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Tour de France Discussion
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| ember |
Posted on 13-05-2020 20:49
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Demare doing very, very well here for Puma. If he survives tomorrow in the yellow jersey, one must say this first week has been amazing for him and his team.
And so it begins, the next three stages will be key for the GC. As seen in the Vuelta, time gaps could be small in general on the difficult stages, and thus, any given gap could be huge, like the one on stage 2. The hills on stage 4 looks both steep and pretty lengthy, making it possible for GC riders to push for seconds, if the easy finish doesn't scare them off. |
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| Ad Bot |
Posted on 24-11-2024 06:36
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| cio93 |
Posted on 13-05-2020 21:32
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What a bold sprint by Demare in the yellow jersey!
An amazing sight, and surely one of the most important days for the team. 
A finishing shot of a TdF stage win in yellow is probably third only to a GT victory outright and winning the WC in terms of historical value, that achievement makes me very proud.
Furthermore, Arnaud Demare is now the winningest French rider in history at four stage wins, passing John Gadret and Jerome Coppel!
I'm also immensely proud to be able to carry the yellow jersey to Colmar tomorrow, just about a dozen kilometres from the German border.
It would be the cherry on top of this first handful of stages to survive the Vosges hills and stay in yellow for the TTT as well.
It will be a tough task indeed, but the nature of tomorrow's climbs is quite suited to Demare at least on paper, being short and steep and therefore hopefully allowing for his hill stat to matter just enough to survive them.
Especially the last KoM is perfect with the steep->flat->steep->flat profile, that one taken in isolation should definitely be manageable, so it'll be important to keep the energy losses up until that point as small as possible with good positioning and protection.
The positioning in particular is why it was so important to be in yellow at this point of the race.
Once again, thank you for all the kind words. It's been a successful Tour already no matter what, but there's still more to gain from it!
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| OlegTinkov |
Posted on 14-05-2020 02:12
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Samolenkov is on fire, eager to see what Chernetskiy can do tommorow!
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| SotD |
Posted on 14-05-2020 09:17
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Really really interesting what makes Sicard perform this amazing - not just in this race, but this season in it's entirety. If it keeps up like this, you cannot write of the overall victory and in the past seasons he should be lucky to get 5th in this field...
I guess it mainly comes down to the crazy 77 FIG stat he carries with him. Same goes for the likes of Alarcon who also seems attentive - but not as well rounded. But riders like Tenorio and Herklotz with high FIG stats also perform really well... This stat has usually been worthless for GC riders, but at the moment I feel a bit bummed that Lecuisinier with his 65FIG stat is the worst of all top 20 GC riders, where the only rider worse than him in 30 is Cattaneo - ring any bells?
Atleast Lecuisinier did well today to finish 4th so atleast his strong SPR/ACC combo for a top rider seems to work well enough, and those stage points might be very valuable in the end if he can keep it up!
Stauff lands a bit more points from 3rd in the points competition which he will obviously also have after tomorrows stage so his overall points tally from the first week is extraordinarily good for us! Obviously the ability to score points will heavily decrease from here onwards, but who knows if he can capture a decent final result on stage 7 if he can complete stage 8...
Congrats to CrueTrue for finally having some Sicard succes. For many years the team who had Sicard as their main GC rider would relegate from the PT. This season he may help them to win it.
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| tastasol |
Posted on 14-05-2020 09:27
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Good to see our guys taking some control and Phinney looked good here, even getting some seconds back with the bonus seconds on everyone but Sicard, who looks to be just amazing this season.
Hope the guys have managed to save some energy for the TTT.
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| Fabianski |
Posted on 14-05-2020 10:34
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Great stuff by Sicard - and a French double victory, along with Frenchies wearing yellow and green tomorrow, really makes this an awesome first week for the home crowd.
Obviously a bitter-sweet 2nd place for Démare, but Sicard just looks amazingly strong so far. And Phinney gaining back a few (bonus) seconds should help for an interesting GC race as well
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| jph27 |
Posted on 14-05-2020 10:51
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Monsalve has done pretty well to be attentive so far, so hopefully his Dauphine was just another example of his utter uselessness in PT one-week races - his best finish to date is 10th, in the 2014 Tour of California (when he was still an unmaxed rider!).
Carthy losing time isn't a surprise, and I don't expect him to finish ahead of Lopez here anyway. Would rather he rides for 2nd in U25 classification and goes for a stage win at some point than fight a battle for White that he'll probably lose.
For the rest of the team, 2/4 on participation in breaks so far is also good (and I hope it continues), though I would have preferred 4/4  |
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| roturn |
Posted on 14-05-2020 11:06
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Sicard on fire recently. Someone should go for a doping test I guess.
While Demare missed another win, it still is a nice point haul in the last 3 stages for him.
Velits luckily coming back was needed gaining on 2-3 rivals. So a good stage for me even though Boom or someone should have gone into the break today. |
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| knockout |
Posted on 14-05-2020 11:16
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Grand Tour Champion
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Had a bit higher hopes for this stage but im not too disappointed because some rivals lost time, big stage points all go to teams much higher in the ranking and we get another day in white.
Now up to the TTT and i think we must be considered favourites. Today was already a great prove of our team work with 7 of our riders finishing 108-109-110-111-113-114-117. Tough to beat such a close knit group and they all have quite similar TT stats as well.
A Big Thank You To All MG Reporters! |
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| DubbelDekker |
Posted on 14-05-2020 12:11
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In a stage like this Madrazo is just one of the contenders instead of top favorite. So sprinting to 5th is a good performance in my book.
Starting to worry about Sicard though. The chap is flying... 
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| Shonak |
Posted on 14-05-2020 12:11
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What a machine Sicard is, a true basque.
"It’s a little bit scary when Contador attacks." - Tommy V
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| jandal7 |
Posted on 14-05-2020 13:51
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Sicard hype is growing after that Dauphine and now here, would love to see him have a big go 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
5x  x5
2x  x2
2x  x2 |
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| ember |
Posted on 14-05-2020 14:26
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Really cool to see us ride aggressive and join another breakaway, there hasn't been many of those so far this season, making this stuff even more exciting
Then there's Sicard, who is just sensational!
Also Guldhammer with what must be the save of the season. Great to see him not fall out of contention this early, just a pity he wasn't able to get any time advantage here, which he could well have gotten had he been positioned when the attacks started.
Galta being attentive was a pleasant surprise, but for the top 10 goal to work, the key will be the mountain stages and joining the breakaways. |
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| cio93 |
Posted on 14-05-2020 16:03
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Zero complaints about second place here, congrats CT, that was very well played!
Keeping together a very select group like this with only Arndt was always going to prove near-impossible, so I'm happy that only one rider managed to slip away and Demare could add vital rankings and sprint points. I'm very glad I could train him to a point where he makes these kinds of selections.
The splits also gave Arndt a slight buffer going into the TTT where he'll lose many minutes. He should be in an ideal position to be aggressive after.
Sicard, having finished first and second already and likely in prime position to take yellow after the TTT now, is gonna cause us headaches in the fight for the green jersey now though. 33 points ain't much, even though that guarantees the jersey until at least stage 8 at worst.
I can only hope he's a significant tier below the top climbers and will also have to concede points to breakaways in the mountains.
But apart from that issue, Sicard was the perfect man to win this as I see Air France beating us in the rankings anyway this season.
On the other hand, 56 points to Madrazo and 55 to Phinney is a good gap after these opening stages, but we have to keep working hard on the flat stages to maintain that.
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| Yellow Jersey |
Posted on 14-05-2020 17:05
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Machado still there, was dropped but got back on so he's still in the fight for a good spot, keep the consistency!
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| ryant |
Posted on 14-05-2020 20:08
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Happy to see our old rider Stauff manage to get a stage win in the Tour after being completely useless all year for us the previous season!
Look forward to following the Tour for the first time really, Sicard grabbing a few precious seconds which he'll no doubt need later on...
 John St Ledger in Team Bunzl-Centrica and Team U25Red Bull Driver in RFactor
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| OlegTinkov |
Posted on 15-05-2020 06:38
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Good ride by Chernetskiy, also my other riders took the lose some time to get in the breaks later orders really seriously!
| 95 | Alexander Foliforov | Team Tinkoff | + 5'12 | | 96 | Matvey Mamykin | Team Tinkoff | s.t. | | 97 | Sergei Kolesnikov | Team Tinkoff | s.t. | | 98 | Nikita Novikov | Team Tinkoff | s.t. | | 105 | Artem Samolenkov | Team Tinkoff | s.t. | | 106 | Evgeny Shalunov | Team Tinkoff | s.t. | | 107 | Aleksey Rybalkin | Team Tinkoff | s.t. |
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| roturn |
Posted on 15-05-2020 09:13
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4th in the TTT is okay. Had expected a lot less, in especially with Dumoulin and Frison already having lost lots of energy before. But with Paillot/Dekker/Velits/Koep/Groenewegen it was a strong lineup in general.
GC wise Velits looking good to potentially fight for a lower top10 but wouldn`t be too annoyed if it`s around 15th if he is going for stage results later in 3rd week as this might even give more points and after 2 less successful GTs stage win wise, it would be nice to see me getting one in the Tour at least. |
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| SotD |
Posted on 15-05-2020 09:13
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 Festina - OAKA also won’t be too happy with their time and on the even lower end
I'm definately not unhappy. We could probably have been better looking at how things went, but losing these figures to my biggest rivals in a TTT is prette satisfying actually:
1'17" Taylor Phinney
44" Angel Madrazo
33" José Alarcon
28" Romain Sicard
26" Andy Schleck
25" Lachlan Morton
23" Joe Dombrowski
13" Stefan Denifl
3" Fredrik Strand Galta
We gain time on Monsalve, Montoya, Guldhammer and Machado...
Before the race started we would expect to lose something like 2-3 minutes on the stage favorites, so no worries from here. I'm much more annoyed with the time lost on the hilly stage. The seconds lost to Alarcon, Schleck, Dombrowski, Denifl and Galta should be clawed back on the ITT, and then it will be the mountains deciding.
So for now it seems like we have to accept finishing around 5-7th, rather than aiming for podium, but a lot can still happen.
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| tastasol |
Posted on 15-05-2020 09:20
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Perfect job from the guys! Looked like the strongest team out there from start to finish today, so we just have to be very happy with the performance. No yellow in the end after the TTT, which was the big goal, and that's mainly down to Phinney not being alert enough on the hilly stages. I always imagined Madrazo and Gazelle (or Gesink if he had decided to race here) would be the guy to beat, so it's of course a slight surprise that Sicard is the man in yellow before the first MTF. Hopefully Phinney can have a good day, and with bonus seconds it's not impossible to take the jersey from him.
I see that Sicard also lost two seconds more than the rest of the team, but kind of annoying to see Phinney losing four seconds here, when it looked like the whole team crossed the line together. A bit of a lottery if he's amongst the first five or not then.
Thanks for a very detailed report, Cunego I was really nervous scrolling down towards our first mention in race!
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