Tour de Suisse, Stage 2 Sunday, June 10 Verbania - Verbier 218 km

[iZnoGouD]

i think the only danger is Frank Schleck, he's going to try something again

 

[roundabout]

His prologue wasn't that great so it remains to be seen how well he'll do in the ITT

 

[theyoungest]

His prologue wasn't that great so it remains to be seen how well he'll do in the ITT

Of the guys currently close to him on GC, only Kreuziger did much better in that prologue. Leipheimer could be a threat, if he has his mojo back.

Rui Costa is a pretty adequate TTist. It even got him on the podium in Romandie (although that was a mountain TT, of course).

 

[BillytheKid]

I think Cancellara can cause trouble here. He and Rast are on the homefield. Klöden too, for that matter.

That one pull Klöden did was more than I saw of him here than all of last year.

Valverde could come stronger as well.

Schleck was really strong yesterday, but Costa looked unfaze at the line. Could be he is the one to beat.

Cunego was a big fail yesterday. Maybe because Schleck and the charging Costa were so strong.

 

[Angliru]

Missed this stage, but congrats to Rui Costa! He's got a powerful punch. Also yay for Frank being in shape and seriously racing! I wouldn't be surprised to see Andy working for Frank come le Tour, unless Andy gains some serious form.

Hopefully the Tour mountains will be fought like this - hard, but reasonable attacks from the contenders that can get rid of the trains.

Agreed. Strong ride by Frank. When he made his move I was surprised no one responded. Costa timed his effort perfectly . I like his style.

Don't let one of your fellow Andy supporters hear that (The part in bold)!

 

[Angliru]

Probably because what few attacks there were actually felt like they might mean something, whereas at the Dauphiné the TT was so long that it completely and utterly killed the race; there was no feeling when any move happened that it had a chance, and even when it did have a chance (Quintana) it felt like it was irrelevant because the GC was still pretty much status quo. The Tour de Suisse is still in its infancy, and so when names that could be involved in the GC such as Schleck and Gadret attack, we actually might be interested.

That pretty much sums it up for me too.

 

[Parrulo]

His prologue wasn't that great so it remains to be seen how well he'll do in the ITT

he does better on longer time trials, if a bit hilly then even better. for exemple he was 10th on the grenoble itt on the dauphine last year

 

[roundabout]

I am not saying that he will do badly. It just seems to me that for Costa the TT would be a bigger issue than the stage to Arosa.

 

[Parrulo]

oh i see, well to be honest i don't know what to think simply because he has never climbed this well before. So imo it could go either way with him struggling either on the itt or on the climbs, or in none/both ofc

 

[jens_attacks]

finally,i succeed to watch the stage
the ascent was great,frank was finally awesome this year with a brutal attack...too bad he ran off the batteries in the last km.but absolutely lovely end of a stage.

surprised how good rui costa is now but well, it was always certain he had class.

after alberto,andy and nibali in 2009,rui costa has the fastest time on verbier.
crazy how many guys rode really fast yesterday.that's the cycling i want to see.


from the crossroad le chable-route de verbier

Verbier
2012:8,5 km@7,5%---22:00---average speed 23.18 km/h(Rui Costa)
2009:8,5 km@7,5%---20:55---average speed 24.38 km/h(Alberto Contador)
2008:9,7 km@7,3%---25:00---average speed 23.28 km/h(Kim Kirchen)

in 2008 they went a little bit higher

 

[Parrulo]

i also went to check the ascent times counting from the zebra cross after the left 180º turn on the roundabout at the start of the climb and got:

20:38 for contador and 22:19 for costa

i used the same coverage to get rui's time and i have the 09 stage on my hard drive. where did you get contador's time from?

 

[patrick767]

At least one Schleck has decided to do some riding this year. I'm surprised an HR MTF didn't produce larger gaps though. 14 riders within 25 seconds...

I agree that Leipheimer has a chance though he's going to have to improve immensely on the main ITT. Before the race started it looked promising for Leipheimer to defend his title, but his prologue was lousy. In California he could justifiably blame coming off an injury. Obviously that doesn't hold anymore.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

It's not really an HC MTF though. The mountain categories are a bit messed up in the Tour de Suisse. They're giving cat.2 points to the harder part of Arosa, then HC to about 10km of false flat and 3 steep km.

In the TDF 2009 Verbier was a cat.1. It's only 8km long, so the gaps won't be huge considering the stage had been mostly flat until then. It wouldn't be HC if the Tour de Suisse had a more alpine route, but as it is they've mostly only been using the lower foothills of the Alps in this route, mainly as the start location means they'd be putting brutal stages right at the start if they did.