Let's hope Adam won't be blamed for speaking out.
MVDP and Philipsen are his step teammates. Evenepoel is the adopted teammate. Vingegaard and Visma are the cousins no one likes. (In Pogacar’s family). Ineos is the little brother he loves beating up on. Roglic is the older brother he likes playing tricks on.
No way they don’t win that and was almost a given before the start.
Perhaps they can have a go at La Vie Claire's record winning margin of almost two hours from 1986, or Movistar's modern-era one of 57 minutes from 2015.
Other teams would need two or three riders in the break in order to catch up as UAE will have three riders finishing high on the mountain and TT stages. Only stage they could lose a lot of time is stage 9.
Having Quintana and Valverde be the second and third strongest climber in 2015 was mainly what gave Movistar their 57 minutes winning margin. A third rider, Anacona usually, often finished decently in the mountains as well. They did gain a little bit through a couple of Castroviejo breakaways, but nothing major that Pog, Ayuso and Almeida can't make up for by putting minutes into the top 3 riders from any other team in the many mountain stages this year.
That is a good point. And Pidcock will definitely try from the breakaway in some mountain stages. Still think UAE wins it by default, basically, but Ineos are indeed a good candidate to keep it somewhat close.
And Ineos lost even more time today while UAE gained it on everyone. Only way UAE is being beat is if a team can pull off two or more riders in the breakaway on multiple stages and they finish ahead. Otherwise UAE has 3 riders that will do better than 3 riders of another team on those stages and gain big time back. The other big teams only have 1 or 2 riders Not to mention they have their own riders that can go in the breakaway and extend the lead. The big danger stage to lose a lot of time on is stage 9 since Pogacar might be their only one finishing same time or gaining while the others lose it.
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