Expecting a lot of attacks on Sky up here now, use sky to drive it then attack them

Cheers, Mike, that’s spot on.

Aru. Nice jersey.

It’s on

Where’s Quintana going? Backwards it seems.

Boom!
Froome leading out the rest? Martin and Porte chasing come on

And they let aru go

Class win

Bmc cock up then… Though thinned the field considerably

Aru has been on bloody good form. Not a surprise winner.

Bmc cock up then… Though thinned the field considerably

Dunno, I think it probably contributed to Quintana loosing a bunch of seconds.

Sean Yates… Fabian Aru 😆

Yeah thought I think they were look at some distance between him and Froome though. Froome in yellow though

I know he’s Astana and all that… but I’m quite the way Aru is going about his racing this year.

Hmmm. Aru took 30 sec out of Froome and now sits at 14″. Can he TT?

Maybe but he won’t be let to go if they can hold him on the next summit finish. Was a little concerning for sky how quickly the train came apart at the end when he really needed gt to be up there with him.

Can he TT?

Not compared to some of the other GC guys, but there’s not much TT miles so definitely a contender.

BMC definitely ballsed that up. Too much smashing of the field before the important stuff started. I guess they had to try to roll the dice but watching BMC’s entire team leading team Sky for most of the day made me wonder who they have as a DS.

could be the plan was to keep sky in yellow (they (sky) made it pretty clear early on they were quite happy to let the break have it) and make it a tough day and perhaps make up some time.

So guys that rode Giro all look cooked before they start – not the best for them.

Aru looked very impressive.
Shame G couldn’t hold on, he’s been playing down his form, but thought it may have been a bluff.

Great finish, I was mildly surprised at how quick G went backwards at the end, though he seemed to rally again. I guess it just shows the pace BMC were pushing affected the peleton so to some extent their plan worked. Was it henao that barely did a turn at the end before dropping?

could be the plan was to keep sky in yellow (they (sky) made it pretty clear early on they were quite happy to let the break have it) and make it a tough day and perhaps make up some time.

I doubt it. This whole “make them defend the jersey” thing always strikes me as received wisdom bullshit. As a GC contender you would always want to have as little deficit to the lead as possible to avoid too much negative impact from mishaps so why would you intentionally NOT be the leader? You can’t possibly know how the race will pan out with crashes, mechanicals, riders fading late race etc so it’s just rank idiocy or bravado to suggest you will take the jersey on a specific day.

My personal feeling was that BMC wanted to thin out the field and try to take yellow or at the very least take time from the other favourites but all they did was burn their team. In reality though, unless Porte couldn’t stick with the other leaders, there was little risk as today isn’t another mountain stage.

Porte just isn’t that good. A podium is possible but Yellow, nope. Pleased to see Dan Martin up there, be interesting what he can do over the rest of the race. If i was going to speculate after todays stage then it is Froome and Aru in a battle for yellow and Martin vs Porte for 3rd overall.