2019 Tour de France
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@canefan said in 2019 Tour de France:
@mariner4life if that is what it's been like, it's nice to see an absence of the big trains of the USPS and team Sky era
Watching guys who could have been GC riders in other teams working as domestiques in over-powered teams turned it into a procession. I used to rail about other teams not doing enough to shake it up, but the reality is there was always bugger all they could do.
This Tour has been a revelation.
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@antipodean said in 2019 Tour de France:
@canefan said in 2019 Tour de France:
@mariner4life if that is what it's been like, it's nice to see an absence of the big trains of the USPS and team Sky era
Watching guys who could have been GC riders in other teams working as domestiques in over-powered teams turned it into a procession. I used to rail about other teams not doing enough to shake it up, but the reality is there was always bugger all they could do.
This Tour has been a revelation.
The only parallel I can think of in recent times (and I might be wrong) was Cadel Evans winning. IIRC he had to do a lot of it himself, whereas I always felt that Armstrong, Wiggins and Froome had an dominant team to ease their path
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@KiwiPie I think Quintana will have burned way more energy than the other big guns last night and expect he'll pay for that tonight, but he's redeemed his tour - as did even Bardet - to an extent.
Be interesting to see whether Bernal's attack hurts him(self) at the end of proceedings tonight.
I don't think they'll want to leave it till the last day to try to crack Alaphilippe, so I'd guess someone will really try to put him to the sword tonight and I'm doubtful he's got enough left to stave them off.
On recent evidence, it looks like Bernal and Pinot are the strongest climbers, but I'm hoping George can help Kruiswijk somehow grind to a win. Just 20 seconds covering 2nd to 5th - it's winnable (and lose-able) in the last kilometre if Alaphilippe is dropped.
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@Chris-B I reckon the GC guys will be eyeing up the bonus seconds available on the Col de l’Iseran today, which is the penultimate climb. It’s about 35km to the finish from there. Alaphilippe will definitely get softened up on that climb before the summit finish. He doesn’t have the luxury of his superior descending skills to save him from now on.
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Bit of an anti-climax, but an understandable decision by race control. If that ice and snow remained as they came through, there would be carnage.
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Man - that's disappointing. There were still several plots to unfold.
Bernal seems like the big winner to me - he still had 30km to ride on his own (maybe with a bit of help from Yates), while Kruiswijk, Thomas and Buchmann had a group that would have been able to work together along the valley and maybe fight back on the final climb and at least narrow the gap to Bernal.
Or would Bernal have continued to ride away on the final climb?
Would Alaphilippe have managed to get back on the back of that group on the descent and had to be re-broken?
We'll never know.
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that was some crazy shit! JA the winner - that gap would have been a shitload more for him after 1 more climb. plus he was isolated. tomorrow not as steep.
if i was riding i'd be all fcuk this lets hit the pub in town!
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@WillieTheWaiter Hard to think he was a loser, anyway.
Kruiswijk, Buchmann and Thomas (from a personal perspective) the big losers - they don't get to put more time on Alaphilippe and don't get a chance to try to catch Bernal.
Will all be much harder for them tomorrow because Ineos will ride to defend Bernal.
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@WillieTheWaiter said in 2019 Tour de France:
that was some crazy shit! JA the winner - that gap would have been a shitload more for him after 1 more climb. plus he was isolated. tomorrow not as steep.
if i was riding i'd be all fcuk this lets hit the pub in town!
Yep, that result has probably saved JA’s podium
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They may as well have gone to the pub - get Bernal so pissed that he can't ride.
Tonight's stage has been modified to be just 59kms, so Bernal should have it in the bag. Alaphilippe will be thinking if only he'd been able to hang on for another 10kms last night.
The peloton will still set off from Albertville but then take a quicker route towards Val Thorens, completing the final 36km of the stage as planned. The first category climb to Cormet de Roselend and the second category Côte de Longefoy will both be removed from the parcours.
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TJV able to put Julian to the sword today - but, not surprisingly, unable to crack Bernal or Thomas - neither looked in any trouble at all and both eventually beat Kruiswijk over the line.
Bernal wins the Tour; Thomas second; Kruiswijk third; Buchmann; then Alaphilippe.
(Assuming none of them crash tomorrow).
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Ineos will be an interesting team next year if all of Bernal, Thomas and Froome are lining up to ride the Tour.
TJV might be interesting as well. In one of George's articles he mentioned that there are rumours that Tom Dumoulin might be coming to TJV - which could leave them with all of Dumoulin, Kruiswijk, Roglic and George.
Wouldn't be good for George's aspirations to be a team leader - he'd have some decisions to make.
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@Chris-B said in 2019 Tour de France:
More on that...
Interesting point from that article Chris-B:
A possible switch to Jumbo-Visma may have looked strange when it was first surfaced in the Dutch press due to the fact that the rival squad are already stacked with GC riders, but a deeper analysis suggests that the move is based on solid reasoning. Cyclingnews understands that, despite having Primoz Roglic, Steven Kruijswijk and George Bennett under contracts for the next few seasons, they see Dumoulin as the icing on the cake in terms of stage racing power.
Jumbo-Visma have increased investment in the last two seasons and believe that in order to dismantle Team Ineos’ stranglehold on the Tour de France they must arrive at a Grand Départ with between three and four of the 10 best stage race riders in the world. It’s understood that Jumbo-Visma believe that Dumoulin would sacrifice some of his own Grand Tour ambitions in order to fit in with a more powerful GC group and aim for a more collective win, rather than be the only focal point on the squad, as he currently is at Sunweb.It's kind of like out Ineos-ing the Ineos team strategy if they manage to do it.
Would be a massively powerful team if you have Roglic, Domoulin, Kruiswijk and Bennett in it. Question would be - can they play nicely together?And what about their sprint ambitions? They have some very handy quicks too..
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@Billy-Webb Yeah - there were hints in an earlier article that there were a few ego games between Kruiswijk and Roglic in last year's TdF.
I wondered the same thing about the sprinters - Ineos pretty much put all of their eggs in the GC classification - 8 guys riding to a single purpose. If it doesn't come off, you might end up with nothing much - a TTT stage win.