Road Cycling
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Roglic wins the time trial, but his competitors do better than I expected them to.
Carapaz is just 39 seconds behind in the GC and Carthy is @47 seconds.
Dan Martin the loser on the day, he's now in 4th and 1 minute 42 back.
George was fast enough to jump over Mikel Nieve, but not fast enough to stay ahead of De la Cruz, so he remains in 11th.
Jumbo Visma has been happy enough to let George more or less ride for himself for several days and keep himself on the edge of the mix. My theory - and it's probably good for George - is that they're planning to send him up the road during the final week and force some of the other teams to chase him to protect their positions in (or aspirations for) the top 10. So instead of TJV having to do all the work at the front of the peloton, they may be able to sit back on a day or two and let others chase George. Which might give George a chance to go for a stage win!
Anyway, it's a theory...
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The GC remains largely unchanged - yesterday the lead group split by a few seconds and George finished in the second group - losing a few seconds to David Gaudu and slipping to 12th - one second down.
Dion Smith was in the mix at the finish today - finished sixth in the sprint.
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Another hilly stage and Dion Smith gets even closer.
He was fourth on the stage, but the 3rd placed finisher (Rui Costa) got relegated, so Dion gets to stand on the podium of a Grand Tour individual stage. Not many NZers have done that - pretty certain none have ever won - not sure who else has come in the first three on an individual stage. I'm guessing Julian Dean probably would have somewhere. George had a 4th in the Giro. I think Jack Bauer got swamped when he nearly won at the TdF.
Dion was only a couple of bike lengths from the winner (Cort-Neilson). Roglic came second so picked up 6 bonus seconds and I think has locked up the green (sprinters) jersey. George sort of led Roglic out in the sprint so was briefly leading inside the last km - so probably NZ's most competitive stage!
Final mountain stage tonight.
Roglic with 45 seconds on Carapaz and 53 seconds on Carthy. Like the Tour - it's his to lose!
Also a test of my theory of whether they'll let George go up the road.
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A pretty exciting final mountain stage.
Dan Martin dropped away from the lead group leaving Carapaz, Roglic and Carthy to fight it out.
Carthy made a couple of feints, but Carapaz attacked hard with about 3km of the climb left and broke away.
At his peak he put 25 seconds between himself and Roglic. TJV had put Lenard Hofstede in the breakaway (the role I thought they might give George) and he was able to sit up and wait for Roglic and provide a bit of support for Primoz.
In the end, Carapaz made up 21 seconds on Roglic - but not enough.
Not sure what the protocol is on the final stage, but I think it will be hard to do much unless Roglic crashes or goes to sleep.
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And Roglic wins!
An interesting feature is that Carapaz has actually ridden the race 8 seconds faster than Roglic, but Roglic has collected 48 seconds of time bonuses compared with Carapaz collecting 16 seconds.
George ends up 12th - 14.04 down on Roglic. Not bad considering there were several stages where he had to sacrifice himself for Roglic and plenty where he was riding in support.
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@Chris-B said in Road Cycling:
And Roglic wins!
An interesting feature is that Carapaz has actually ridden the race 8 seconds faster than Roglic, but Roglic has collected 48 seconds of time bonuses compared with Carapaz collecting 16 seconds.
George ends up 12th - 14.04 down on Roglic. Not bad considering there were several stages where he had to sacrifice himself for Roglic and plenty where he was riding in support.
I really support bonus seconds and who is to say how Roglic would have gone if he didn't target podiums.
I much prefer seeing GC guys have to get to the front than winning a TT than sitting in a peleton with their team shutting down attacks. -
@Crucial Yeah - me too.
Some additional rewards for performing in the Stage racing.
Roglic also lost a few seconds of advantage on one stage when Dan Martin crashed inside the 3km mark and everyone was given the same time, when I think Primoz should have gained 3 seconds.
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And Froome finished in 98th, 3.5 hrs down on Roglic. In a nice touch, he was retrospectively presented with the 2011 trophy in a ceremony before the final stage commenced. It was also his final day as an Ineos rider, after 10 years.
Time will tell how successful he is with ISN next year. Odds are against him being successful, but he is a tenacious sod.
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Saw a guy in TJV gear riding towards me the other day and thought, that looks a lot like George.
Sure enough...
George Bennett to return to racing in New Zealand
The top New Zealand cyclist George Bennett has confirmed he'll race two events in New Zealand in the New Year.
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@Chris-B said in Road Cycling:
Saw a guy in TJV gear riding towards me the other day and thought, that looks a lot like George.
Sure enough...
George Bennett to return to racing in New Zealand
The top New Zealand cyclist George Bennett has confirmed he'll race two events in New Zealand in the New Year.
he was doing 6 hour rides on Zwift in the bathroom of his quarantine hotel. faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaark that!
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@WillieTheWaiter said in Road Cycling:
@Chris-B said in Road Cycling:
Saw a guy in TJV gear riding towards me the other day and thought, that looks a lot like George.
Sure enough...
George Bennett to return to racing in New Zealand
The top New Zealand cyclist George Bennett has confirmed he'll race two events in New Zealand in the New Year.
he was doing 6 hour rides on Zwift in the bathroom of his quarantine hotel. faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaark that!
That's just disgusting. Nobody should have that level of mental capacity.
1hr on zwift and I'm mentally cooked.
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@scribe said in Road Cycling:
I did 2.5 hrs on a turbo trainer once whilst training for an Ironman (pre Zwift days). Never again. That was after reading about a Female pro who used to do all of her Ironman training indoors. Crazy play.
yeh I think i've maxed out at about 2 hours. Surprising the amount of pros especially triathletes who do the majority of their training on the trainer. I'd be about 80%.. so much more efficient, impossible to do decent intervals in an hour session in central auckland!
that female pro you talk about - that wasn't the woman who swam like a frikkin spaz was it? I remember reading an article on a female pro in the uk about how she trained all on the trainer for ironman - a while back before it became the norm.. and it showed her swimming, breaststroke kick with freestyle swim - craziest thing I've seen.. funnily enough her swim coach could see she was going to be a great athlete when she was sorted out and she was!
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never did more than 90 minutes. And i did that precisely once, and swore to never do it again. 1 hour, no more.
And that evil device has sat unused in my garage for 19 months now...
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@mariner4life said in Road Cycling:
never did more than 90 minutes. And i did that precisely once, and swore to never do it again. 1 hour, no more.
And that evil device has sat unused in my garage for 19 months now...
yeh.. I name my workouts after how I feel about them.. ha
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Just a casual 359 watt FTP there...
Nice work!
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Have a mate who rode 420 watts for 45 minutes in a zwift race last week. (Legit numbers, he has a wattbike so accurate)
He is a beast.
I ride quite a lot but jeepers those numbers scare me!
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Rankings are often a bit of a waste of time, but for what it's worth (as per that article) George is ranked 26th overall for road cycling. After those good results mid-year he's 16th in one day races and 54th in stage races.
3rd overall in Oceania behind Porte and Jai Hindley - which perhaps doesn't give enough value to winning sprint stages in Grand Tours (Caleb Ewan) and maybe time trialing (Rohan Dennis).
Then again, I mainly like watching guys suffering up hills!
