Vuelta a España Vuelta a España 2021: Stage 14 (Don Benito - Pico Villuercas, 165.7 km)

[SafeBet]

Great camerawork, as always.

Impressive to miss almost anything meaningful in a stage where almost nothing happened whatsoever.

 

[TourOfSardinia]

antiCLIMBax

 

[Unterlenkerfahrend]

Moon landing had better coverage 50 years ago than this GC finish. Bernal looked good for the first time in a while at the end.

 

[SafeBet]

More like 3 seconds

Roglstomp happened.

 

[Gigs_98]

Unbelievable that they didn't find any way to show us the gap between Roglic and MAL until 100m to go. If you had told me that MAL had a 30 second gap with 200m to go I wouldn't have had a single reason to doubt that.

 

[sir fly]

Not a blockbuster, but a pretty decent action.

Congrats to Bardet. Gained the most out of the stage. Shame for the earlier crash.
Vine, Lopez, Eiking... everybody can be happy after today.

 

[Red Rick]

Unbelievable that they didn't find any way to show us the gap between Roglic and MAL until 100m to go. If you had told me that MAL had a 30 second gap with 200m to go I wouldn't have had a single reason to doubt that.

Vuelta trying to make sure Gigs isn't watching.

 

[Rackham]

Jumbo train, the return.

 

[roundabout]

16 riders within 30 seconds in the favorites group at the finish. Maybe Eiking can indeed keep the jersey til Covadonga

 

[Samu Cuenca]

Moon landing had better coverage 50 years ago than this GC finish. Bernal looked good for the first time in a while at the end.

This is the Vuelta, so even if they had faked the stage, the coverage would probably still have been worse than during the Moon landing.

 

[Gigs_98]

Embarrassing commentary by Eurosport Germany. At first the commentator wasn't able to identify the Movistar rider who had attacked although he realized that it wasn't Mas. Then he spoke about how MAL wasn't a danger to Jumbo since he had already lost so much time.

I guess you could argue that 1:30 is a somewhat big gap but it sounded very much as if he had forgotten that MAL was a major player in the gc or something. Absolutely inexplicable what the guy was thinking...

 

[DoYouEvenRideBruh]

Went to have a shot of the good stuff today and missed most of the 'action', though there wasn't much by the looks of it. Congrats Bardet, got the stage and if I'm not mistaken the KOM jersey as well?

 

[JosefK]

Good stage for Roglic: didn't crash.

 

[More Strides than Rides]

Impressive to miss almost anything meaningful in a stage where almost nothing happened whatsoever.

I've been wanting to comment about this Vuelta's "creative" camera work, but haven't made enough of a stink about it.

Has anyone else noticed that they've doubled or tripled the number of stationary cameras they use for the finishes? Sprint finishes are hardly shown from the helicopter view anymore, and same with many mountain finishes. Seems the director is way more interested in the stationary cameras zooming around in a pan while the riders go by than giving any indication of the race situtaiton.

 

[SafeBet]

I hadn't noticed Demare managed to beat the group. Better result today than in yesterday's sprint...

 

[Cassirer]

Went to have a shot of the good stuff today and missed most of the 'action', though there wasn't much by the looks of it. Congrats Bardet, got the stage and if I'm not mistaken the KOM jersey as well?

Jep! Happy for him. I think he is in a similar Spot as Quintana, with less extreme high and low: prodigy fading way too early

 

[Red Rick]

Pretty sure Kuss closed down a part of the gap down already if that was indeed ~20s.

 

[movingtarget]

No time gaps for Lopez, it took ages to get a time gap for Zeits chasing Prudomme, no coverage of Roglic's chase behind Lopez. This is really poor TV coverage and its not new for the Vuelta. Might be time for a change of TV director.............just a suggestion ..........

 

[Rackham]

IMO this is looking a bit bleak for Movistar. That was a lot of effort from Lopez for very little. The JV train is back & the whole team looks like they've reached top form just in time for the 3rd week.

 

[SafeBet]

Pretty sure Kuss closed down a part of the gap down already if that was indeed ~20s.

Hard to tell. At one point they showed a heli image from the side and the gap looked pretty big. I tried to time it but they moved to a different camera very quickly. If I had to guess I'd say 15 seconds.

Meanwhile Herrada got the combativity award.

 

[Escarabajo]

Again with the bad broadcast from Spanish TV.

I am so happy for Bardet!

 

[movingtarget]

This is the Vuelta, so even if they had faked the stage, the coverage would probably still have been worse than during the Moon landing.

At least the moon coverage showed the final step and they probably even had the time it happened ...........God knows what the Vuelta TV director would have shown.......maybe the darkness

 

[roundabout]

Hard to tell. At one point they showed a heli image from the side and the gap looked pretty big. I tried to time it but they moved to a different camera very quickly. If I had to guess I'd say 15 seconds.

Meanwhile Herrada got the combativity award.

I guess Vine didn't resemble a cycling version of a zombie enough to be considered combative

The gap looked big, but I think they were also on a pretty fast >30 km/h section there. But yeah, 15 second looks reasonable judging by the gap to Yates and after at the finish

 

[movingtarget]

Nice win for Bardet. Not a climb to worry Roglic but Movistar tried something even though it was much too late in the stage and Jumbo looked in control. Another good ride by the race leader Eiking.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

IMO this is looking a bit bleak for Movistar. That was a lot of effort from Lopez for very little. The JV train is back & the whole team looks like they've reached top form just in time for the 3rd week.

True, but as Wayne Gretzky once said, you miss 100% of the shots you don't take. This could have ended up being like the 15-20 seconds Cobo took to La Farrapona while everybody else fell asleep. In the end it only amounted to a handful of seconds, but if Roglič hadn't been on a good day and had to stay at Kuss' pace, it could have beeen far more significant. He's committed to the team and they to him in the long run now, and if this means that they test out how Rogla responds and gives Mas a bit of an easy ride then in the long run it can work. They can even consider seeing if a 2019 Giro situation could present itself, although I don't think Jumbo would fall for that again, not from the same team at least. They have lost two riders, one of their rouleurs and one of their best climbers plus their most experienced leader, so their problem will be that if they do get into the race lead then they'll be there to be shot at. Their aim must surely be to take the jersey as late as possible, while simultaneously having the problem that the final day is an ITT where they would expect to lose time to Roglič as well.

They may even consider it worth sacrificing having two riders on the podium in order to potentially upgrade one of those riders to the win.

Oh, who am I kidding, it's Movistar, failing to win, but having 2nd and 3rd and winning the teams classification would probably be optimal for them...