Hum, guess I totally underestimated the difficulty of stage 1. I really thought it'd be a good opportunity for Errazkin, given his decent climbing skills, but never expected it to be a full GC stage already. But with Xuban being 2nd best among the pure puncheurs, there's hope for some later stages, maybe with a late or mid-range attack.
Stüssi's positioning in the front group clearly wasn't ideal, but I hope he just had bad legs - and he doesn't like hills that much after all. So avoiding gaps is the only thing he has to do on the uphills, and he did that. Except for the monster up front, but yeah, maybe Herklotz will be beatable in 5 years or so. Congrats to cio anyway, definitely the ideal start, and I sure hope we'll get some variety in the stage winners list
Really weird strategy by Carlsberg, AI probably getting confused by the presence of both Aranburu and Carthy - the latter getting blue, but basically throwing away his GC chances already... Sucks to see.
Fabianski wrote:
Really weird strategy by Carlsberg, AI probably getting confused by the presence of both Aranburu and Carthy - the latter getting blue, but basically throwing away his GC chances already... Sucks to see.
I guess so, but bizarre when I've sent Aranburu to GC races including GT's for the last 3 years and never had this problem. PCM's always doing something new to screw with me it seems.
Edited by baseballlover312 on 24-12-2024 14:01
RIP Exxon Duke, David Veilleux, Double Feature, and Monster Energy
Brilliant report! Thank you for covering the action very well, kb!
Great to have Laporte in the breakaway and even grab some KoM points. Fingers crossed he can do it again and claim more points and maybe even the jersey for a couple of days, as he is really close. For our negative, AHJ loosing almost four minutes is very worrying, as I fear it will give him no GC rider treatment, and thus he will struggle for a GC ride and also not fight for white. But we shall see, PCM tends to be full of surprises
Congratulations, cio! Really the perfect start for Herklotz, and also seeing the pure puncheurs get dropped with a significant gap, all +35 or more, should see him go pink all the way. Though, as was said pre race, his support cast for mountains and difficult stages doesn’t look that great this time around, which makes me hopeful for breakaways in the third week.
