Road Cycling
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In case anyone who is interested hasn't noticed - the Tour of Switzerland is being shown on Sky this week.
Finn Fisher-Black currently 4th on GC after the opening short TT and a sprinters' stage. George is 73rd, but less than 30 seconds back. Another flat (ish) stage tonight - then lots of mountains to come.
Interested to see how George goes in these - he seems to be riding his best for several years.
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George picks up 14th on the first mountain stage and jumps to 16th in the GC - two minutes down on Adam Yates. That's definitely showing better form than the last couple of years.
Interestingly, they showed a pre-stage interview with George (which I missed the start of and was tryig to work out if it was him) where he sounded like Steve Williams was their main hope, with potentially Matthew Riccitello as back up. Steve cracked and Riccitello finished only a few seconds ahead of George, so should be a reshuffling of the pecking order.
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Adam Yates and Almeida fighting this one out for UAE. Yates has 31 seconds going into the final time trial. Almeida is a better time trialist, but that looks a lot to make up. I'm guessing Yates will hold on.
Those two have put the rest of the field to the sword - which is a bit crazy when you think they're likely to be Pogacar's super domestiques come the TdF. They can also pick from the likes of Ayuso, Soler, Vine, Majka, McNulty, Grosschartner, and del Toro for their climbing domestiques. They could field two strong teams!
Saw a suggestion today that Jonas shouldn't ride theTdF since he's not yet back from injury.
George is 18th in the GC. A decent time trial should keep him in the top 20, which would be a good result for him, I think. If he does a good one (for him) he could pick up a couple of places.
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No TdF for Finn Fisher-Black either. They've named their Super Team.
Tadej Pogačar (Slo)
Juan Ayuso (Spa)
Pavel Sivakov (Fra)
Marc Soler (Spa)
Nils Politt (Ger)
Adam Yates (GB)
Joao Almeida (Por)
Tim Wellens (Bel)I think they've got more guns than Jumbo LaB.
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@Chris-B said in Road Cycling:
No TdF for Finn Fisher-Black either. They've named their Super Team.
Tadej Pogačar (Slo)
Juan Ayuso (Spa)
Pavel Sivakov (Fra)
Marc Soler (Spa)
Nils Politt (Ger)
Adam Yates (GB)
Joao Almeida (Por)
Tim Wellens (Bel)I think they've got more guns than Jumbo LaB.
Jumbo won’t go close. I think the only potential saving feature would be if the super doms are competing against each other. Cant see that with Pog there though.
I think we are going to see a procession - Jonas is just coming back from injury so they’ll crack him on the first huuuuuge weekend. After that, it’ll be pretty boring.
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@gt12 Just reading that Sepp Kuss has covid and won't start, so that's even worse. They've still got a good team, but Sepp is the guy you'd expect to still be there at the end of the mountain stages.
I'm prepared to give Jonas some benefit of the doubt - and Tadej rode the Giro, so that may catch up with him at some point.
TAB has:
Tadej 1.62
Jonas 3.50
Primoz 9.00
Remco 17.00Everyone else over $20. Given the likelihood of crashes, covid and unexpected cracking - someone like Remco or Joao Almeida ($41) might be worth a small punt!
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can't see it being anything other than a cake walk for Pog. Hard to have that much time off and get the required level of fitness back. (see Pog last year after his busted wrist).
reckons he's fully recovered from the Giro and better than ever (noticeable how much leaner he is this year... which seems absurd considering how skinny they are..)
was funny listening to poddy with Geraint and him on it - G asked him out of 10 how rooted he was after the giro - answer was a 7.. G was basically 'ruined'.. and had to come home and spend time immediately doing stuff with his kids, Pogi 'no idea how you can do that - i just spent 2 days on the couch with the missus, good to go.'Can't think of any kiwis at the tour this year.. no pithie or dion smith...
another year of waiting for our first stage (solo) victory!Carapaz might be a good dark horse for a podium
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cycling world has lost its sh*t on the internet after she only ended up losing the tour by 4 secs....
in other news - close for Corbin Strong last night - 3rd in stage 2 of the Vuelta - no much press considering one of the best ever results for a kiwi in a stage in a grandie
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A very strange day. The peloton gave Ben O'Connor a win by 6.31 - he's much too dangerous a rider to gift that much time. He now leads Roglic by 4.51 and Primoz & Co will likely have a long hard battle to claw that time back.
George finished with the reduced peloton. Some "sort of" good news for him personally is that his team mate Riccitello didn't (edit: just read he had a crash so that's not good).
Israel Premiertch started the race with three protected riders - Riccitello, Michael Woods and George.
Woods lost time on the first mountain stage and is 3.5 minutes behind George, while Riccitello is 7 minutes behind. If they're going to continue to ride for GC then George has surely become the de facto team leader - for now, anyway.
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What is more bizarre is that the Vuelta was won in exactly this fashion last year on stage six.
Roglic must be a very slow learner.
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@Chester-Draws said in Road Cycling:
What is more bizarre is that the Vuelta was won in exactly this fashion last year on stage six.
Roglic must be a very slow learner.
Getting in, chasing, and losing that break also cooked on of his domestiques. Bora looked short of help today and they’ll all need good legs when they get to the mountains.
Kuss was a fucking legend chasing Soler to get Wout back in contention for the stage. It was a huge effort from a GC guy on the flat.
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Stage 9 and Adam Yates did a Ben O'Connor to bring himself somewhat back into the equation - as did Carapaz. UAE needed to do something after Almeida dropped out of contention yesterday and dropped out of the race with covid today.
O'Connor was able to ride with the small Roglic group - Mas was able to break away from that group on the final climb, but it wasn't a mountain top finish and they reeled him back in on the flat after a descent.
George had a mechanical right at the bottom of the final climb and lost 3 minutes on Roglic.
Shades of the Giro if a few years ago. I guess we'll never know whether he could have ridden with that group - in theory the climb might have suited him - but potentially being about 10th turns into 16th.
GC
O'Connor
Roglic
Carapaz
Mas
Landa
Lipowitz
Yates
Gall
Tour de Suisse 2024 Stage 4 results
