Great win for Purito. Looked so easy. Great rides by Poels and Mollema as well.
Also, another very good performance by Kessiakoff. I reckon he's better than ever before at the moment. Would be great if he could maintain his great form over three weeks.
This type of finish today seemed as though it was a "classic" like finish. Steep and pretty short? Am I right or not, only got to watch the finish climb.
Guys like Dan Martin/etc/ longer mountain guys lost time. Think this stage has much of an effect on GC?
chrica04 wrote:
This type of finish today seemed as though it was a "classic" like finish. Steep and pretty short? Am I right or not, only got to watch the finish climb.
Guys like Dan Martin/etc/ longer mountain guys lost time. Think this stage has much of an effect on GC?
Dan Martin was 2nd in the Giro dell'Emilia (a race that has a local circuit with a short 2km steep hill every lap)... He can handle hills like this perfectly.
He wasn't good enough today. Period.
YvesStevens wrote:
Poels could be in the future maybe a good GC rider, great win by Rodriquez tough
I rather think of Poels as puncheur/ardennes classics rider.
He is decent on high mountains too, but not nearly as good as he is in short punchy climbs
And he's very young too, like Ruijgh. Ruijgh was able to hang on high in GC quite a while in this Tour, but in the end he dropped. Future will tell how much they will develop for the longer stage races.
FreitasPCM wrote:
I do hope Purito won't do a 2010 time-trial this time... He's got everything to win the GC.
So do I. I wouldn't mind seeing him winning this Vuelta.
Also, I think he has improved his timetrialling since last year. For example, in the Giro timetrial he only lost 2' on Millar and 1' on Nibali. Sure, this TT is longer than the one in the Giro, but I think Rodriguez is looking better now than in the Giro.
I reckon he'll lose half of the time he lost in last year's TT in this year's.
Arvesen was in the Sky-bus ready to retire form the race, but then decided "dammit, I can't quit."
There's also a photo of the bike. The frame is broken in two.
Tweet from Karsten Kroon:The worst crash I've ever seen, going 70k/h I was in the wheel of @kaarvesen when a child ran on the road and he couldn't avoid him.
I narrowly escaped and thought they were both dead. I was in shock, could not peddel anymore and started crying.
I thought, so now the race stops or what? Incredibly, both Kurt and the kid are more or less ok. Thank god."
FreitasPCM wrote:
I do hope Purito won't do a 2010 time-trial this time... He's got everything to win the GC.
So do I. I wouldn't mind seeing him winning this Vuelta.
Also, I think he has improved his timetrialling since last year. For example, in the Giro timetrial he only lost 2' on Millar and 1' on Nibali. Sure, this TT is longer than the one in the Giro, but I think Rodriguez is looking better now than in the Giro.
I reckon he'll lose half of the time he lost in last year's TT in this year's.
The good thing of the TT, for Joquim, is that it's in the middle of La Vuelta and he will be able to try to risk if the things go wrong.
But, trust me, even he's in top form and I see nobody that can actually challenge him in the mountain stages he's just an horrible TT rider. Last year he lost 4'30'' to Nibali. He had a bad day but I don't see him losing less than 2 min. Too much.
Also, Joaquim needs to get as much time as he can because he's now in top form and the other favs are building their during the race. At the end he can be in trouble, is not that good to go to a 3 week race in your top form while the others planned to be at top form in the last week. But we agree that the last week is maybe the last in terms of difficulties.
There are alot of little things in this vuelta!
About that the stage was peppared for Joaquim win. He knew what errors did last year.
