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Giro d'Italia Discussion
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| baseballlover312 |
Posted on 24-12-2024 13:31
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Tour de France Champion
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You gotta be kidding me. Carthy worked for Aranburu all day and loses a minute? Absolutely unreal. Ai destroys our GT on day one.
RIP Exxon Duke, David Veilleux, Double Feature, and Monster Energy |
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| Fabianski |
Posted on 24-12-2024 13:37
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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.
Thanks for the report.
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| baseballlover312 |
Posted on 24-12-2024 13:53
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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 |
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| DubbelDekker |
Posted on 24-12-2024 19:04
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Shame Lutsenko got cooked, but nice job by Carboni
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| ember |
Posted on 24-12-2024 20:01
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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. |
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| jandal7 |
Posted on 25-12-2024 10:03
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Well, I said maybe Fouche should lose time, so we made 60MO Yacine Hamza our leader on the stage. Elite tanking strategy from the boys here
24/02/21 - kandesbunzler said “I don't drink famous people."
15/08/22 - SotD said "Your [jandal's] humour is overrated"
11/06/24 - knockout said "Winning is fine I guess. Truth be told this felt completely unimportant."
[ICL] Santos-Euskadi | [PT]  Xero Racing
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2x  x2
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| knockout |
Posted on 25-12-2024 10:25
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More time losses for both Foss and Plapp. Not a ton but it adds up quickly. So another stage that wasnt good for us.
Nice to see a proper puncheur win on a stage like this!
A Big Thank You To All MG Reporters! |
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| Fabianski |
Posted on 25-12-2024 12:12
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We're really not playing it well here. Errazkin at least getting our first point of the race, but I expected way more than 10th place on this stage. Szarka in 12th on the other hand is pretty surprising, hopefully he'll have the same great legs in the actual sprint stages.
But Stüssi not being attentive at all isn't great, he not only missed out on the front group (understandably due to low Hi), but was even at the very end of group 2. Hopefully he'll move up some positions after the TTT and will then be considered a real GC contender, otherwise this could be a very bad race for us.
Congrats to Gazelle, really strong start for you - not so surprising from Lutsenko, but I definitely didn't see Carboni's podium yesterday coming. Well done!
Thanks for the report.
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| tastasol |
Posted on 25-12-2024 13:11
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Solid stuff by Gaudu. Hopefully a sign of more to come from that side!
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| baseballlover312 |
Posted on 25-12-2024 13:24
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Terrific effort by Aranburu to once again distance our GC leader and ending up with nothing.
Guess it's good that he's at least active since Carthy clearly doesn't care about GC. Gotta score something.
RIP Exxon Duke, David Veilleux, Double Feature, and Monster Energy |
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| Ad Bot |
Posted on 26-12-2024 05:57
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| baseballlover312 |
Posted on 25-12-2024 15:47
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Really interesting to see what the AI does now for my team. If Carthy hadn't lost over a minute for no reason on stage 1, he'd be near or ahead of most contenders, but instead he's behind the ball by a lot. But Aranburu loses 30+ seconds on the rest of the team here, so he's clearly not being seen as a GC guy either. So, I guess PCM just had my team decide not to try with anyone? I don't really know where we go from here. I guess our best chance at this point is for Carthy to remain in the 8-10 spots on GC and end up winning by attacking in the last week, like last Giro.
Thanks for the reports today!
RIP Exxon Duke, David Veilleux, Double Feature, and Monster Energy |
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| redordead |
Posted on 25-12-2024 18:04
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I really wanted that 2nd place in the TTT, so to miss out by just 1 sec is not nice. But I should be used to placing behind Jura by now
Solid start from TGH otherwise.
"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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| ember |
Posted on 25-12-2024 18:33
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Great to see Laporte grab the jersey, we take it as a cool PR thing 
For AHJ, that stage 2 was slightly better, at least time loss wise, but no sign of turning the «no GC treatment by the AI» theme from stage 1.
Herklotz in pink after the TTT makes it look likely to see him in pink for the whole Giro, which I am sure cio hopes for/planes for when picking the Giro. Cool to see Lutsenko also grab a stage, as a pure puncheur taking the gamble to show up for a GT. |
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| alexkr00 |
Posted on 25-12-2024 20:27
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Indeed we have two leaders here.
If the GC doesn't work out for Formolo, I hope he will go last year's Vuelta route and chase the KoM.
He's a good bet for stage placings as well as shown in the first two stages. Was hoping for a podium in the first stage as well, but good that at least he was able to do this in the second one. We were always going to have a hard time in the TTT so glad that's out of the way even though it puts Formolo quite far back in the GC.
It will be interesting to see how the sprint play out as Van Poppel hasn't looked great so far this year.
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| Fabianski |
Posted on 25-12-2024 20:34
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Great job by the team! According to the preview numbers, we could definitely hope for a stage podium in the TTT, but to really get it - and to even make it 2nd instead of the "expected" 3rd place, is very nice  Stüssi has even moved up to 3rd in GC and hopefully should definitely be considered a GC contender from now on - which hopefully comes with better positioning in the hilly stages.
But now, up to Szarka to take over, if he finishes as the 2nd best sprinter in any flat stage again (as he did in S2 behind Kulikovskiy), I'll be more than happy.
Congrats to Oxxo, job perfectly executed (although you might have been hoping for some bigger gaps - would've been great to see Eastman in Pink, just to make it a slightly less boring race for the GC win).
@red sorry for stealing 2nd place, but Tao will still easily finish ahead of Stüssi in the end - that second won't really matter for the GC
Thanks for the report again.
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