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Tour de France - Discussion
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| alexkr00 |
Posted on 29-03-2024 20:23
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World Champion
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Very lucky that some of these hilly stages played out the way they did, otherwis this Tour would have been a disaster. Nice to see Grosu taking his second stage win.
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| Fabianski |
Posted on 29-03-2024 21:20
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Weird to see the puncheurs not even trying on this one... Was expecting this to be an easy win for Yates with no-one insisting during the entire climb, but well done to Grosu! Will probably still be impossible to take green, with the Champs Elysées being the only realistic chance left, but a win is a win.
Now looking forward to the next 3 stages, with PHL the favourite on Alpe d'Huez and in Annecy, but Phinney probably having a (sprint) advantage in Le Grand Bornand...
With the TT experience so far this year, I'd expect PHL to lose between 1'00" and 1'15" on stage 20, so probably not that much missing - but still, he needs some gaps and/or bonus seconds!
Thanks for the great reports so far, and congrats to all who did well!
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| tastasol |
Posted on 30-03-2024 14:54
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Good effort from the guys in the break again. No success this time, but always good to the guys try. Nice win for Grosu, congrats!
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| DubbelDekker |
Posted on 30-03-2024 17:18
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Very cool to see Warchol in the KoM fight! He's also doing quite well in GC.
Love how Senni is hanging on in top 20.
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| baseballlover312 |
Posted on 30-03-2024 18:15
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Kamna is not the guy that should be attacking on this sort of stage, in comparison to Gregaard. Frustrating to lose 10 GC spots with him pointlessly just like that. It was very obvious that he's not strong enough to win on this tough a stage, and he has a TT advantage, so why is he the one wasting energy and getting himself dropped when we have a pure climber who's best for these stages and will lose tons of time in the final TT anyway?
Quintana at least looked a little better today and picks up a couple of spots, but ultimately a top 10 is out of reach so the gains are marginal.
RIP Exxon Duke, David Veilleux, Double Feature, and Monster Energy |
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| Croatia14 |
Posted on 30-03-2024 18:44
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Great win for PHL, and awesome performance by Pogi
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| ryant |
Posted on 30-03-2024 18:56
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Small Tour Specialist
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Interesting last few stages, Yates would have hoped for more than just an 8th and 3rd place on stages 15 and 16, losing out to the break especially hurt as they were within grasp and then the peloton just let them go. All in all we have a decent gap of around 50 pts to PHL and Phinney - it may be enough to hold them off with still 3 GC stages left but who knows, we need a breakaway win to be sure I'd imagine to be truly safe.
Carthy on the other hand did as well as I'd hope for, showed good attacking intent but maybe paid for it in the end losing 1'30'' to riders like Pogacar and Sivakov. We're not in any danger off finishing any higher than 7th overall with the 50km TT so maybe joining the break tomorrow would be good for us, after seeing Penasa join the break today...
PHL as expected just too strong and good to see Grosu grab 2 stages now, glad that sending the top sprinter to the race hasn't completely backfired at all in the end - although I'm sure you would have hoped for more consistency alex. The sprinting AI is just that bad sadly only slightly matched by prologue/short TTs although that has largely been rectified.
 John St Ledger in Team Bunzl-Centrica and Team U25Red Bull Driver in RFactor
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| Marcovdw |
Posted on 30-03-2024 20:11
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Another day of getting a weak rider into the breakaway and Cattaneo losing more time...
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| Luis Leon Sanchez |
Posted on 30-03-2024 21:04
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I haven't been commenting much since the bitter disappointment of Jakobsen in the sprints early on in the race. It's been good to see the likes of Fernandez active in the breakaway but we've been really lacking scoring potential here. Could be costly in terms of PT survival.
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| knockout |
Posted on 30-03-2024 21:29
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Another strong stage for us. Lecuisinier continues to be the strongest in the big mountains and keeps gaining a few seconds. Getting another stage win is of course also very much appreciated.
Fabianski wrote:
Weird to see the puncheurs not even trying on this one... Was expecting this to be an easy win for Yates with no-one insisting during the entire climb, but well done to Grosu! Will probably still be impossible to take green, with the Champs Elysées being the only realistic chance left, but a win is a win.
Now looking forward to the next 3 stages, with PHL the favourite on Alpe d'Huez and in Annecy, but Phinney probably having a (sprint) advantage in Le Grand Bornand...
With the TT experience so far this year, I'd expect PHL to lose between 1'00" and 1'15" on stage 20, so probably not that much missing - but still, he needs some gaps and/or bonus seconds!
Thanks for the great reports so far, and congrats to all who did well!
Very interesting to read your opinion on that. Based on the loss per km on the previous tt, the expected loss should be (at least) slightly over a minute. Then I'd say the losses on a flat tt (like stage 20) should be higher than the losses on a hilly one (stage 12) so I'd expect it to be more likely to be in the 1:15 to 1:35 region. Then I'd say Lecuisinier had a better day than e.g. Bernal in the first one so accounting for the chance of a bad day, everything below two minutes would extremely scare me. So I'd really like to see another gain like today, otherwise i fear the loss in a nailbiter finish. Not too many opportunities to gain that either.
A Big Thank You To All MG Reporters! |
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| Ad Bot |
Posted on 17-03-2025 23:02
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| Ulrich Ulriksen |
Posted on 30-03-2024 21:38
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Well barring a breakaway escapade that is probably the end of the your rider comp, not going to gain back 2 minutes. McNulty maybe paying for his relatively weak secondaries. Think it will be a defensive battle not to lose a lot more places now. But 10th might get him into a break.
Thanks for the reports. Congrats to PHL on a great win that begins to put a real stranglehold on the GC.
Man Game: McCormick Pro Cycling |
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| redordead |
Posted on 31-03-2024 08:12
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Much better from Pogi on this stage, but 4th again. Destined not to get bonus seconds I guess 
I wasn't too keen on Habtemichael going into the breakaway since he was doing a nice job riding tempo for a solid GC. Then again if the likes of Penasa and Rodrigues go into the early break then maybe the AI is 'smart' enough that he doesn't do any pacing there, because why would he help Pogacar's GC opponents?
If that is the case and he got a relatively free ride then that's pretty good, he certainly finished in a good spot. We managed to extended our lead in U25 and teams.
"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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| Marcovdw |
Posted on 31-03-2024 20:13
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Cattaneo dropped again and we don't even try to get into the breakaway anymore. This race really has gone downhill since the start...
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| SotD |
Posted on 31-03-2024 20:23
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Well, atleast we tried with our best options. Decent GC spots for now, but with a long ITT and a lot of energy spent today I suspect that both will drop to the lower end of the top 20 - or worse.
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| whitejersey |
Posted on 31-03-2024 21:25
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Big stage for PHL putting that ever so important distance between him and Phinney before tomorrow, going to be a super important TT!
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| jph27 |
Posted on 31-03-2024 22:19
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Barring disaster tomorrow, Barguil should hopefully now have enough of a gap to hold onto a top 5 after the TT. Big question now is whether he can gain another 30 seconds or so to put Sivakov under pressure for 4th, though would think that is unlikely at this stage.
Nice to see Prado in the break and into the GC top 20. And of course the extra stage points make this an even better performance - think Barguil would now be 2nd without the TT, which is an incredible effort! |
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| baseballlover312 |
Posted on 01-04-2024 04:05
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Good effort by Quintana. It wasn't to be. The Giro ending truly just looks like an aberration at this point. Unfortunately that's the race where we had a podium contender in the final days, and this is the one where we have an outsider in position to attack. Just some shit luck.
Gregaard was great to move himself back into the top 20, and not bad from Kamna either.
RIP Exxon Duke, David Veilleux, Double Feature, and Monster Energy |
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| redordead |
Posted on 01-04-2024 07:15
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Not a good stage for us, but I guess it could've gone a lot worse. One more big mountain stage, hopefully we finish strongly.
"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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| knockout |
Posted on 01-04-2024 11:04
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Super important stage win for Lecuisinier. If we can avoid time losses on the next stage, we are looking good for yellow...
A Big Thank You To All MG Reporters! |
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| knockout |
Posted on 01-04-2024 20:35
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Not happy to see the break come through but I cant be too greedy. Could mean that Lecuisinier drops 1-2 spots in the points classifications in the final two days but the focus was of course always elsewhere and we (likely) dont get a shikai scenario so I'll be fine...
knockout wrote:
Super important stage win for Lecuisinier. If we can avoid time losses on the next stage, we are looking good for yellow...
No time losses on the final mountain day. I wanted a time gap of about two minutes before the TT, i got it so I'll take it. The long TT still scares me a bit but hopefully, this lead should be enough.
A Big Thank You To All MG Reporters! |
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