind of stage into....Tour(para)". It was great for the carnival aspect but pointless risk for a GT.

This stage wasn't suited for Jonas Vingegaards talents.

 

[Kangaridoo]

Meintjes lost 12 minutes today and his hope of top 17!

 

[kingjr]

You had Roglic losing almost 40s with 100km to go; Evenepoel losing the wheel and about 15s on a sector; and Pogacar's second to last attack looked like it was about to finally break the elastic but for Jorgensen's monster turn.

there was tension and excitement from like 120km out, on a stage where a lot of people were predicting a sprint. I feel the revisionism has already started just bc it ended up s/t

I never felt during the race that any of these situations would materialize into anything significant, but if you did, that's good for you.

 

[Lequack]

Some pics

 

[Libertine Seguros]

You had Roglic losing almost 40s with 100km to go; Evenepoel losing the wheel and about 15s on a sector; and Pogacar's second to last attack looked like it was about to finally break the elastic but for Jorgensen's monster turn.

there was tension and excitement from like 120km out, on a stage where a lot of people were predicting a sprint. I feel the revisionism has already started just bc it ended up s/t

Ain't that just the Marc Antony principle at work though? The last memory is the one that people will stand by. In the long-term, stage 5 will be more memorable than this one, but this was an infinitely more entertaining stage. But the final moments of stage 5 were an iconic moment that will live on in Tour history (even if just as part of a statistic, since most sprint wins are fairly transient and interchangeable in memory), whereas this was a great stage from far out, that ended in a tame, damp squib of an ending and created no time gaps to merit committing to memory when it comes to "what if" stories for the Tour later on either.

Hence why I compared stage 9 in the 2013 Tour, where Porte was dropped and Froome isolated very early on, and it looked like some chaos could break out, but Movistar made a complete mess of things, nobody else dared attack while Rubén Plaza was tapping out a pace that Froome was clearly comfortable with, half the people who were dropped came back on the downhill and everybody relevant ended on the same time. It looked at 60km from home like we were watching a stage for the ages, but nowadays it's a stage that is barely even recalled.

 

[jono]

Good job by VLAB's super-domestiques, but are there any stages remaining where riders of their profile can hope to be useful in protecting Vingegaard's GC position?

 

[RobertCrawley]

ASO was so excited about the success of riding on dirt roads, next year they are including river jumps and hand-to-hand combat.

 

[RobertCrawley]

Couldn't he just changed bike? Or no 3km rule today?

I don't know. The 3k rule is usually applied to sprint stages to keep the GC guys safe from the animal sprinters.

 

[Brullnux]

Ain't that just the Marc Antony principle at work though? The last memory is the one that people will stand by. In the long-term, stage 5 will be more memorable than this one, but this was an infinitely more entertaining stage. But the final moments of stage 5 were an iconic moment that will live on in Tour history (even if just as part of a statistic, since most sprint wins are fairly transient and interchangeable in memory), whereas this was a great stage from far out, that ended in a tame, damp squib of an ending and created no time gaps to merit committing to memory when it comes to "what if" stories for the Tour later on either.

Hence why I compared stage 9 in the 2013 Tour, where Porte was dropped and Froome isolated very early on, and it looked like some chaos could break out, but Movistar made a complete mess of things, nobody else dared attack while Rubén Plaza was tapping out a pace that Froome was clearly comfortable with, half the people who were dropped came back on the downhill and everybody relevant ended on the same time. It looked at 60km from home like we were watching a stage for the ages, but nowadays it's a stage that is barely even recalled.

Of course, though I think the difference to 2013 is that the attacks continued until the final 7km, and the one that looked to be the most potentially consequential was with 18km (?) to go. It wasn't a stage for the ages because of the lack of GC gaps, but it was better than basically any other stage in the past few GTs, and I don't think that has to be judged on the basis of gaps

 

[ChewbaccaDefense]

Already 63 pages for this stage...gravel creates excitement.

 

[Andre]

Some pics

Great photos Lequack

 

[Andre]

next year let's put in a cobble section and some sections of pure sand

 

[ChewbaccaDefense]

UCI organizers were so excited about the success of riding on dirt roads, next year they are including river jumps and hand-to-hand combat.

I mean, I'd be stoked for a BMX stage.