Will we even be able to watch the whole climb?
no idea if it's the reason today, but usually it's difficult to carry over shape from the Giro to Tour de Suisse - let alone after doing Romandie for a result before. Many of the Astana guys just race way too much.Fortunato 1 minute behind the peloton. What happened to him?
Gregoire didn't keep up with the best on the big climb, made the difference/climbed with the best on the final one which is 1.5/2km at like 10.5% or whatever, so similar to the climb on Stage 1. Frontignano was two weeks later and in line with his other long climb performances so I don't think it was bad form.Frontignano is 7.6k at 7.9%, the big climb in Ardèche with 20k to go is 6.3k at 7.4%, and both climbs have a very steep few kilometres in there. Not vastly different climbs. That tells me he wasn't in good form on Frontignano, and therefore that it isn't a great indicator.
Fortunato 1 minute behind the peloton. What happened to him?
Average race speed so far is 54.882 km/h.
(56.3 km covered in 01:01:33).
Swiss road surface
Pretty sure guys like Gall, Riccitello, Onley, Van Wilder would work with him if they get into a group without the likes of Gregoire and Vauquelin. If O'Connor sticks with them, it could complicate things though.IF Joao Almeida wants to win this then he needs to attack meaningfully today and tomorrow.
Get the 'team' to rider hard on the ascent to Splügenpass and then just ride his own tempo.
It's not a stage to put a lot of time on everyone, but the longer climb as the potential to weed out competitors. The long successive climbs to Splügenpass play to his high tempo style that can leave a lot of riders behind. The downside is that the top is still far from the end of the stage and no one will want to push with him.
Tomorrow is a harder more classical rolling climb stage and would be more about waiting for the final climb to attack.
I would rather think he had a mechanical or something like that and struggled to get back in this fast stage so far, as he is very bad riding for himself on a flat. He was in good enough shape yesterday to not loose time on the best climbers, so normally he should be able to stay in the bunch on a flat. Of course, this would change if he got sick or crashed today without notice.2 min now. Might not make much sense to go on with this race if he get's dropped on the flat.
Yeah that's a factBroadcast will start when the climb is over![]()
Yeah that's a factAbsolute moron timing of airing today :O