TdF Stage 17: Mont Blanc -> Courchevel

On another note if Wout wants to maintain his superhero status he might be well advised to get out of that team.

Maybe there is no doping and he knows it or maybe he’s doping too? I mean, a big lad like him, a proper roleur setting the pace in the mountains day after day, that can’t be right either can it?

Speculation is stupid.

Great stage win for Felix Gall, but you know deep down AG2R will be thinking “still not French though”

Three weeks riding has really taken its toll on Pog.  As for Vingo…….I think it is for his own good that he actually tied up bit at the end.

Think Vingegaard could be the most unpopular winner of a bike race since Vinokourov won the London Olypmic road race 😀.

How so? He’s trained for one race all year and his sacrifice has (apparently, we’ll see on Sunday) paid off. In interviews he seems like a pleasant bloke, so I’m not sure where the animosity is coming from.

Or a clear case of having a couple of bad days. That happens, it doesn’t mean the other guy is cheating. Especially not when one considers the long season and injury disrupted preparation Pogacar had.

Yeah, its not like hes just wiped the floor with the other 150 or so either. Puts is a stellar performance AFTER a stellar performance, whilst racing FullGas from the start to give us the fastest Tour to date 😀

Nah, hes not cheating, no suree Lance Vingegaard 😉

a proper roleur setting the pace in the mountains day after day, that can’t be right either can it?

Possibly not, but knowing his history and abilities I think Wout’s had quite an underwhelming tour this year. Even as a domestique he’s not been at last year’s level. I think the key thing here is the relative performance of Vingegaard and everyone else. Is it likely that this year all the other top contenders are so far behind him when previously they weren’t?

Vin came in nearly two minutes after the stage winner, yet people are acting like he blitzed everybody.

Today was a terrible day for Pog and a good – though not exceptional – day for Vin.

yet people are acting like he blitzed everybody.

He didn’t need to blitz everybody today to raise suspicions, he did that yesterday. Today just underlined them.

Think it was the way he set off when pog popped. He was going at a right rate up that hill, he slowed down towards the end though so maybe it isn’t all that obvious.

Still, great result for S Yates

And A Yates looking solid for 3rd which is nice as I have an e/w on him for GC at 50:1

I thought Vingegaard was going to get close to catching Gall when Pogacar dropped. He didn’t really have to ride cautiously and worry about being exploding and losing time as he was so far ahead of the broken Pog and everyone else. Kuss and then Kelderman were  there to pace for him and yet he only reduced the gap to Gall by about a minute, it’s pretty normal for GC guys to rip much bigger chunks of time out of the break on the final climb – although not sure how much work Gall had done previously in such a large break and with 2 team mates in there.

“I’m not sure where the animosity is coming from”  – some of it perhaps from the fact that he’s not Pogacar who is just much more charismatic and easier to love, and also that TJV are becoming the dominant team. Agree that Vingegaard does seem like a nice fellow.

If Roglic wins the Vuelta then TJV will have the clean sweep of grand tours. Pogacar needs to go and do super-dom duties for Ayuso by denying Roglic maximum bonuses on all the uphill finishes!

Or a clear case of having a couple of bad days

Did Pogacar have a bad day in the TT? If you took Jonas out of the equation it would have been hailed as incredible. Unbeatable. Maybe he did have a bad day, but everybody else must have been having a worse one. Putting over a minute into everybody else isn’t ordinarily a bad day by anybody’s standards.

Listening to The Move this morning, and they reckoned that the last time there was a split as large as the one Jonas produced, you’d need to go back to Jacques Anquetil in 1961. And Jonas did that against somebody who had already completely smashed the rest of the field.

It’s quite extraordinary.

^^Yup,and poor Carlos trapped in a Yates sanwich 😉
Will be good to see what happens with that on the Belfort stage. 🙂

Puts is a stellar performance AFTER a stellar performance, whilst racing FullGas from the start

If that was what had happened then maybe you’d have a point but that isn’t what happened.

For a start it wasn’t two stellar performances, it was one, today was down to Pogacar cracking. Also, Vingegaard hasn’t raced full gas, with one or two exceptions he’s been following wheels.

The competition this year is so poor it makes it seem more exceptional.

There were always only 2 contenders Pog and Vin; and Pog has been on a wing and a prayer to make it to the race after his early season injury. It’s not hugely unexpected that he could keep the pace at the start of the tour but then fade away in week 3. Vin on the other hand has had an interrupted run in on his own terms.

Other than that it’s a fairly underwhelming field which is partly shown up by the number of TJV and UAE support riders still at the top of the leaderboard.

Looking at the riders (other than Pog) and the time gaps to Vin then they’re not really unexpected at effectively the end of the Tour against their previous results/current form.

On today’s stage Gall and Vin “went” at about the same point, Vin closed about one minute on him, a relative unknown with 1 professional win to his name, it’s hardly earth shattering. His speed was in comparison to the dying embers of a breakaway, the better of the riders in it were able to hold on (and beat him) when he caught them.

@kryton57

No dummy here, was an entertaining day for sure.

The competition this year is so poor it makes it seem more exceptional

Compared to?

One wonders if the tumble Pog had early on was a factor in his performance not being up to his usual standard.

Adam Yates for 2nd on the podium would be great.

The most telling thing about these comments is you can pretty much tell who’s watched or listened to the tour as it happened and who’s skimmed the highlights.

Adam Yates for 2nd on the podium would be great.

Would UAE let him overtake Pogacar?

Compared to?

Maybe 5-10 years ago when there were genuine contenders from multiple teams that needed to be managed/marked by (usually) Sky. 2016/18 you could make genuine cases for Quintana, Uran, Bardet, Valverde, Mas, Porte, Martin, Contador and Pinot as genuine contenders going into the races on top of whoever was the Sky 1/2.

Would UAE let him overtake Pogacar?

They may not have any choice in the matter. Do you let both riders slide off the podium or send A Yates up the road to defend his current spot/improve upon it?!

Better to have a UAE rider in second, even if it’s not Pogacar, than to have no-one on the podium.

Still another hilly day in the Vosges to come… Tomorrow is flat though so hopefully a day where they can sit there and recover a bit.

Adam Yates for 2nd on the podium would be great.

Would UAE let him overtake Pogacar?

This is a great question!

this is a great question

There would be no point unless Pogacar cracked again on the last mountain stage.

They already told Yates to ignore Poj and try for the stage win today.  If he’s injured or fatigued, we may not see him tomorrow, or we’ll see him riding for Yates,

Pog is still 3 min clear of second. He’s had one bad day. No way is he supporting Yates in the coming days

already excited about next years duel between the pair of them

I don’t dislike Pog but I do dislike the way the media seem to want him to win everything just so they can get all excited about him winning everything. Hence, I was pretty pleased to watch the wheels fall off. (not literally)

Bit disappointed for Rodriguez though – obviously his performance has been a relative surprise but if he’d been full team leader from the start I reckon he’d have the final podium place sewn up.

He’s had one bad day.

Did you see yesterday?

Did you see yesterday?

the day he was 1m 13s up on the rest of the peloton (bar 1) on a 22km TT

Turns out that the moto that stalled on the climb which then held up Vingegaard was none other than Thomas Voeckler who was commentating for French TV!

He and the pilot have been barred from the race for a day.

https://www.cyclingnews.com/news/voeckler-suspended-from-tour-de-france-after-moto-stalls-in-front-of-vingegaard/

Not sure why the pillion gets fined. It’s not his fault that the driver made an error

Very strange decision

I think comparisons to Tours before have their place, but…

Everyone knew this was between just two riders WAY before the Grand Depart

Everyone knew that Pogačar came into it at a disadvantage

Everything that has come to pass could have been, and sort of was, predicted

Just because you are disappointed that it wasn’t closer, doesn’t really mean it should have been.

And if they are doping on anywhere near the scale that US Postal was, under the testing conditions currently out there, then there is some proper trout tickling going on in them thar pharmaceutical fields…

Maybe 5-10 years ago when there were genuine contenders from multiple teams that needed to be managed/marked by (usually) Sky. 2016/18 you could make genuine cases for Quintana, Uran, Bardet, Valverde, Mas, Porte, Martin, Contador and Pinot as genuine contenders going into the races on top of whoever was the Sky 1/2.

Add Roglic (in a different team) and Evenapoel with Rodriguez, Yates and Yates and things would improve but I think Vingagoago plus a Pog without a busted arm would be head and shoulders above still. Mind you it would be good to see what Evenapoel would have done on that TT, I suspect Vingagoago would have battered him too.

Not sure why the pillion gets fined. It’s not his fault that the driver made an error

Because the pillion tells the pilot where he wants to be.
Pillion says “go here”, he’s then jointly responsible for the pilot being there.

Same with those press and TV bikes that impeded Pogacar – without the photographers saying “hold it here while I get this shot!” the bikes wouldn’t have been there. Yes the pilot could/should have over-ruled but they’re trying to negotiate crowds, steep climb, hairpin bends etc, they can’t be looking in the mirrors constantly.

The most telling thing about these comments is you can pretty much tell who’s watched or listened to the tour as it happened and who’s skimmed the highlights.

Or hasn’t watched any of it and has just looked at the time gaps!

Ah come on,  the time gaps are stupid. But vingegard has been up there the entire race and also has been asking with pog the last one standing in gc several times on big stages. The tt was extraordinary and to follow it up with effectively a massive attack yesterday to try and win the stage is still astonishing.

Yeah pog cracked which at least shows he is human,  vingegard is clearly so far above everyone else he might as well be on another planet (thank you equipe).

If he isn’t doping then he truly is more than a one in a generation,  lanterne rouge power ratings etc show something extraordinary/outstanding/inhuman (pick your poison)

Poj quoting today he’s suffering from a Gastric / energy issue.  …”difficult to eat, sits in my stomach and doesn’t go to my legs…”

If he isn’t doping then he truly is more than a one in a generation,

You mean like Pogacar, the tour winner who can mix it up in the spring classics?

What amazes me most about this ‘great performance = doping’ thinking is how selective people are with it. By which I mean they focus in on one rider, Vingegaard in this case. If history has taught us one thing it’s that its never a case of just one bad apple, if one is on it loads of them are.

If you want to have Vingegaard as a doper then you really need to accept that the whole barrel is still rotten. And this is why I choose to suspend judgement, because I want to watch and enjoy cycling.