He looks very relaxed though! Almost bored. Good poker face!
The next climb might be quite revealing. It'll be a big psychological blow to JV if he can simply sit there on his wheel and follow every move, even if he doesn't pull back much time.
Moment of consolidation now, the Yellow Jersey group behind has swelled and is at least holding the gap. See how much it blows up on the final climb.
Vingegaard obliterated the old climbing record on the Tourmalet!
Weird from oily jims dodgey lorry boys light it up on the descent then sit up in the valley :/
Mental. JV has taken nearly 2 minutes off the quickest time up the Tourmalet!
probably explain the expression on his face when he looked round just before cresting the Tourmalet and seeing Pog glued to his wheel
Do sometimes think Pog is like an enthusiastic puppy, he clearly has so much natural talent, but sometimes wastes energy when not needed, he has bonked a few times at critical points as he's not fuelled properly etc.. (cycling weekly article today, said when he snapped last year and lost all that time, that he bonked and his coached said his power dropped from 6.8w/kg, to just over 4 and he just blew up)
His broken wrist won't have helped, he's missed loads of racing, probably just needs to ride himself back into it.
Grimace on the face of Wout
From my first post this morning:
Tour de Suisse winner Mattias Skjelmose (Lidl-Trek) is steadily climbing up the GC rankings and is now just inside the top 10, only 16″ off Pogacar
Yeah well that was wrong wasn't it?! Dropped from the yellow jersey group, going backwards.
WvA really rode himself in to the black there.. almost came to a complete standstill, tank emptied!
blown! 😀
This is a fascinating mental game!
Kwiato gone.
Blimey!
boom!!!!
This really does have the feel of stages 19/20 of the Tour de France, not Stage 6!
The Jumbo plan sort of backfired...
Incredible stage - tactical, bluffs and double bluffs, attacks and counter attacks.
Sucker punch!!
cracking stage
Brits doing well - phenomenal from James Shaw, the Yates twins have just finished, Pidcock up there in the top 10.
Brilliant from Pog
the media were writing him off at the start.... but that was clinical from Pog
That's proper racing. A great stage.
Game on
did Jumbo get greedy ?
I don't think they got greedy, they played to their strengths and did all they could to support JV, WvA couldn't have given any more, and it almost worked, bar one fly in the ointment...
His broken wrist won’t have helped, he’s missed loads of racing
keep seeing this, he only has 4 less racing days that Jonas
Cav got in with 5+ mins to spare
Saving his energy for tomorrow, good lad! 😉
I don’t think they got greedy, they played to their strengths and did all they could to support JV, WvA couldn’t have given any more, and it almost worked, bar one fly in the ointment…
This ^^.
I think they expected to drop TP on the Tourmalet, JV would then hook up with WvA in the lead and whatever group was there would ride to the finish leaving TP chasing frantically behind. They were expecting TP to be in the same sort of state as yesterday and they got that very wrong.
I don't think it's quite at the 2-horse race stage yet but it's not far off if they keep going at it like that. Jai Hindley lost a chunk of time in half a stage there.
11 mph cross tail wind tomorrow and quite exposed on the run in to Bordeaux
Well, you're right Klunk, but if it had ended like the previous stage (or worse if the jumbo plan worked out with Wout), it just might have been a procession for GC, with pog and the rest looking for stages</p>
James Shaw sounding like Ricky Gervais in that interview!
keep seeing this, he only has 4 less racing days that Jonas
Yes but Pog races far more, and raced the spring classics and thenthe problem is he wasn't able to train when his wrist was broken!
Loved the Jai Hindley interview..."was like a dream being in yellow but I got my arse handed to me to be fair" or something similar
So the Jumbo DS told Jonas on the Tourmalet "You've got him on the ropes!"
