TdF Stage 5: Pau – Lauruns

Exactly, as they say, the night is still young.

It is quite amusing though. Pogacer has been out snaffling bonus seconds everywhere he could – the media asked Vingegaard about it early on and he just shrugged and said “the Tour won’t be won by 4 seconds”.

The media were trying to make it out as a big psychological blow to Vingegaard and a sort of “look at Pogacer grabbing all the bonus seconds so effortlessly!” and now Vingegaard has just put a minute into him without batting an eyelid.

Psychological indeed. 😂

I’m enjoying this “reverse” Tour with these mountain stages from the off, bar the dull start to yesterday, i liked the Basque opener too, will be good next year when they get rid of the Paris parade and contest all 21 stages for GC i think too.

That Paris parade might be stage win 35……

Craziest tour ever? Have we ever seen GC shake ups so early?

IMO that’s basically game over. Pog ain’t pulling that back, especially as Vingo clearly has more to give too.

Vingo may well have more to give but Hindley looked fresh as a daisy after that epic ride – though to be fair he might have been on adrenaline being it was his first tour stage win.

Whatever it does look like Poggo isn’t as strong this year as in previous tours – but as many have pointed out, tis only stage 5……

Whatever it does look like Poggo isn’t as strong this year as in previous tours – but as many have pointed out, tis only stage 5……

His partner crashed out of the Giro Donne today with concussion. Don’t know if he was advised of that during the stage but it’s possible his mind might be elsewhere at the moment.

Possible but Ving smoked everyone by the look of it.

https://www.cyclingweekly.com/racing/it-was-an-accident-inside-jai-hindleys-tour-de-france-yellow-jersey-coup

What a brilliant stage to watch, when Vinge was asking them to work with him and nobody bit. But why would they?

Some great tactics today and I NEARLY even got out on the roadie this evening 😂 , maybe tomorrow!

Love Pog’s style on the bike though, his standing sprints look so good, one of these days he’ll snap a bar from side thrusts-maybe!

Going to join in with those writing Pog off, this stage suited him more than others to come and he shed a lot of time on very little road. Vingegaard has looked in imperious form recently. Maybe Hindley can put up a fight.

Bit annoying that the GCN extended highlights are under half an hour, most of the giro stages they had nearly an hour. Can’t normally catch the ITV ones due to kids bedtime and the on demand from itvx doesn’t usually appear for ages.

Jumbo too busy marking pog and ignoring a GC winner in a breakaway. That’s a strategic mistake. Bora had a strong team and managed to mop up the bonus points too. Should make for a fine Bora vs Jumbo race tomorrow, with UAE looking out of contention without the firepower to pull back Ving today.

It’s tricky to call, in the past riders would aim to ride into form in the first week of predominantly flat stages and then be peak for the second half of the tour where the real work would be done. With these mtn stages coming so early maybe some have already peaked and the challenge comes later on whether they can maintain that form and not start going down the other side.

And we’re not just talking about the superhuman team leaders. The domestiques that will be needed later on to support – whether closing down attacks or setting pace for the leader – it’s also when they are timing to hit peak form. It’s very difficult to stay at peak for 3 weeks, and there’s still some big days to come.

I think his wrist is probably very painful now after 5 4 days of hard racing, not once when Jonas attacked did Pog get out the saddle.

Can’t normally catch the ITV ones due to kids bedtime

Does your TV / PVR not record? We have the live race and the highlights BOTH on series record so we can watch whichever seems best. Having seen the some of the live coverage yesterday, we watched the whole race live (on delay of course), but the snoozefest on Tuesday was definitely a “highlights only” day

I watch on the ITVX  app on the slow-but-smart TV. They are very good at uploading the highlights shortly after broadcast. Have to scroll down as they aren’t sorted in reverse order though. And the day’s broadcast is also available.