Tour De France 2021
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@scribe Hard to know.
It's certainly a golden age for Slovenian cycling.
One thing I've liked about cycling in the past few years is that (mainly) pretty much everyone has shown some substantial weakness somewhere in a Grand Tour. E.g. Bernal in the Giro. Roglic last night.
When you see guys showing no weaknesses, winning the time trials and burning off the best climbers it seems too good to be true and probably is.
Very interesting stage last night. Pogacar has given Van der Poel and Van Aert a substantial head start now. Thomas and Carapaz 5+ minutes back.
The brief article I read was attributing Roglic's failure to his crash a couple of days ago. Probably right, since there wasn't much on the day that should have cracked him otherwise (heat?). Anyway, he is cooked and you'd imagine TJV will be all in behind Van Aert now.
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Leaderboard looks quite spread for week 1.
It’s not like the top five have hammered themselves to get some early promotion either.
I guess that week 2 will see teams show their hands a bit.
Ineos strategy seems to be to control the peloton (what a surprise) and pounce on any weaknesses shown by contenders like they did with Rog last night. Pick them off one by one. -
@sparky said in Tour De France 2021:
Le Tour reaches the Alps this weekend. 🔥
I like the idea of these downhill finishes after the climbs.
We’ll see how it works tonight.
Tomorrow’s finish is at Tignes. Not overly steep but the elevation/altitude is pretty hard if he are gasping.Wednesday twice up Ventoux. That could get fun.
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@sparky Yeah - despite that there's a long way to go - it's all over bar the shouting if Pog remains on his bike.
Carapaz and maybe Gaudu the only genuine GC contenders within a Bulls roar of Pogacar.
Van Aert can't live with him in the mountains and has no avenue back in the Time Trials.
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@gt12 said in Tour De France 2021:
@tewaio said in Tour De France 2021:
Occam's Razor = he's on the gear, sadly
The way he just rode away from Carapaz was mad.
Given the weaknesses of everyone else, I’d be shocked if he doesn’t have the best ‘help’
He nonchalantly rode away from the other GC contenders again today, looking super fresh. It was like he was bored and wanted to just play a bit with them. Man, I hope he’s not juiced but it doesn’t look good when everyone else is suffering.
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He was 10 seconds faster than Schlecks and Contador did with perfect dry conditions, and Pogacar in the wet would have had worse traction. He's even more formidable than the numbers show...
This article covers a lot but doesn't mention traction, but it does say there is less adhesion in the wet (of course), taking the view that that speeds a cyclist up due to less rolling resistance.
Are you faster when it rains?
There are plenty of sensible reasons to avoid riding when the forecast says rain. It’s treacherous, can be just a
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@scribe said in Tour De France 2021:
He nonchalantly rode away from the other GC contenders again today, looking super fresh. It was like he was bored and wanted to just play a bit with them. Man, I hope he’s not juiced but it doesn’t look good when everyone else is suffering.
same for Colbrelli - never seen a sprinter EVER smash it off the start line, smash it for the first couple of hours to ensure points at the intermediate sprint then did a massive pull to split the break and set it up for Wout Poels to attack.
Thats when I went to bed.. get up and find out he's somehow then ridden back through all the best climbers in the world to come 3rd on one of the toughest stages ever..
if you're on the gear at least be a bit subtle about it!
