• The Cycling News forum is looking to add some volunteer moderators with Red Rick's recent retirement. If you're interested in helping keep our discussions on track, send a direct message to @SHaines here on the forum, or use the Contact Us form to message the Community Team.

    In the meanwhile, please use the Report option if you see a post that doesn't fit within the forum rules.

    Thanks!

Vuelta a España Vuelta a España 2021: Stage 1 (Burgos - Burgos, 7.1 km / Prologue)

Page 9 - Get up to date with the latest news, scores & standings from the Cycling News Community.
It's kind of hilarious how big time gaps in the mountains from 20-30 years ago rarely happen (Pogacar madness aside) and differences are often just seconds yet ITT gaps have kind of stayed the same.
Today was really a great exhibition why GTs are hesitant to include more TT kilometers...a 7k Prologue and you have GC contenders losing 30 or 40 seconds, yikes.

If Roglic is in his usual form and doesn't crash I don't really see him losing this. With the longer ITT at the end, Bernal, Carapaz or Landa need to gain at least 2 minutes in the mountains. Hard to see that happen without longer repeated high altitude passes. I mean, even if Bernal or Carapaz like last year takes 30 seconds once or twice, they'll still have to do that multiple times to make up the difference. So yeah, either a controlled Roglic 3rd Vuelta or he crashes or cracks completely due to a certain reason (injury still not healed e.g.).
Hopefully I'm too pessimistic and we see some creative tactics (maybe Padun lost time on purpose to have a free roam soloing mountain stages like a certain Danish chicken).
 
  • Like
Reactions: Sandisfan
Has he ever been team leader on a smaller stage race with TTs? Just looking at his results he always seems quite a ways back on TTs relative to other stages but it would be nice to see what he’s capable of.
In all honesty he put in decent TTs at the TDF this year, the second one in particular. He wasn’t near the best but he was around the top 30 and not losing 7 minutes like he did in 2020.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Sandisfan
Kuss has had a lot of freedom and was a leader or co-leader in all stage races he has taken part this season excluding the Tour. So he had all the reasons in the world to go all out in TTs in UAE, Catalunya, Romandie and Dauphine. His performances varied a lot. His best performance came in the Romandie prologue, where he was 13th. Maybe a bit surprisingly it seems the shorter and punchy stuff suits him better .
 
When they award mountain-jersey points on a TT stage, it’s obviously based on each riders times up the climb section, which is then converted to mountain “points.” Since transponders now give accurate timing information throughout every stage, do folks know if a stage race promoter has has ever tried determining the climber’s jersey on cumulative time up categorized climbs, rather than on points for placement at the summits? I’m not necessarily supporting that idea, because it might takeaway some of the in-race action on the cat 1, 2, 3 climbs, but it does have some appeal for giving a more accurate “best” climber.
 
When they award mountain-jersey points on a TT stage, it’s obviously based on each riders times up the climb section, which is then converted to mountain “points.” Since transponders now give accurate timing information throughout every stage, do folks know if a stage race promoter has has ever tried determining the climber’s jersey on cumulative time up categorized climbs, rather than on points for placement at the summits? I’m not necessarily supporting that idea, because it might takeaway some of the in-race action on the cat 1, 2, 3 climbs, but it does have some appeal for giving a more accurate “best” climber.
I think it would be so much more fun to have a KoM jersey this way.
 
I think Kuss is actually a pretty good TTer, but there's no reason for him to go all out most times. A 7 km Stage 1 ITT is a different story though.
My suspicion is that Kuss struggles with the ITT position/pacing for longer periods of time so in an irregular prologue he performs quite a bit better.

Secondly, I think "Kuss meme level ITT" is just a lazy explanation for why he hasn't done much in GCs yet when his inconsistency on the climbs seems to be a bigger issue to me.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Sandisfan
When they award mountain-jersey points on a TT stage, it’s obviously based on each riders times up the climb section, which is then converted to mountain “points.” Since transponders now give accurate timing information throughout every stage, do folks know if a stage race promoter has has ever tried determining the climber’s jersey on cumulative time up categorized climbs, rather than on points for placement at the summits? I’m not necessarily supporting that idea, because it might takeaway some of the in-race action on the cat 1, 2, 3 climbs, but it does have some appeal for giving a more accurate “best” climber.

Even apart from problems with the reliability of transponders (Tobias Bayer climbing Alto del Castillo at >55km/h yesterday?), and their being attached to bikes that the riders may not actually be on, I would still dilsike this. The top guy on a climb could be moving anonymously from the rear to the middle of the peloton, we'd lose sprints to the top, the whole tactical issue of which breaks to go for, the obscure outsiders battling in the early stages, the goal for lesser teams etc.
 
Think at best he's a co leader. Unless Bernal and Carapaz completely collapse or crash, I can't see Ineos fully backing Yates in any GT. He hasn't shown the ability to be competitive in 3 weeks in a long time.
Also Adam's version of being competitive is GTs has almost exclusively been sitting on the back of the GC group for as long as possible and trying to limit his losses, I doubt Ineos will allow him to do that here.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Sandisfan

TRENDING THREADS