.... and so brings the curtain down on a highly enjoyable Tour de France - certainly an enjoyable one to race. Thanks for picking some really cool teams
Big moments for me:
1) Coppel beats Zabriskie in opener: It was Auber's plan 'you do not need a GC rider' policy instead Coppel (swapped for Phinney in the transfer season) took the yellow jersey in the opener and despite bonuses and wind held it pretty much to the Alps.
2) Phinney crashes on Arenburg stage: Phinney went down and bought a couple of other riders down with him. His hopes of a podium (hell he could have won it) went and Henao and Gomez Marchante's hopes of a top ten went too. The latter two went on attacks in the Alps and the Pyrenees that arguably dragged two other riders into prominence.
3) Uran siezes yellow in the Alps: He attacked at the bottom of the Rousses climb and then looked like a champ through the Alps until Spilak stole a march on the hilly stage into Gap.
4) Spilak siezes yellow in Mende: I think Uran would have lost the jersey in the Pyrenees anyway, but it may have been Dekker who took it from him there.
5) Spilak holds on just on Ax 3 Domaines: If Dekker has taken the jersey would what happened on Port de Bales have happened?
6) Phinney blasts everyone in the TT: It shows it just there if tours had TTs like they used to, Phinney would do an Indurain every time unfortnately for him TTs are not in favour at the moment.
7) Bennati wins four stages: Gazzeta somehow did worse than the Control team (and boy did I take close control when there was 3 left on the last Tormalet stage) on the team standings but still had a great race never really any doubt Bennati was going to win the points jersey from about stage 4. Funnily that was Warner Brothers season goal too!
Finally a what if... if Cunego had have been here with his Giro team would he have won? Pretty sure Valverde would not have been close but the climbing/punchaer monster? The closest comparison to him here is Andy Schleck who is slightly behind Cunego as a climber but slightly better as a TTer. I suppose the thing about Cunego ( Valverde is similar) is that they can win out of a small group sprint like the Mende or Tormalet stages. So he would win time on bonuses as well.
Anyway fun race, congrats to Warner Brothers for backing Simon Spilak this unlike Boonan worked out well for them.
Edited by Smowz on 23-01-2011 12:28
I don't think anyone can match Cunego, for me he would dominate the mountains, he even won the last time trial in the Giro, so I doubt he would loose much time there.
Anyway, excellent reporting. You kept it interesting all the way through, while keeping up the perfect pace. Thanks
[url=www.pcmdaily.com/forum/viewthread.php?thread_id=33182]Team Santander Media Thread[/url]
Sucks for Iglinski, he so deserved a Top 20. And as to the Cunego/Sella/Intxausti point made in race - the race would have been no better with Intxausti there. Either he would have performed similarly to the role Iglinski had, or he would have been made leader over Uran, and got a low end Top 10 placement with Uran being wasted.
Last year, in a very tight contest, no rider scored more than 1000 points from the Tour de France, whereas Cunego took 1400+ for the Giro, and Schleck 1500+ for the Vuelta. This year its different. Cunego only took 1227 from the Giro, while Valverde got 1189 from the Vuelta. And in the Tour?
Well while watching it may not have seemed to be a dominant performance by Spilak, but he was always there, very consistent - as highlighted by 2nd overall in the points competition. And that added to of course the prize for overall victory, means that he has saved Warner Brothers season with a whopping 1403 points.
Thomas Dekker was not quite so lucky points wise. While his manager may view this race as an improvement on 4th overall last year, that is not quite the case. Once again Dekker is the 2nd best scorer from the race, but this years tally of 838 is less than the 896 achieved last year.
And next to 5th in GC. Scoring better than both Pluchkin and Popovych, its the King of the Alps Rigoberto Uran. 1 stage win, almost 2, and a stint in not only the Yellow jersey, but Polkadot and White aswell, all helps to heavily reward the Colombian here, with 769. Popovych in 3rd was only the 6th top scorer with 579, behind Pluchkin on 627.
Sitting pretty as the 4th best scorer is multi-stage winner and the Points jersey winner Danniele Bennati. In the GC race, La Gazzetta were hopelessly bad - nobody inside the Top 100 - and yet they will come away from the race as one of the better scoring teams. It is 747 for Bennati, with Van Stayen next on 328, Boonen on 297, and Vanderbiest on 210.
Also worth mentioning, are Taylor Phinney, with his Stage 20 TT lifting up to over 500 points - passing Andy Schleck in the process for 404. The KoM jersey can only lift 8th overall Contador to 397 points - just ahead of our first race leader, Coppel on 380.
Here's the list of pointscorers from the race then, the left hand column indicating final GC position.
This of course has a significant effect on the Individual standings, none more so than at the top - Simon Spilak takes over the lead to take a 56 point advantage over Trofimov. Trofimov remains in the driving seat though, as we won't see Spilak again until the Season Finale.
Phinney moves up to 3rd, with Uran, Bennati, Gesink and Pluchkin all also into the Top 10. Andy Schleck goes 16th, Boonen 17th, Dekker 20th and Coppel 23rd. Plus various other TDF riders are into the Top 50.
Onto the teams, and Warner Brothers are far and away the happiest team coming away from the race. Boonen may have dissapointed, but still added to Spliak's total to comfortably outscore the rest. Philips and Vesuvio both manage to pass the 1000 point mark, but theres plenty of other high scoring teams aswell with almost 14,000 points scored in total from the race.
Sony Ericsson may have been right at the bottom end of TDF pointscorers, but still hold a 1000 point lead. You would have to say, they have probably secured their ProTour victory here by merit of none of their closest challengers scoring big and winning the race.
And now to the really interesting part of the rankings. 2nd place down to 12th, separated by just 700 points. From here on every race is sure to count. We still have La Gazzetta and Festina in 2nd and 3rd, but behind them saw the real movement - the only other team in the division not to have changed position is Lafarge at the bottom.
Wikipedia discover why doing well in a GT is actually quite useful, and they are up 3 places to 4th - leaving Pearl Adidas relieved to only lose 1 spot after Fothen fell apart in his bid to retain last year's triumph. Also up 3 are Jack Wolfskin into 6th - with Van Stayen and Gesink to count for points scoring performances on all terrains.
Going up 3 places is all well and good, but Vesuvio do better, gaining 5 positions to move into 7th, having broken the 1000 point barrier in a race for the first time. Auber are down 2, and Domina down 1 next, before we reach Warner Brothers. From 18th, and relegation worries, to 10th and over 1000 points clear of the relegation zone - a truly brilliant race for them. And it means B&O drop out of the Top 10 despite being the 4th best scoring team.
When some teams go up a lot, others most go down. Lipton Ice Tea - who some tipped to win this division - fall a whopping 7 places to 12th. They arent likely to be concerned about relegation though, but all other teams are far from out of the woods. Cafe de Colombia are 400 points behind Lipton, and have lost 2 places here. Like Spilak, Valverde isnt around again until Lombardia - so it is worrying times now for the Colombian team maybe.
Next are Philips, who perhaps expected to be more than 400 points into safety by now. Dekker does still have two more stage races though, so with the Dutchman having scored well in France, things are looking good survival wise. Can the same be said of Carmeuse? Popovych has more work to come, if they are to be saved. As it is, they are 2 points above Nespresso - who are the last of the teams outside of the relegation zone.
For Energie-Diesel, it's time for Pozzovivvo to return to the fray and help them. He will race both Asturias and Deutschland, while LL Sanchez will hope to score in the hills - as well as risking 8 race days on TONE. Starbucks though have more of a problem, and now back in the relegation zone, the game could be up. Top scorer Amador has been given a few one day classics, with Kiserlovski only to fight for them in the remaining mountainous stage races. Theyll be needing a lot of luck.
Too bad for Iglinskiy here... Luckily no captains went down on the last stage... So to sum it up:
Alberto Contador 8th GC and winner of the mountains jersey. That is pretty alright. Had hoped for 6th or 7th, but can't complain.
Both Madrazo and Ardila crashed early on, that was quite a pity as they were both very likely to end up somewhere around 20th place. Ardila might even had the quality to break into it...
No real succes in the stages, the best was Ardila in 3rd, Contador in 4th and a couple of 5th for Lavoine...
Looking forward for the PT rankings. I assume I will be around 3rd or 4th after this race due to the lack of results for Pearl, Domina and Lipton... For me it was quite unlucky that Phinney dominated the final TT otherwise Contador would have gotten 7th and also gotten a bigger lead on them. I assume they are my closest competitor for 3rd atm... Auber didn't have a super race, but Coppel made it decent. La Gazzetta had quite a good race outscoring my team for sure. So they are probably safe in 2nd...
Vesuvio looked like a team that would close the gap but in the last half of the race they lost contact I think. I don't think they will more than break into the top 10 (Which seems extremely close though)... A team I expect to jump up is Jack Wolfskin... 3 stagewins or so and a top 10 GC is better than most teams.
6th is amazing, but I don't think we will score big in any of the remaining races so staying in the top 10 till the end of the season could prove to be quite a tough challenge.
Ohh it's close... My team have to rely entirely on Castaño in the last 2 "Tours", and then Diego Ulissi and Sammy Sánchez needs to outperform Schleck, Hagen, Sinkewitz, Gesink, Cunego, Bakelants and van Garderen in the hilly races... Damn it will be a monster to achieve 3rd here!
I assume I have the upper hand on Lipton, Auber, Domina, Jack Wolfskin and Pearl... But I'm very frightened of Wikipedia, Vesuvio, B&O and La Gazzetta with these races to go...
Every race will be history in the making, while everything is so damn close...
alexkr00 wrote:
Also, Gesink wasted 21 race days to score only 181 points.
If next year I won't have the money to increase his mountain stats at least by 1, he's out of the Tour de France equation.
On a normal year he would have been a top 5 candidate. This year had an exceptionel frequence of top riders... Even Contador with 83 in mountains struggled to do better than Gesink, so it's not only the mountainstat... Contador is probably leaving us next season unless he will have a fairly low wage... 17th or so in the Vuelta and 8th in the Tour seems pointless... Castaño and Ardila have done better...
Youve definately had some bad luck with Contador, you spent 3 million to boost him 2 mountain stats, and he rewards you by scoring only 13 more ranking points than he did last season. I imagine he will want a slightly higher wage, given that his current wage was generated from him having 81 MO, and now he has 83 - but it won't be as high as it could of been had he delivered a very strong GT result.
alexkr00 wrote:
Also, Gesink wasted 21 race days to score only 181 points.
If next year I won't have the money to increase his mountain stats at least by 1, he's out of the Tour de France equation.
On a normal year he would have been a top 5 candidate. This year had an exceptionel frequence of top riders... Even Contador with 83 in mountains struggled to do better than Gesink, so it's not only the mountainstat... Contador is probably leaving us next season unless he will have a fairly low wage... 17th or so in the Vuelta and 8th in the Tour seems pointless... Castaño and Ardila have done better...
Yes, Contador struggled too but Gesink lost tons of time in the mountains. Also, Contador is better in the mountains than the Dutch man Gesink is superior in hills, time - trial, stamina and recovery so I'm not sure if Contador is the best rider to compare Gesink with.
For example with +2 mountain, Gesink would be at least at the same level with Spilak, who looked really strong in this TDF.
Damn, I wish I'd have won the Team Classification. Missed out on that one in the very last stages, it seems
Anyway, I still think that my team is ready for a strong final part of the season. My team goals are coming up (Tour was the first calendar-wise), so hopefully, there'll be no problems staying clear of relegation.
