Vuelta a España 2019 stage 17: Aranda de Duero - Guadalajara > 219.6 km

[Bullrun]

The objective being that they could sit back and bluff Roglič until he feels he has to work to defend his lead from Quintana, with the aim that Roglič would then get tired working alone against the four Movistar riders up front plus the stagehunting Deceuninck riders, and then once he is tired, THEN Astana kick into full gear, fresh and with probably a good 20-25km left to mitigate losses, plus potentially gaining time on a Roglič that would have had to spend 15km in the wind. You know, remember the 2010 Giro and how it ended up with Vino and Scarponi and Evans taking pulls in the remainder of the péloton while Porte and Arroyo still had domestiques up front? The bonus is that Pogačar was also isolated so they could have potentially had the same fortune against him. We saw today that yesterday's exertions cost Quintana, who had been looking weak in the mountains at the weekend. Surely they'd fancy their chances of taking 3 minutes from Quintana more than their chances of taking the same amount of time from Roglič on the evidence of the last two weeks?

I have yet to see a single justification on why would Roglic work alone against the Movistar riders upfront and not simply let the Rabbo/Bora/UAE doms work for him that isn't some implicit "lol i dunno i'm just a bit of a kook who fancies making up completely absurd scenarios".

 

[Bullrun]

Perhaps people like Escarabajo, Libertine and others believe that once domestiques are left behind, they start riding the other way, back to the starting line.


Now, THEN that "Roglic would work alone" scenario would make sense.

 

[hrotha]

What you don't understand is that, even if Roglič decides to wait for his (now knackered) team, that's STILL a win. That's more time lost than what Movistar regained by pulling, which means extra pressure on Roglič, which may impair his performance and/or recovery. And that's Roglič's domestiques getting even more tired for today's stage, instead of Astana riders being the only ones getting extra tired. Basically, there'd be no good scenario for Roglič, and that opens up the race for MAL to benefit because he sure as hell couldn't beat Roglič in a straight fight.

Sure, Bora or whoever might have saved Roglič, but then "Someone else is bound to do the work to save our rival, so it might as well be us" is not exactly a genius strategy. And Bora or whoever aren't Astana, i.e. the strongest team at that moment of the stage.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

I have yet to see a single justification on why would Roglic work alone against the Movistar riders upfront and not simply let the Rabbo/Bora/UAE doms work for him that isn't some implicit "lol i dunno i'm just a bit of a kook who fancies making up completely absurd scenarios".

Right, so he sits up and waits for his domestiques, meaning Movistar gain more time immediately, and his domestiques - who have just been dropped, lest we forget - then have to go straight to the front and ride hard, meaning they won't automatically be of enough use to gain back the time that was lost by sitting up.

And then there's the scenario that Roglič doesn't work and Astana don't collaborate, and his domestiques are blown up and can't get back on immediately (remember, it's not like they were just sat at the back and suddenly there was a split, they were blown out the back), and he is forced to do the work himself, which makes him more vulnerable to Astana attacking either later on in yesterday's stage, or today's stage - let's face it, today we learnt that realistically letting Quintana back into the GC mix was a risk worth taking because his climbing form wasn't good last weekend and it wasn't good today.