Vuelta 2018 stage 20:Escaldes-Engordany - Coll de La Gallina

[Bot. Sky_Bot]

Re:

The first good stage of the Vuelta, thanks to Lopez.

Yes. It was great, Valverde was nowhere. Out of top three.
Epic stage with finally some fights. MAS was really amazing!

 

[Cookster15]

Re:

Yates was a worthy winner. Hard to see him winning if the big guns were there though.

Quintana is not a big gun? Yates was also doing quite well against Dumoulin in the Giro - another big gun. So you can only be referring to Sky when they have their A team. In that case every rival team and rider struggles to make a dent.

 

[Koronin]

Re: Re:

The first good stage of the Vuelta, thanks to Lopez.

Yes. It was great, Valverde was nowhere. Out of top three.
Epic stage with finally some fights. MAS was really amazing!

Yeah, we know you hate Valverde.

 

[Dekker_Tifosi]

Yates was absolutely killing himself in the Giro to get the gap on Dumoulin, literally in the end. If he had to take the same somewhat more careful approach he took in this Vuelta he would not have the right buffer for the TT. (not on a good Froome or Thomas either).

That being said, he fully deserved the win here and you can only beat the guys who are actually there. So this whole what if *** remains ***. Yates wins the Vuelta because he was the strongest rider. Period.

I also think right now Simon Yates is probably the best climber there is.

 

[Keram]

I allways had Yates brothers as a same person. I never knew which brother has which palmares. It is time to separate them :lol:

 

[Robert5091]

Re:

I also think right now Simon Yates is probably the best climber there is.

On the short steep stuff, one of the best, but the long, grinding ones can still cause problems I think. I'm going to look at the Zoncolon stage again from this year out of interest.

Chapeau to the MS team who turned the Giro disaster around. (I think the plan was for Yates to first take the Red Jersey in week 3 as he knows Andorra so well)

 

[Andy262]

Very happy with Mas winning the stage, hugely deserved. Sprint was iffy but when you put a 120 deg turn 25 yards from the line you're asking for that sort of manoeuvre if it gets competitive - which they probably weren't expecting.

Sad for Kruiswijk, but he's not quite strong enough.

And awesome from Yates, buried the Giro and congrats to him.

 

[fuiers]

Really good stage today. Had to be on social media blackout because I was working. Just catched the replay. Good stuff from Enric Mas. Yates the best rider by a country mile but he really looked cooked after finishing the last two stages. I was really rooting for him in Giro and this win will be satisfying. Movistar needs to get behind a tactic table. Who knows what they could have done if Landa was ok to ride. But could´ve, would´ve and should´ve. Chapeau Yates and this Vuelta has been my favorite GT for me. Brits are the men to beat as it seems. Also very happy for the Thomas De Gendt for winning KOM. Such a classy rider and always pushing.

 

[Gigs_98]

Re:

Really good stage today. Had to be on social media blackout because I was working. Just catched the replay. Good stuff from Enric Mas. Yates the best rider by a country mile but he really looked cooked after finishing the last two stages. I was really rooting for him in Giro and this win will be satisfying. Movistar needs to get behind a tactic table. Who knows what they could have done if Landa was ok to ride. But could´ve, would´ve and should´ve. Chapeau Yates and this Vuelta has been my favorite GT for me. Brits are the men to beat as it seems. Also very happy for the Thomas De Gendt for winning KOM. Such a classy rider and always pushing.

I completely forgot about that but I think this is something worth pointing out. De Gendt, the ultimate stage hunter has in a way finalized his palmares by winning a "minor classification" at a grand tour, something he never did before.

 

[Koronin]

Re:

Really good stage today. Had to be on social media blackout because I was working. Just catched the replay. Good stuff from Enric Mas. Yates the best rider by a country mile but he really looked cooked after finishing the last two stages. I was really rooting for him in Giro and this win will be satisfying. Movistar needs to get behind a tactic table. Who knows what they could have done if Landa was ok to ride. But could´ve, would´ve and should´ve. Chapeau Yates and this Vuelta has been my favorite GT for me. Brits are the men to beat as it seems. Also very happy for the Thomas De Gendt for winning KOM. Such a classy rider and always pushing.

Movistar has needed to do that since this season started, or maybe tried to figure this out last year when Valverde got hurt. They have been totally lost tactics wise this entire season.

 

[IndianCyclist]

Three riders with double podiums in GTs in a single year - Dumoulin, Froome & MAL

 

[movingtarget]

Re: Re:

Yates was a worthy winner. Hard to see him winning if the big guns were there though.

He dropped the biggest guns for fun for much of the Giro. His level in his second GT was probably lower, but so would their’s have been. I don’t think we’ve seen anyone climbing as well as him this year when you take into account both his GT rides.

There remain question marks about his endurance over three weeks, so I’m not saying that he would definitely have won. Maybe he’d have had to go deeper and blown up again. But it seems very strange to say that it’s hard to see him winning when he was a better climber than any of them for two and a half weeks in one GT and then demonstrated that three weeks is possible for him in his second GT. It’s easy to see him winning. Maintain his Giro performance for three weeks and he wins, unless GT organisers revert to old school TT lengths.

Dumoulin and Froome still would have gapped him in the TT and then you have the Sky train which means the pace of the stage is generally higher in the mountains.

 

[ice&fire]

Re:

Three riders with double podiums in GTs in a single year - Dumoulin, Froome & MAL

Not unheard of: Froome, Quintana, Chaves did it two years ago