Tour de France
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Froome is quite difficult to distance. He rides to his power metre so if he is dropped early on a climb he can often get back on as long as he keeps a consistent output going. I think Froome still has to be the favourite given how strong is team is and how good he is in the time trial. I think the mountain top finishes seem to be the best opportunity to put time into him.
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@hydro11 said in Tour de France:
Froome is quite difficult to distance. He rides to his power metre so if he is dropped early on a climb he can often get back on as long as he keeps a consistent output going. I think Froome still has to be the favourite given how strong is team is and how good he is in the time trial. I think the mountain top finishes seem to be the best opportunity to put time into him.
Given that Froome has a formidable team defending him, won't the attackers have to work as a team to break him? One person trying to do it alone is likely to destroy himself but if Aru, Bardet, Uran all took it in turns to attack then it might work. Can't see it happening though.
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@hydro11 said in Tour de France:
Froome is quite difficult to distance. He rides to his power metre so if he is dropped early on a climb he can often get back on as long as he keeps a consistent output going. I think Froome still has to be the favourite given how strong is team is and how good he is in the time trial. I think the mountain top finishes seem to be the best opportunity to put time into him.
I think he cracked a little today though, Landa was trying to drag him up the final climb and had to slow down quite visibly to do so.
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@KiwiPie said in Tour de France:
@hydro11 said in Tour de France:
Froome is quite difficult to distance. He rides to his power metre so if he is dropped early on a climb he can often get back on as long as he keeps a consistent output going. I think Froome still has to be the favourite given how strong is team is and how good he is in the time trial. I think the mountain top finishes seem to be the best opportunity to put time into him.
Given that Froome has a formidable team defending him, won't the attackers have to work as a team to break him? One person trying to do it alone is likely to destroy himself but if Aru, Bardet, Uran all took it in turns to attack then it might work. Can't see it happening though.
Yeah especially as Aru has lost Fugslang.
Armstrong discussed this possibility on his podcast today, was sceptical it would happen as most of the other teams are not very fond of Astana. Would be great to watch though.
Tonight's stage should be great to watch, only short but with 3 catagory 1 climbs and virtually no flat terrain. It's made for a crazy attack from Contador
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@KiwiPie Further to Sammy's comments - I guess none of them will want to be the first sacrificial lamb to attack and all of them will want to be the third guy who attacks and possibly gets to win.
I'd like to see more of these cross-team alliances form, but they seem to be temporary and often untrustworthy - unless people happen to be old friends.
Interestingly, I was reading that Bennett and Bauer use to ride together for the little Ta$man Wheelers club in small South Island/NZ races - they sat together on one of the TdF flights taking them from A to B and were reminiscing about how weird it is that they're both now in the bigtime.
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@KiwiPie said in Tour de France:
@hydro11 said in Tour de France:
Froome is quite difficult to distance. He rides to his power metre so if he is dropped early on a climb he can often get back on as long as he keeps a consistent output going. I think Froome still has to be the favourite given how strong is team is and how good he is in the time trial. I think the mountain top finishes seem to be the best opportunity to put time into him.
Given that Froome has a formidable team defending him, won't the attackers have to work as a team to break him? One person trying to do it alone is likely to destroy himself but if Aru, Bardet, Uran all took it in turns to attack then it might work. Can't see it happening though.
Aru is in yellow now though. I don't see why other teams would bother helping him.
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@jegga said in Tour de France:
There's a prominent story on stuff about our tour rider, is that a sign I should be jumping on the bandwagon or is it still too soon?
I think a more accurate metric for "when to jump on the bandwagon" would be the length of the relevant TSF thread.
If/when this thread gets to 100 posts, I'll consider re-evaluating my views on bicycling, and I'll be on that bandwagon with some hastily compiled knowledge and opinions. -
@Kruse said in Tour de France:
@jegga said in Tour de France:
There's a prominent story on stuff about our tour rider, is that a sign I should be jumping on the bandwagon or is it still too soon?
I think a more accurate metric for "when to jump on the bandwagon" would be the length of the relevant TSF thread.
If/when this thread gets to 100 posts, I'll consider re-evaluating my views on bicycling, and I'll be on that bandwagon with some hastily compiled knowledge and opinions.Don't forget to brush up on your mechanical expertise and geography.
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Looking like today's results could be interesting as well.
Contador and Landa have 2min lead on the yellow jersey group, with Quintana, Kwiatkowski and Barguil about 10 seconds back.
Aru has no friends and is stuck in the Peleton covering Froome while Landa is looking to grab the Yellow. -
@Kruse said in Tour de France:
@jegga said in Tour de France:
There's a prominent story on stuff about our tour rider, is that a sign I should be jumping on the bandwagon or is it still too soon?
I think a more accurate metric for "when to jump on the bandwagon" would be the length of the relevant TSF thread.
If/when this thread gets to 100 posts, I'll consider re-evaluating my views on bicycling, and I'll be on that bandwagon with some hastily compiled knowledge and opinions.Sweet, when it gets into the 80s I'll have a good read of this
A Beginner's Guide to the Tour de France - Freewheeling France
A Beginner's Guide to the Tour de France - dummy's guide to watching the Tour de France in person and following the Tour de France on TV. - Freewheeling France
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George drops another spot today, but (without having seen any of it) otherwise I think the day was very good for him. He got jumped over by Caruso who was in the break - but, Quintana lost about four minutes on the big guns (with whom George rode with and almost is one).
So - in George's battle for a top 10 place:
- Meintjes 0.00
- Contador 0.28
- Caruso 0.56
- Quintana 1.07
- Bennett 1.30
- Barguil 3.39
Barring disasters - everyone else looks too far ahead or too far behind.
But, when the really big guns have been fighting it out in the mountains only Meintjes and Bennett have been able to ride with them.
So Stage 18 - the last big mountain stage - if George has his legs and a bit of luck with him he has a good chance of jumping over Caruso and probably Quintana and hopefully even Contador.
He apparently spent a lot of time in the off-season working on his time trialing and I think that was a factor in his win in California, so again hopefully an opportunity to take time out of Quintana at least in the final time trial - if he's close enough.
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@Chris-B. said in Tour de France:
George drops another spot today, but (without having seen any of it) otherwise I think the day was very good for him. He got jumped over by Caruso who was in the break - but, Quintana lost about four minutes on the big guns (with whom George rode with and almost is one).
So - in George's battle for a top 10 place:
- Meintjes 0.00
- Contador 0.28
- Caruso 0.56
- Quintana 1.07
- Bennett 1.30
- Barguil 3.39
Barring disasters - everyone else looks too far ahead or too far behind.
But, when the really big guns have been fighting it out in the mountains only Meintjes and Bennett have been able to ride with them.
So Stage 18 - the last big mountain stage - if George has his legs and a bit of luck with him he has a good chance of jumping over Caruso and probably Quintana and hopefully even Contador.
He apparently spent a lot of time in the off-season working on his time trialing and I think that was a factor in his win in California, so again hopefully an opportunity to take time out of Quintana at least in the final time trial - if he's close enough.
George was 50 seconds down on caruso and Quintana on the first TT. The second one is longer.
Of those listed above him in your post he was the slowest in the first TT -
Stage 17 although not a summit finish will shake up the GC more than 18. They've got to climb Telegraphe, Croix de Fer and Galibier, followed by a fast descent of 20kmto the finish. If Bennett comes through that ok then he can start thinking of maybe top 10.
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lost a bit of time one of the earlier stages too unfortunately..
kinda annoying cause it was deliberate.. his target for the tour was stage wins so to do that he needed to lose time early so he could target getting into breakaways in the last 2 weeks and not be chased by GC teams.
But then his team leader Gesink sucked so he automatically became team leader..
I hope his contract up for review this year cause he'll be getting a massive payrise.. when you consider guys like Nairo etc that he's outperforming,and they'd be well north of a mill, GB would be a on a fraction of that.
Still got hopes on Paddy for having a crack at a stage, that boy can sprint.. thinking they're keeping him under wraps so if he got in a break he'd be allowed to stay
