Tour de France 24
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@gt12 The amazing thing is that Pog really only used Yates for a few hundred metres and then took off because Adam couldn't go fast enough.
Decent statement to counter Jonas'effort from a few days back.
UAE burned a few matches last night - and Ayuso is out with covid.
Van Aert sat up very early (I think a couple of others as well), so maybe Jumbo has a counter-attack planned for tonight.
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Just to chuck this in - George came third in GC in the Tour of Sibiu. I gather it's in Romania.
It must be a pretty competitive race because four-time TdF Champion Chris Froome came 103rd and 42 minutes down on George. Sounds like Froome was being used as a domestique for George and Riccitello.
George did have a little bit of a crack...
“We had a nice few days here,” added Bennett. “I didn’t plan on being in Sibiu in July but I enjoyed a week here with a good crew. It was nice to see Riley get his first pro win and me and Mathew did what we could on a course that didn’t really suit us.”
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Big weekend of climbing that basically resulted in Pogacar putting first 39 seconds, and then a minute eight in to Vingegaard, and he now leads by 3.09
Still a tough 3rd week to go, and plenty of opportunity for Vingegaard to fight back before the last day time trial. But Pogecar looks in great shape, and also has the best team.
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@mariner4life said in Tour de France 24:
Big weekend of climbing that basically resulted in Pogacar putting first 39 seconds, and then a minute eight in to Vingegaard, and he now leads by 3.09
Still a tough 3rd week to go, and plenty of opportunity for Vingegaard to fight back before the last day time trial. But Pogecar looks in great shape, and also has the best team.
I watched the replay this morning before the Euro's and Pogacar looks like a man very determined to right the wrongs from last year. Unless Jonas pulls a rabbit out of the hat and can attack Pogacar on an off day, it's Pog's to lose. How many grueling mountain stages left?
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@Canes4life The remaining stages are:
16 Flat
17 Mountain
18 Hilly
19 Mountain
20 Mountain
21 ITTStill time for Jonas to crack Tadej, but he needs it to be a proper crack - with 3 minutes to make up, Tadej can likely "manage" getting dropped 3kms from a finish.
Stage 19 is the hardest remaining - that's the one I reckon will bear watching.
The final ITT climbs 500 metres, so probably suits Tadej and Jonas more than Remco, but I doubt anyone will make up minutes on it.
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Jonas just does not have the team to crack him, and Tadej has a team that can protect him. If the teams were reversed this week it would be much exciting, but I think he is home and hosed. I really feel like Visma needs a big domestique alongside Kuss to help Jonas.
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@gt12 Yeah - right now it seems pretty unlikely, but we've all seen how quickly the seemingly invincible can suddenly blow up.
Tadej looks a bit too good for that to happen to him.
Wout Van Aert hasn't seemed as good in the mountains this year as previous years.
If he was better, with Sepp Kuss, Jorgensen and Kelderman - that would be a pretty good team. Still not as good as UAE, but enough to do more damage.
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Has anyone ever won the 3 grand tours in the same year?
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@mariner4life No - I was just googling that to see.
Jacques Anquitil won four grand tours in a row, but it was two in 1963 and two in 1964.
Merckx won three in a row, but also across two years.
Have a go Tadej - it's only 3000 odd kms!
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UAE boss on Pogacar's Vuelta: ‘Don’t want to risk burning him out’ - Canadian Cycling Magazine
Mauro Gianetti says that the yellow jersey will not be doing any more Grand Tours in 2024 UAE boss on Pogacar's Vuelta
I'd guess not, but who knows.
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@mariner4life No.
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@Chris-B said in Tour de France 24:
@mariner4life No - I was just googling that to see.
Jacques Anquitil won four grand tours in a row, but it was two in 1963 and two in 1964.
Merckx won three in a row, but also across two years.
Have a go Tadej - it's only 3000 odd kms!
Vuelta was moved in 1995, before that it was basically impossible to do all there in the same year. Merckx for example only entered it once and didn't do the tour that year (but did the vuelta giro double with a three day break in between!)
I think Vingegard is below his best given the injury earlier this season, so he might be stronger in the vuelta and if Pog loses even a little bit from fatigue in his third grand tour of the year that could be the difference. I hope he goes for it though, would be a very cool record to set.
Also hoping Binian Girmay gets the points win. Looks like he just needs to beat the cutoff and his points lead in enough.
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No Olympics, no vuelta it seems. But going for the world champs instead. That's the historic 'triple crown' combination, but a bit surprised that he didn't want to prioritise Olympics, although carapaz (defending olympic champ) was also not selected.
I'd love to have a full 3 week olympic grand tour. A bit tricky with the Olympics only being two weeks, so would have to start early, but would be interesting to see the teams get mixed up and organised into national teams. Although I remember the hype around the British 'dream team' in 2012 with lead by Wiggins, Cav and Froome. They got caught out by an early break that noone else wanted to do any work catching (all the other major teams having someone in the breakaway group), and burned out their team with I think only Cav managing to finish in the peloton.
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There's only a handful of people can realistically win a grand tour. And they tend to be from the same countries.
Can you imagine Roglič working for Pogačar? Van Aert working for Evenopoel? Who would lead for Colombia?
Then you would have Vingegaard with zero protection in the mountains.
There's a reason the Grand Tours are no longer national teams.
At least with the road race there's literally dozens who can potentially win, provided they get a decent balance of climbing and sprinting.
Edit: if they were to do it, it would need to be a week long race. That would at least open the field up.
