I know that Martin was soft pedalling, just wondering if he misjudged just how easy he could take it?

G and Alaphillipe are flying!

Bardet, oh dear.

Adam Yates has had a poor one really.

Did he just take nearly 10 seconds out of Thomas in the last km?!?!

**** WOW!

Now we have a race!

What a ride by JA. Amazing.

Amazing !!!!!!

Shitting buggers! 😳

It’s rare that a TT is such great viewing. Such an awesome ride

Did he just take nearly 10 seconds out of Thomas in the last km?!?!

Thomas looked quite ragged towards the end, and wasn’t that quick up the ramp where as Alaphillipe was almost overshooting the corner at the top…

Now we have a real GC race, great for the sport to see Team Sky’s mega bucks buying the top riders and top technology possibly not buying the championship.

Great performance by Alaphillipe!

Looked fresh as a daisy (comparatively) at the end too.

I can’t see him winning it but that was really bloody good. Maybe if he can live with the climbers and Quick Step can shut everything down Ineos style it’d be his!

It was scary how fresh Ala looked at the end

Was on the phone at the time but … did I see Alaphilippe pull a broadside skid after the line?

splendid

I guess his hope is he sits on Thomas, let other teams do the attacking and let Deepwater Horizon do the chasing.

Holy shit balls batman just seen the result. Team Fracking are going to need to attack him now, not sure he has the team to survive but he appears to have the legs currently!!

Hmmmmm… extraordinary performance! 🤔

https://mobile.twitter.com/LaurentVignasse/status/1152260612560424961

Check out how fast he was going with 400m to go 😳

I would love to know how much power he was putting out as he climbed that last ramp. He was absolutely smashing it.

Also..did I see sagan pull a wheelie up a 17% incline, on a tt bike, one handed, and still come home within 2 min of the winner??!

the skid at the end was class. Pierron-esque.

Don’t think I’ve ever seen someone win a TT with panache before.

He deserves to win the Tour with a performance like that.

Update on WvA, he’s been in hospital and had the wound cleaned and stitched and will be in hospital for the next few days.

(source: JVroad insta vlog)

No more details on the wound, just that he’s comfortable.

Get well soon Wout!

👍🥇

Julan A. Amazing talent.

Just have to hope alaphillipe hasn’t gone all in on the tt and won’t blow up tomorrow in the big mountains

grahamt1980
Just have to hope alaphillipe hasn’t gone all in on the tt and won’t blow up tomorrow in the big mountains

This. Can’t help but assume that Ineos were giving G the timechecks and told him not to knock himself out in the TT – just ‘sit on’ and let JA destroy his legs for the stage win so they can hit him tomorrow.

Much as I like G, can’t help but hope that JA holds on for as long as possible.

So, all of a sudden he’s taking 14 seconds out of one of the best TT riders around?

If anyone else did it, there’d be questions asked…

Juiced

Phenomenal to watch though

To be fair CFH, he’s had a few decent TTs this year and he seemed to get most of the time on that last little climb at the end – something he’s better at than Gee T is.

Hopefully.

True, igm, but I’d say that TT performance (and how fresh he looked afterwards) was atypical.

I bloody well hope he isn’t, but if a Skyneos rider had put in such a performance, there’d be questions asked and booing from the barriers.

CFH – please be wrong. Although he does kind of remind me of Pantani in a way.

JA put 18 seconds into GT on an 11k TT in April – but was GT trying?
JA’s CdD TT in June less impressive – still 7th but shipped a minute.

But if I were in yellow and thought I had half a chance (two things that won’t happen) I’d ride out of my skin. Even if I knew it was a last hurrah (a French hurrah obviously)

Juiced

Sauce?

Juiced

Phenomenal to watch though

No.1 ranked cyclist in the world by a long way, in the form of his life puts in a fabulous performance!!! Who would think its possible 🙄🙄

https://www.procyclingstats.com/rankings/me/pcs/individual

I was just waiting for the usual suspects to come up with the doping bollocks, and this thread to sink into the mire. Maybe he is, but untill some “actuall evidence” comes up why not enjoy his performances for what they are, pure brilliance.
FFS this place just stinks sometime 🙁🙁🙁🙁

The bigger story is that Thomas has put so much time into Egan Bernal. So the team will now unite around Thomas to win. Thomas is in a much stronger position than he was. He is part of a team that knows how to win stage races whilst JA has expended too much energy in the first part to be a contender in the second part.

@taxi25, I’m somewhat surprised by your reaction given the sports’ dalliance with ‘helpers’ for a number of generations… Rose tinted Oakley’s?

It is now my first thought when seeing an extraordinary individual performance, I’ll still watch and take an above average interest in the sport, but I have a healthy spoonful of reality with me when I do.

I’m ok with how he’s done in that context, it’s not like he’s come from nowhere is it? He’s been a contender for ages. I still think the big hills will find him out.
I reckon he’ll scrape today in yellow after losing a minute to Thomas and the others in GC.

He’s already shown a strong ability to put time into world class rivals on similar parcours and is the number one ranked rider in the world and a classics winner, realistically he may well have thought there’s little to conserve his energy for, unlike some of the other riders, given that he said his team aren’t strong enough for him to win the tour. So an above average tt’er to start off with, the worlds number one, a relatively short tt on a course that suits him, in yellow, with a crowd screaming for him to win on possibly his last day to really shine in yellow. If he starts battering his rivals in yellow in the high mountains I’d be more concerned.

It is now my first thought when seeing an extraordinary individual performance, I’ll still watch and take an above average interest in the sport, but I have a healthy spoonful of reality with me when I do

Was it extraordinary or just very, very good? He was 14 sec (0.66%) faster than Thomas and 36 sec (1.7%) faster than De Gendt. One thing for sure, he’s attacking each stage very hard, even harder than Yates in last year’s Giro. Look what happened there in the third week.

As for your “spoonful of reality”, some of us would call that a “spoonful of cynicism”.