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With the Vuelta though, there should be another shake up on stage 3 and then again probably on stages 5 and 6, so we should get down to the realistic contenders for podium/top 10 pretty quickly.
Yeah, TTs definitely serve a purpose in thinning out the competition. That was certainly one of the problems with the first week of the Giro this year; too many teams still in GC contention meant that very few were interested in going for stage wins until mid way through the second week.Tonton said:True.DFA123 said:The beauty of the Vuelta though is that, unlike the Tour, there are about 15 mountain/hilly stages and loads of possible ambush opportunities. Not 11 flat stages and 3 mountain stages with lame climbs nearly all under 10%.Alexandre B. said:After 13k (non-individual), it's over guys.memyselfandI said:It is indeed good for Bahrain, it's between Nibs and Froome for shure, no other climbers doing steady long tt at this race.
Thanks for watching La Vuelta.
And it finishes on Angliru, where anyone could lose five minutes on a bad day. The GC battle will be on all race for sure.
TTT is nothing new, like ITT is nothing new...the trend is to have less of them, but let's not kid ourselves: we can't just get GTs with no TTT and 10km of ITT just for the sake of small time gaps. It keeps riders who don't belong around and soon enough we forget that GT winners have to be a complete riders. Or riders who can mitigate a weakness by dominating another facet of cycling.
20 stages to go. It's far from over.
With the Vuelta though, there should be another shake up on stage 3 and then again probably on stages 5 and 6, so we should get down to the realistic contenders for podium/top 10 pretty quickly.