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Vuelta Stage 17: Villadiego - Los Machucos (180.5 km)

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Re: Re:

Valv.Piti said:
hrotha said:
yaco said:
A crazy decision by Orica to attack on the second last climb - And Chaves got 3km up the climb until he popped - Then Orica went to plan B to get Haig into the final climb with a break on the peleton - Problem is that type of climb is unsuitable for Haig - It's been a bad Vuelta for Orica.
Why crazy? Chaves is not good enough in this Vuelta to achieve anything by waiting.
Because defending 9th place obviously is more important than to try to win anything.....

What a silly post ! You weren't going to win the stage by attacking on the second last climb today - You attack on the final climb.
 
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so it's not a big pity that i didn't watch the stage it seems that all action was in the last climb , well i would have liked to see how teams prepared for the last climb , but Tomorrow could be way more interesting
 
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Re: Re:

yaco said:
Valv.Piti said:
hrotha said:
yaco said:
A crazy decision by Orica to attack on the second last climb - And Chaves got 3km up the climb until he popped - Then Orica went to plan B to get Haig into the final climb with a break on the peleton - Problem is that type of climb is unsuitable for Haig - It's been a bad Vuelta for Orica.
Why crazy? Chaves is not good enough in this Vuelta to achieve anything by waiting.
Because defending 9th place obviously is more important than to try to win anything.....

What a silly post ! You weren't going to win the stage by attacking on the second last climb today - You attack on the final climb.

If you are the strongest, yes.

If not, you need to anticipate, that's what Orica was doing today.
 
Re: Re:

Valv.Piti said:
hrotha said:
yaco said:
A crazy decision by Orica to attack on the second last climb - And Chaves got 3km up the climb until he popped - Then Orica went to plan B to get Haig into the final climb with a break on the peleton - Problem is that type of climb is unsuitable for Haig - It's been a bad Vuelta for Orica.
Why crazy? Chaves is not good enough in this Vuelta to achieve anything by waiting.
Because defending 9th place obviously is more important than to try to win anything.....

It was crazy because it was very soon clear that the Yates/Chaves move was going nowhere. The Orica DS should've been on the radio to "can it" but instead they wasted time and energy hanging out there barely 100m in front of the main group for far longer than they should.

The Haig move was fair enough and in fact far better executed. The climb ended up being too hard for him but to their defence, it proved too hard for most everyone. Hasn't been a good GT for Orica but its also being judged against last year's which was arguably their best ever. Their selection of 3 GC men locked them into a top heavy structure which was damned early by one being completely "running on empty" and none of them being anywhere near peak form. The one clear positive has been Haig and I'm not going to throw any mud in the direction of most of the grunts either.
 
Re: Re:

Chrispol said:
yaco said:
Valv.Piti said:
hrotha said:
yaco said:
A crazy decision by Orica to attack on the second last climb - And Chaves got 3km up the climb until he popped - Then Orica went to plan B to get Haig into the final climb with a break on the peleton - Problem is that type of climb is unsuitable for Haig - It's been a bad Vuelta for Orica.
Why crazy? Chaves is not good enough in this Vuelta to achieve anything by waiting.
Because defending 9th place obviously is more important than to try to win anything.....

What a silly post ! You weren't going to win the stage by attacking on the second last climb today - You attack on the final climb.

If you are the strongest, yes.

If not, you need to anticipate, that's what Orica was doing today.
Exactly, Orica obviously knew the shape of their riders and knew they had no chance in a straight up drag race on the last climb. So they gambled, maybe hoping a slow down in the peloton would get Chaves or Haig far up enough the road to do something. And they failed today, but didn't really lose much by doing so - hardly disastrous tactics.
 
Re: Re:

bigcog said:
TourOfSardinia said:
bigcog said:
Base on past history I can't see Froome winning this. Think he will loses minutes on Angliru, unless he got a hunger bonk today which someone suggested, but didn't look like it to me.
What a wonderfully upbeat 1000th post
Congrats
bigcog

:lol: just being realistic, if he manages to win it I will be surprised.

You're giving up on your guy? Where is the faith? ;)
 
I was wondering why steep climbs like this don't make the time differences they used to make. I wonder if it's the improved gearing of this time?

I mean if all can chose super light gears to limit the damage, while in the past you died on a gear that was too big to spin anymore, you'd lose a lot more time back then..
 
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Re:

Dekker_Tifosi said:
I was wondering why steep climbs like this don't make the time differences they used to make. I wonder if it's the improved gearing of this time?

I mean if all can chose super light gears to limit the damage, while in the past you died on a gear that was too big to spin anymore, you'd lose a lot more time back then..
Yeah, that's probably the main reason.
 
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Re:

Valv.Piti said:
It made bigger differences than I expected honestly, but that was mainly because of Contador having his best day since 14 and Froome being pretty horrible.
Hey mortirolo , was pretty good and also the stage to Verbania was damm good , hope contador could keep this going ,
 
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2015 contador was very good in the giro. His attack in abetone was super strong. His crash on stage 6 took a lot of him and he still managed to win the whole thing. 2015 contador would have a great chance of beating froome at the tour (without the giro in his legs)
 
GenericBoonenFan said:
Gigs_98 said:
Dekker_Tifosi said:
To underline the strength of what Denifl did:

Only 7 riders climbed Los Machucos faster than Denifl: Contador, Lopez, Nibali, Zakarin, Majka, Woods and Kelderman.
That's just crazy. How on earth could he do that after being in the break all day.

Austrian weather conditions + his mtb background, those guys tend to be great on very steep climbs. They're used to riding long distances on very steep climbs with intervals of less steep sections inbetween.

He said pretty much that about the climb afterwards, although without the mtb explanation. Just that a climb in shelves, a series of hard efforts with staggered recovery periods, is ideal for him. He also said that he found himself saying to himself "oh my God, these legs are great" at a certain point.

So when you take into account the level he showed against Lopez in Austria, add a climb that suits him, plus the fact that he's been allowed to do nothing all race to peak for the last week and that he had great legs on the day, you get a superb performance.
 
Zinoviev Letter said:
He said pretty much that about the climb afterwards, although without the mtb explanation. Just that a climb in shelves, a series of hard efforts with staggered recovery periods, is ideal for him. He also said that he found himself saying to himself "oh my God, these legs are great" at a certain point.

So when you take into account the level he showed against Lopez in Austria, add a climb that suits him, plus the fact that he's been allowed to do nothing all race to peak for the last week and that he had great legs on the day, you get a superb performance.

He said that he had targeted this stage and made sure he was in the best possible form this morning. However, it is one thing to plan and another to execute. His body language showed that he was perfectly suited to the climb.

Being an enemy of Contador, I wish he'd finally get eliminated from the top 10 competition ;) The Angry Lou would be a perfect finish for that.

It was bizarre watching a Sky TTT up a goat track, but the race is still on :)
 
Re:

Valv.Piti said:
It made bigger differences than I expected honestly, but that was mainly because of Contador having his best day since 14 and Froome being pretty horrible.
mainly because of froome yeah, because if you see the other differences, contador like 30 secs to nibali and then 50 to kelderman. It's pretty 'meh'.
There used to be minute gaps on climbs like these. All the more proof TT has become more important
 
Tank Engine said:
Zinoviev Letter said:
He said pretty much that about the climb afterwards, although without the mtb explanation. Just that a climb in shelves, a series of hard efforts with staggered recovery periods, is ideal for him. He also said that he found himself saying to himself "oh my God, these legs are great" at a certain point.

So when you take into account the level he showed against Lopez in Austria, add a climb that suits him, plus the fact that he's been allowed to do nothing all race to peak for the last week and that he had great legs on the day, you get a superb performance.

He said that he had targeted this stage and made sure he was in the best possible form this morning.
However, it is one thing to plan and another to execute. His body language showed that he was perfectly suited to the climb.

Being an enemy of Contador, I wish he'd finally get eliminated from the top 10 competition ;) The Angry Lou would be a perfect finish for that.

It was bizarre watching a Sky TTT up a goat track, but the race is still on :)
Sounds like rest day magic, doesn't it, hrotha ;)
 
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Re:

zapata said:
I am going to miss Alberto Contador.

Maybe you won't have to. Riding away from the Sky Train and dropping rising star Lopez like a stone today might encourage a rethink from the great man (and umpteen team directors). A zillion or so miles away from his performances a couple of months back at the Dauphine and then the tour.
 
Re:

hrotha said:
Well I guess this was the first rainy day with steep uneven slopes in all of Denifl's career. Sounds legit. Yup.

I don't vouch for anyone in this sport and any big win can conceivably be explained by issues we can't discuss here.

However, insanely steep shelves alternating with shallow pitches aren't particularly common. When they do appear as mtfs they are usually in the Vuelta and so are more likely to be raced in heat than in the wet. Denifl, of course, was until this year primarily a WT climbing domestique, and so riding for someone else. Here he was riding against opponents with an extra GT in their legs. And more importantly, against riders who have been killing themselves for two weeks in one of the more fiercely raced GTs in a while. Meanwhile he's been doing nothing except wait for a final week opportunity. So yes that probably was the first time in his career that such a situation arose.
 
Re:

hrotha said:
Who's talking about things that can't be discussed here? Certainly not me!
*whistles*

Anyway, I'll concede that point. Far more important is the fact that Denifl kinda sucked.

I think it's pretty hard to tell what the upper limits of a climbing domestique are if he doesn't break through young. You can tell that one probably isn't a future GT contender, or his talent would have shown itself anyway. But the difference between a guy who is lucky to have a job working for a Pantano or a Frank and a guy who can seriously contend for breakaway GT stages should be nearly invisible to the outsider if he's professional about his job.

To use a crude measurement: A 150 cq points a year as a domestique sort of guy could quite reasonably turn out to be a 150 cq points guy or a 450 cq points guy when he suddenly becomes a main leader of a team with a good calendar. 900 cq points is a different matter. Denifl is going to finish the season circa 280 to 350 points.

On one of the relatively rare times where he got to ride a big race for himself he finished 7th on GC at Paris Nice a couple of years ago. Earlier this year, he lost 17 seconds to Lopez in the process of finishing 2nd on the Kitzbuheler Horn on a day when everyone else got killed. Lopez is probably the strongest climber in this race at the moment. If you are willing to accept that performance as good coin, I don't see anything weirder about him holding on from the break today, on a climb that suits him, in conditions that suit him, against a field he should be much fresher than. Not fresher in terms of the day obviously, but fresher in the sense that he's spent 2 weeks doing 150 watts at the back of the peloton, while all of his opponents have spent much of that time at full gas.
 

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