Yay Eurosport live coverage ending with 3km to go - or was it just my Sky playing up?
I think given all the issues this year you can't draw that many conclusions on form for now, although there's not that long left until the Tour. I hope Froome is locked in the Tour and finds some decent form, not too bothered if he actually wins it as I'm not a massive fan but I'd like to see him get a decent shot at a 5th Tour.
I don't understand what Sagan is doing at the Dauphine though...
I don’t understand what Sagan is doing at the Dauphine though…
Training, no one is writing off his chances yet but he's been way off so far this season.
Good to see Ineos off form – could this be the end of the Sky/Ineos snorefest that has blighted recent years?
Looking like it’ll be a Jumbo snorefest to me.
Yay Eurosport live coverage ending with 3km to go
According to the Spanish commentators the Eurosport Player servers fell over Europe-wide, affected all their channels. It recovered with about 2.5km to go. (I watched it in the evening, so wasn't affected).
And yeah, the season could just turn into a Jumbo snorefest which wouldn't be great, either.
Fuglsang dominated the Dauphine last year, how did the tour go for him. The fear for Jumbo is that they have peaked too soon. Can Roglic hold his form through a 3 werk stage race that doesnt start for another 2 weeks?
Yep watching it last night and I reckon Froome will more likely be riding into form during the Tour and Roglic out. Dumoulin might be the bigger threat to Froome/Inneos/anyone else at the Tour. I can't wait 😀
Roglic is just looking astounding isn't he, especially with the team he's put together to help out there, the whole squad is just riding with such intent and such ability, it's awesome to see. Sure, we can sit here and call it a snooze fest like INEOS/Sky of previous years, but it's harsh to do so, they're just doing their job.
I'm not sure how long it takes to 'ride into form' or whether the main INEOS guys are taking it 2% easy and not going fully into the red to save fatigue for the upcoming Tour, but at the moment you just can't see past JUMBO winning this one..
Certainly, no-one else is standing out for me, with Bardet, Quintana, Yates, etc etc all looking a good chunk off the pace when we get to the pointy bits.
Sure, we can sit here and call it a snooze fest like INEOS/Sky of previous years, but it’s harsh to do so, they’re just doing their job.
Oh yeah, I fully understand why they do it - but it makes for crap spectating.
Stage 2’s Groupetto punishment was a bit harsh
Savage!
Although am reassured to see some familiar looking Kinesio taping on that guys lower back, I mean, if the professionals do it then it CAN'T be snake-oil right?
Training, no one is writing off his chances yet but he’s been way off so far this season
It can't be great training though to plod along at tempo in the bunch then get dropped on a climb and then plod along in the groupetto the rest of the stage?
And that hail looked pretty brutal!
I’d say this is more the level Froome should be, now he hasn’t been able to ‘train’ in Kenya with all the ‘supplements’ that brings
You look back through cycling history and its full of pics of Armstrong, Hamilton, Pantani et al on safari and juiced up to the eyeballs
Didnt work too Well for Fausto Coppi!!
That left hand pic of the hail up there ^^ looks like some kind of weird romantic painting from the 18th C, with a Jumbo-Visma rider pasted in. 😀
It can’t be great training though to plod along at tempo in the bunch then get dropped on a climb
I have a feeling they were doing a bit more than plodding along. Yates went pop before Froome for example.
Froome looks like he's struggling at the back of the peleton up the col de madeleine
dodgy descent road surface !
That left hand pic of the hail up there ^^ looks like some kind of weird romantic painting from the 18th C, with a Jumbo-Visma rider pasted in. 😀
Ha, yeah. There's a subreddit dedicated to this ( https://www.reddit.com/r/AccidentalRenaissance).
I'm really enjoying the Dauphiné and I'm not too worried about a Jumbo snooze-fest:
- Look at the size of the lead GC groups in yesterday's and today's stage. We're getting bunch sprints at the end of mountain stages. I think it's cool.
- Jumbo look good, but not Sky-in-their-prime-all-conquering-good.
- Roglič looks amazing but he's not invincible - see last year's Giro.
- If Ineos do improve between now and the Tour, the ding-dong battle between them and Jumbo could be quite something, or open the door for someone opportunistic to upset the apple cart.
I'm fully prepared to accept that I might just be being very optimistic because BIKE RACING IS BACK ON TV AND IT'S GREAT.
Ol' (not so old 😀 ) WVA is an impressive rider.... towed the peleton up the madeleine and a quarter of the final climb. he was winning the sprinters classic a week ago !
Loving the cycling on the telly at the moment, especially today's stage.
When I was in France a couple of years ago we stayed quite close to St Martin (villeranger) and also rode up and back down the Col de la Madelaine. The weather today looked equally as nice as when we were there.
We even got to watch a cycle race that we had no idea was happening until we saw them setting up the finish line. The race was the Tour de Savoie Mont-Blanc. It was class sitting in the sun drinking a cold Kronenberg Blanch watching the finish.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tour_de_Savoie_Mont-Blanc
The climb up to Val Thorens is class too.
After chatting to a British builder in a St Martin bar when we were there. I got a deluded idea into my head that I could move there, not sure the wife and kids would be up for it. 😭
Interesting factoid about the Col de la Madelaine is that despite being labeled as a 2000m col it's actually only 1,993m they just thought it sounded better being 2000m.
You would think they'd have just dumped a 7m high pile of rocks and dirt at the top but why bother when you can just change the sign, I just love the French way of doing things.
As for Ineos's lack of form, I can't see Dave Brailsford getting it so wrong. I think they're bluffing in order to get Jumbo to burn themselves out in the first week or so in the Tour then in the last week they will attack, attack, attack!
I do find it funny how Froome gets slated for being boring yet Roglic is unbelievably more boring. I like Froome, especially after reading his autobiography. He's very intelligent, shrewd, tough as old boots and absolutely ruthless in his pursuit of achieving his goals. If he was actually as poor as his current form indicates I think he would just retire rather than suffer every day with no chance of winning. Bring on the Tour!!! 👌
^^^ not ‘arf didnthurt ^^^
Go Froome-dog
Looks like Bernal has pulled out of the Dauphiné:
https://www.itv.com/itvcycling/articles/egan-bernal-abandons-the-criterium-du-dauphine
A real shame IMO - he's the kind of rider who has the chops to come back fighting after losing some time, and I was kind of hoping he was going to have a pop at Roglič this weekend.
So Egan’s abandonment in light of the earlier comment on Froome:
ruthless in his pursuit of achieving his goals
🤔?
I think that Ineos are running two strategies for the Tour.
1. Kwiatovski, Sivakov and Bernal will peak for the earlier part of the tour and plan to take the lead.
2. Thomas and Froome to peak in the latter part of the tour and will attack on a big mountain day where it will force all the other teams to chase them down towing Bernal along. Essentially Jumbo and and the other favourites will be working for Bernal because if they don't Thomas or Froome will win it.
Bernal being pulled out of the Dauphine could be to help him recover from a genuine niggle or it could just be Brailsford playing mind games. I think letting Jumbo go into the Tour super confident could make them complacent and open to attack from everyone.
Roglic does look the strongest out there which doesn't always translate to winning the Tour, if anything it makes you a marked man where no one will let you get an advantage.
I'm so excited about the Tour that I hope something like what happened last year doesn't ruin it for the fans.
Nice to see someone else getting a win today. Shame about the crash and abandonments.
Has anyone seen any images/video of the descent that did for Kruiswijk?
As bad as they say, or is Dumoulin doing a Schleck and whinging about descending?
As bad as they say, or is Dumoulin doing a Schleck and whinging about descending?
Unlikely, he's a really good descender. In the 'toilet' stage of the Giro he made time up on the descents vs the likes of Nibali.
I think Pinot said in an interview that he'd ridden the road in training and was surprised that they didn't resurface it.
Kind of agree with @didnthurt. But Ineos have to stop leading the train. Let the Yellow Jersey team do the work. I know tactics are much simpler in hindsight, but Ineos need to let Jumbo represent the Yellow and let them work harder earlier on. I still think Bernal has a chance, but he does need other riders to get in the break to make LJ work. No point in dragging 3 or 4 LJ riders to the last KM then letting Roglic or Dumoulin attack. Make them work. Them use G or Froome to attack, leave Bernal to sit in the wheels. Then Bernal attacks on the high mountains.
Massively over simplified I know. But anyway, it’s getting closer and I’m incredibly excited!! (And drunk!!!)
Roglič has abandoned this morning due to injuries from the crash he had yesterday:
https://twitter.com/JumboVismaRoad/status/1294927097417338880?s=20
That puts Pinot in the lead today, with a lot of folk very close behind:
Sad to see someone so strong leave the race because of a crash, but it will be interesting to see how the race develops today.
As for what this all means for the tour? Who knows?
Wow... that's going to make today massively interesting then. You'd expect to see Jumbo Visma shattering it for a win today then instead of going for the GC bunching....
I'm going LAnda...
That was entertaining. If you didn't watch it seek out some highlights. It's a great shame though that we don't get full stage coverage of most races. There is so much action early on that we miss as became apparent when we started to get full coverage of TdF.
tough ol' race.
Really good race that. Very pleased for Martinez and EF that he won the overall.
Jumbo don't half look good and have some of my favourite riders in, although I'm fairly non plussed about roglic.
I just have a feeling this could be a very close tdf. Pinot looks hungry for it, as does 'albert steptoe'. We've had a hint the last two days that there's a French team leaders alliance forming. I would love to see a French winner after all these years
What a race today. I love watching Pinot race - he just puts every ounce of his being into it.
That said, having read Matt Rendell's 'Colombia es Pasion!' recently I've pretty much started rooting for colombians at every race now.
Well looking at recent performances it doesn't look to me as though TdF will be close. I hope I'm wrong though. These days I don't have any particular interest in winners, I just like to see good racing. But I would love to see Pinot do it. Spoiler - he won't.
Same as you in that context, i'm more into watching crazy attacks than people 'sitting'. Which arguably wins GTs i'll grant you. But when one of the big guys just goes from 4-5km out with a crazy shattering attack it's great to see.
i think big Tom may end up with the TDF this year if he can get the support from the team. But he's in one of them very unfortunate positions where he may end up too far off because he's had to help Roglic, hance blowing his own chance before it begins.
They seemed a bit cagy about Roglics chances of starting TdF yesterday.. I was expecting to hear "its just road rash but we are being cautious."
From a sponsor exposure / satisfaction point of view, Jumbo did so much they didnt actually need to win the GC to be the clear winners.
I think all that can be said about the TdF is that on the face of it looks more open than other recent years.
Having said that, I'd not be surprised at Ineos drawing everything together in time and strangulating it.
That was a very very long way down. I was watching it in silence and didn't know it was Remco.
Is Roglic injured? Does that mean Dumoulin or Kruijswijk will be the leader at the tour? Or will they have 3, or even 3 leaders?
Are Ineos off pace? Is Froome bluffing? Is Bernal as good as last year? Should G have done the Classics this year?
Pinot, what can he do?
Bardet, same question.
It'll be a very interesting 3 weeks in France.
I think Dumoulin was giving it a bit of a "If he's injured..." yesterday.
All this chat about Ineos bluffing...
Does it seem a bit lame that a team would deliberately 'throw' one race just to bluff their opponents? Seems a bit disrespectful towards the organisers and viewing public, although I guess the second guessing and intrigue makes for interesting discussion....
Also, if the armchair pundits can sport the 'bluff' surely other teams are going to call it also?
