Top 10 Oman Stage 3

1 Marcel KITTEL PROJECT 1T4I 03:23:00
2 André GREIPEL LOTTO-BELISOL TEAM 00:00:00
3 Nacer BOUHANNI FDJ-BIGMAT 00:00:00
4 Tyler FARRAR GARMIN - BARRACUDA 00:00:00
5 Peter SAGAN LIQUIGAS-CANNONDALE 00:00:00
6 Tom BOONEN OMEGA PHARMA-QUICK STEP 00:00:00
7 Andrea GUARDINI FARNESE VINI-SELLE ITALIA 00:00:00
8 Mark CAVENDISH SKY PROCYCLING 00:00:00
9 Graeme BROWN RABOBANK CYCLING TEAM 00:00:00
10 Ramunas NAVARDAUSKAS GARMIN - BARRACUDA 00:00:00

Stupid Cav messin up my PCM$ anyway great result by Kittel

Edvald Boasson Hagen takes the win in Algarve!

1. Hagen
2. Boeckmans
3. Ciolek
4. Breschel
5. Ravard (?)

Hagen takes the GC lead.

Get in ! Well done Eddy. Eddy should stand a good chance of overall here if does well tomorrow, looking forward to tomorrow. Especially Nordhaug/Froome combo

If Hagen loses less than half a minute, I'll be very very surprised.

True, but he has a strong form going and already 17s on Wiggins. It will depend tomorrow and how they feel. He might be giving it a try tomorrow since he has the leader's jersey, but Sky is extremely strong with Porte, Froome, Nordhaug and Wiggo so it all depends how they want to play it out.

Yes, we've seen how well Sky manages having more than one GC contender..

Talking of Algarve did anyone see that car pull out on the riders just after the finish Boeckmans rode onto the pavement cause it pushed him to the other side of the rode #stupid drivers!

Pretty well I'd say, unless you wanted them to somehow know that a guy who hadn't done anything by then was going to be the strongest rider in a GT?

Anything by then? He was leading the Vuelta, 2nd most of the time, and on stage 15 he drove better than Wiggins. I'm sure I could come up with a better soloution

But I guess this isn't the place.

Of course, we're all geniuses in hindsight.

Agreed. Sky made no sense in not playing all on the one card that had never shown anything remotely close to that before.

Who said all on Froome? I'm just pointing out that instead of leading the groupe, one of them could've attacked, and forced the others to do the work. Now they ended in a lose/lose situation, when it could've been win/win.

Having 2 riders on the podium in Madrid doesn't look like a loose/loose situation to me, especially when those riders were Wiggins and Froome. Had it been Schleck/Schleck, I could have agreed, but both Wiggins and Froome did great in the Vuelta, ending on the podium.

Great result for Sky, Cobo was simply stronger.

Good to see Hagen win today, though, it wasn't exactly world class sprinters he met. At least it's good to see both him and Nordhaug winning this early. Hopefully that promises a solid season from both of them.

You're right. It was a great result, my point is just it could've been 1/2 and not 2/3 if they played their cards right.

Except that for Wiggins at least, THAT would be a lose/lose situation. Wiggins climbs best on a constant tempo - he is a time triallist at heart after all. He doesnt do attacks, and doesnt always cope well with the change of pace style of racing that would have resulted. Froome attacks, others counter. Wiggins struggles to keep up. So both Sky riders end up exerting energy.

Its so easy to use hindsight and say that they should have treated Froome more as a leader than they initially did. But Froome had not shown anything close to that sort of ability on a 1 week race, let alone 3 - while Wiggins had won the Dauphine and been 4th in the Tour. It may not look right to some fans that the race leader is the rider doing the pacing on a mountain stage, but no manager would have changed their tactics - which had up to that point been successful - just because Froome unexpectedly beat Wiggins in the TT.



Uh, no. Wiggins was never going to beat Cobo, so a 1/2 was never possible. Sky's tactics ensured Wiggins got a podium, thats for sure. And if we were to take Wiggins out of the race, having Froome as sole leader, Sky would have approached the race differently, and the race would have turned out quite differently since there would no longer be a rider such as Froome setting such a strong constant pace on the early mountain stages - and whos to say that would have helped Froome beat Cobo?

Nibali setting the pace in Oman. Going to be tough for the sprinters Betting for Sagan.

I hope for him too, last kilometre is uphill, so this should be ideal for him. So win me a bet Peter!
Edit: And Velits or Rodriguez should be there too if they get rid off some sprinters...

So it looks like Cav, Kittel and many more are droped, Vandenbergh still fighting with 30 seconds lead.
Edit: Some sprinters rejoined according to twitter