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Tour de France Discussion
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| Ulrich Ulriksen |
Posted on 11-04-2021 15:51
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Fear Holloway is going to fall victim to the rouleur issue and neither help Van der Lijke nor get a decent sprint in himself. Maybe will play our differently on harder stages.
Agree this was a reasonable sprint, the game is capable of them, probably a more traditional peloton mix helps - with some strong sprint teams but not too many.
Awesome reports from Cunego as always.
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| cio93 |
Posted on 11-04-2021 16:55
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Congrats to Volvo!
Unfortunate that the game can't simulate fighting over a jersey at s.t., Ganna was nowhere near contesting.
But we've managed to avoid any mishaps, which is the important thing.
Now comes the first opportunity to gain additional time on our rivals, with a hilltop finish that should still favor MVS and likely even vdLijke, but certainly offers options for the likes of Herklotz and Spilak to compete if they position themselves well.
Getting bonus seconds tomorrow would be brilliant, but I expect to at least have Herklotz in the mix at the front to benefit from any gaps that might appear further down the field, to get closer to yellow and potentially gap a few inattentive GC riders in the process.
We didn't bring any particularly punchy riders to support him, but none of the hills should deplete the energy bars of Stüssi or Vasyliv completely if they are at the front going into them.
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| ryant |
Posted on 11-04-2021 22:04
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Bit of a meh first couple of stages from us here as I'd have hoped for better, especially in the first stage. Now with the first meaningful stage in terms of the GC I can only hope Meintjes is favoured by the AI and loses no time.
 John St Ledger in Team Bunzl-Centrica and Team U25Red Bull Driver in RFactor
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| tsmoha |
Posted on 12-04-2021 09:09
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The only interesting stage in the first week for us. Obviously no special result for Morton, but it's okay at this point. Just wanted to avoid stupid time losses and he succeeded in that point.
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| knockout |
Posted on 12-04-2021 09:16
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I'm annoyed by that unnecessary attack by Van Stayen. I cant see how he could have seen that as his best chance to get a podium result on this stage and even more annoying after seeing Skujins refusing to attack properly in the previous GT. I'd have preferred to take a secure top 5 than the small chance at a stage win on this stage to collect points for the points classification. Questionable tactics by Evonik on the day so we need to maximize scoring on the next flat stages. Hopefully the number of small bumps along the way will benefit us.
Not good to see Chiarello gapped on a hillyish stage like this. Seems like i'll have to hope for breakaway success from him
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| roturn |
Posted on 12-04-2021 09:22
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Annoying attack by Van Stayen indeed. Clearly should have waited.
Herklotz with an though expected win still as he just wins everything on those kind of stages.
Olivier did extremely well and so did Zardini as I need some stage points from those hill stages by him. First have read in your text, Olivier in third and was very happy to then see, I misread and it was Madrazo. Not ideal but still a nice 4th!
Have hoped to see some gaps to weaker hill riders but then again couple got dropped such as Quintana, Alarcon or Galta. Even riders that use to jump high due to breakaways such as Brambilla, Chiarello, Goos, Godoy, Karnulin lost a bit time. Time will tell, if those really hurts them or helps them by being the lucky break guys once again.
On the negative Valls really took a day off here and clearly could have done better, same with Ciccone. Koep once again doing one of his best seasons it seems, not point wise but result wise. |
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| SotD |
Posted on 12-04-2021 09:23
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Obviously not very smart to use our breakaway guys to stay with Vlatos, but I kinda expected it to happen, and it is what it is. We didn't exactly come with big expectations for todays stage knowing that a yellow jersey would likely hinder the efforts. Yet we tried putting a couple of riders in the early break which was nice to see... Kastrantas would have been the perfect rider fighting for an early KOM.
Atleast now I must expect that all our riders are freed up to do whatever they want. Big congrats to cio for a early Herklotz stagewin and yellow jersey. Not so much congrats to knockout for yet again being in a position where the pre-stage favorite removes his brain with 10-15km to go.
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| Croatia14 |
Posted on 12-04-2021 09:30
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To be fair I think van Stayen took his best chance there looking at the final standings, the Mur van Huy in this db is one for the climbers. Calmejane and Roglic did well, Roman and Novak not so much. Peters sadly not that smart from the break.
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| knockout |
Posted on 12-04-2021 10:01
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Croatia14 wrote:
To be fair I think van Stayen took his best chance there looking at the final standings, the Mur van Huy in this db is one for the climbers.
You might have a point if only looking at the stage win but the attack basically made it a situation where he either wins or drops out of the top 5 of the day for sure and 8th is amongst the better results possible after the attack. I'd much rather take the sprint which will often lead to a 3rd place behind Herklotz and Spilak but very rarely to a finish outside the top 5. Imo that sort of consistency is key to the fight for green.
And i dont agree with you that the results show that this one was for the climbers. We just dont have any good puncheurs in the startlist to argue that case. If you look at the preview, the "puncheur" table looks a lot more like the stage results than the "GC contender"/climbers list. Herklotz and Sicard are the top 2 puncheurs in the startlist while also Sicard & Chavez & Meintjes were listed top 7 puncheurs and all of them finished in the top 7 too. Your Calmejane also did about as well as his standing in the puncheur table would have suggested.
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| Croatia14 |
Posted on 12-04-2021 10:44
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knockout wrote:
Croatia14 wrote:
To be fair I think van Stayen took his best chance there looking at the final standings, the Mur van Huy in this db is one for the climbers.
You might have a point if only looking at the stage win but the attack basically made it a situation where he either wins or drops out of the top 5 of the day for sure and 8th is amongst the better results possible after the attack. I'd much rather take the sprint which will often lead to a 3rd place behind Herklotz and Spilak but very rarely to a finish outside the top 5. Imo that sort of consistency is key to the fight for green.
Indeed I was referring to going for the win, as he could use his superior hill/flat combination for such an attack and would stand a higher chance of staying clear that doing the hill/mo battle against Herklotz and gus like that.
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| tastasol |
Posted on 12-04-2021 12:28
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Solid start for us so far. A bit disappointing that we didn't get the KoM jersey with two of the best climbers in the break and winning two of the KoM sprints, but I guess that's life! Hope we can get it back on another stage before the mountains and squeeze out some points.
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| Ad Bot |
Posted on 07-12-2025 01:12
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| ember |
Posted on 12-04-2021 13:46
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Thank you for your extensive and detailed reports, cunego! Really enjoy the variety and how you clearly put some work into taking photos to cover the stages in an exciting way.
Have to admit this is an ugly start for Galta's GC ambitions! Hopefully we can restart already, as he has put a lot of extra pressure on himself to make breakaway success work in the final week, similar to the two previous Tour de France editions, and last year's Vuelta. If not, this will be a frustrating race, I'm afraid.
Herklotz with an early sign of domination. Getting into yellow already is huge for him, Puma and their points scoring potential. Congratulations on the win, cio! |
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| cio93 |
Posted on 12-04-2021 14:44
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Man, what a day! 
(thank you ember and SotD!)
There's obviously an elephant in the room, but I want to begin the recap with a spotlight on our two incredible youngsters Cavagna and Ganna, who surprisingly were our choice for protection duty today instead of our climbers.
I didn't expect that to be the plan and was hesitant whether it was the better choice, but it did work out perfectly, with both managing to help Herklotz right until the flamme rouge, and more importantly, with Rémi Cavagna probably achieving the best result of his career so far, getting to wear the white jersey in his home GT now!
It appeared unlikely that we could remain in the mix for that jersey after yesterday, but now Cavagna has a brilliant opportunity to wear it until at least the next hilly stage.
Even if that stage is too hard, if he were to stay sufficiently close to Gidich there, the TTT could bring the jersey back onto his shoulders for one last day again to hopefully make it at least 6 days in white, an amazing achievement for our versatile (and cheap!) allrounder.
I shouldn't have doubted Cavagna by practically leaving him out of my calculations for any sort of individual glory at this race, he had the stats to perform today and didn't hesitate to show that.
But now, let me annoy everyone even more by yet again praising the man I have spent years and millions on to prepare him for this very moment. 
After having gained experience on how to win stages like these to move into the yellow jersey in Switzerland last week, Silvio just about got the job done again, and the better of Spilak once more!
Six stages and the Vuelta win, four stages in the Giro that weren't enough to take it, and now just three days into his first Tour, he already gets his first stage and his first taste of yellow! 
Commiserations to Evonik, who certainly must've liked the initial acceleration of Van Stayen, and I thoroughly enjoyed that close battle with Spilak. I hope Generali will still be happy with that result.
I obviously would've preferred to gain 20 seconds on Madrazo instead of 12, but that was a valiant effort by the Spaniard which deserved to be rewarded as well.
The extent of the gaps behind the front group came as a surprise, but a very welcome one of course with Dennis being removed from the equation already, leaving only Spilak as a threat for yellow in the TTT.
That's assuming the second hilly stage will have a similarly narrow result as today, although of course Spilak in first and Herklotz outside of the bonus seconds would see our advantage shrink to just 5 seconds, which is very much doable for Generali on a decent TTT day.
The big battle Herklotz vs. Madrazo is still obviously the headline until we can see their climbing form.
And on that front we absolutely exceeded all expectations for the start of this race, where initially I was banking on the TTT to be the day where we force a first gap to Madrazo that we then carry through the mountains.
But now we already sport a valuable 32 second advantage, which we cannot afford to translate into a false sense of security though!
It is still absolutely crucial that we keep our focus on stages 8 and 9.
We need to produce a similar effort on the hilly stage, and everyone but Herklotz needs to preserve as much energy as possible throughout week 1 to perform on their top level in the TTT to increase the gap to ideally over a minute there.
So now, first of all, no crashes or lapses of attention in the next three days!
Let's show the world we deserve to wear the maillot jaune.
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| OlegTinkov |
Posted on 12-04-2021 16:22
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Congrats on the yellow cio, good stuff!
I really hope Samolenkov can do something the next 4 stages or otherwise our other riders start to get in the breakaways.
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| alexkr00 |
Posted on 12-04-2021 17:48
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Disappointed, but not surprised.
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| Ulrich Ulriksen |
Posted on 12-04-2021 23:27
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Hopefully being the smartest (and luckiest) is a common theme for Revard throughout his career. Great day for McCormick's young riders with McNulty taking the lead in the white jersey in the Middle East on the same day.
Congrats to Herklotz, he is going to be very hard to beat.
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| Bikex |
Posted on 13-04-2021 00:27
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Ulrich Ulriksen wrote:
Hopefully being the smartest (and luckiest) is a common theme for Revard throughout his career. Great day for McCormick's young riders with McNulty taking the lead in the white jersey in the Middle East on the same day.
Congrats to Herklotz, he is going to be very hard to beat.
Indeed great to see Revard active and successful on the biggest stage. Our sponsors are very happy about the loan deal at the moment!
The rest of the team is not doing so well so far. Gidich really should've finished with the front group here and take white and Smith lost a big chunk of time already. Hope that means he'll go into breaks like in the Vuelta!
Thanks for the great preview and reports so far, Cunego! |
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| redordead |
Posted on 13-04-2021 09:15
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We did it!! Tour de France stage win!!!
Awesome sprint from Saber 
Ironic that this will likely be his only victory of the season
Our only goal here apart from xp gains was to enhance Saber's palmares. Job done, we can chill for the rest of the race now 
"I am a cyclist, I may not be the best, but that is what I strive to be. I may never get there, but I will never quit trying." - Tadej Pogačar
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| quadsas |
Posted on 13-04-2021 09:18
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redordead wrote:
We did it!! Tour de France stage win!!!
Awesome sprint from Saber
Ironic that this will likely be his only victory of the season
Our only goal here apart from xp gains was to enhance Saber's palmares. Job done, we can chill for the rest of the race now
I can will things into existence
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| knockout |
Posted on 13-04-2021 09:30
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Ouch. Knew this wasnt going too well when Dzamastagic was in the wind with 2.5km to go. Even he has limited energy so the fading was obvious from that point on. At that point MVS should have refused a sprint until someone else starts instead of just going when Dzama is tired. But that was never gonna happen
I guess i have to focus on the positives that somehow we have still gained some points for green on Ahlstrand. Catching back up to Saber might be easier 
Congrats redordead!
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