What the hell? Shades of Spilak not chasing Taaramae in 2018, but instead of a late attack for a couple of minutes it's a breakaway for several...
Meanwhile Fouche doing a great job losing time, hope he can actually use that for substantive attacks unlike at the Giro. Who knows, if this can happen when Kudus gets away surely they give Fouche over an hour...
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
Quite a stage, would have expected Evonik to chase harder, but seems like they have quite some faith in Lecuisinier's upcoming thirteen stages. Aular and Lopez Nolasco doing well to be 7th and 19th so far, but the time trial probably will make them see lose some time and places. Hope they can keep this mountain form up though. Congratulations on a stage that (possibly?) secures staying in PT, roman, and thank you Ulrich for a great written report!
This has to be the craziest stage in MG history, it doesn't make sense at all how peloton just let Kudus ride away all day long. And I actually thought losing some seconds due to bad positioning was a major issue...
I never thought even an attempt for such a crazy attack attempt in a Floyd Landis 2006 style was in PCM's possibilities, what is even crazier is that PCM allowed it to succeed. I am not sure if I really should be happy about this because if this would happen the other way, I would be just so sad about it. Just doesn't make sense the peloton never did anything. It is nice to actually be on the other way of getting luck and may be a huge season changer after major fails earlier this season, but it just feels really weird.
But who knows, maybe this is just a start: my support team for Kudus is definitely not great and therefore we may see many more stages in this style even if my team uses domestiques as it should. Maybe it's not over yet. But if Kudus loses the race from this position, it will be an absolute fail.
Damn that is brutal to knockout. You have my commiserations, man. Glad that we're switching to a different game next year. These nonsensical GT flukes are game breaking.
If the peloton had tried to chase to the best of their ability and Kudus would've beaten them, this would've been an awesome stunt by him.
But just like when Dombrowski got f*cked out of a guaranteed GC win in stage 20 of last season's Giro, the peloton hardly tried for most of the stage. Even at the bottom of the final climb, Evonik's top domestique got himself caught behind a split instead of leading the chase. This is just the AI bugging out.
One pattern I notice is that the last time this happened, it was also a stage where there was non-stop climbing or descending and hardly any flat or low percentage roads. Something about that seems to have the potential to make the top favourite and his team behave strangely passive while their GC is getting destroyed in front of their eyes.
For us it was a decent stage btw, with Warchol doing what he is supposed to. But that is irrelevant compared to the farce that just happened in the fight for the Tour de France win.
Damn that is brutal to knockout. You have my commiserations, man. Glad that we're switching to a different game next year. These nonsensical GT flukes are game breaking.
If the peloton had tried to chase to the best of their ability and Kudus would've beaten them, this would've been an awesome stunt by him.
But just like when Dombrowski got f*cked out of a guaranteed GC win in stage 20 of last season's Giro, the peloton hardly tried for most of the stage. Even at the bottom of the final climb, Evonik's top domestique got himself caught behind a split instead of leading the chase. This is just the AI bugging out.
Thanks. If anybody knows this situation its you and i feel your comment matches a lot of the thoughts ive had over the day. This seems not a case of sending too weak of a support lineup, a terrible daily shape or a tactical error by my (and/or other) teams. This was just an AI malfunctioning to the highest degree from my POV.
A few quick words for Ulrich: ignoring the b@%#^# AI, this report like the others was very well written. Thanks for that! Its obvious that you always put a lot of effort into it and you deserve that the involved managers - especially those that are still in the race podium fight - follow along and commentate properly. I will of course follow the remaining stages but i want to say a quick sorry if my comments will be unenthusiastic one liners for the rest of the race even if there might be further stage wins etc. Hard to be positive when the whole hype for a super interesting duel and hopes to potentially still be in a title fight in case of a dominant race comes crashing down in this manner.
Roman, congrats to the stage win, yellow, polkadots and whatever else comes out of this. Sincerely hope that you can enjoy it!
PS: what are the odds that Lecuisinier will miss out on the podium because of breaks on the final two mountain stages will be given a ton of time due to the gap to yellow being so large?
Oof... Guess that's pretty much the wildest MG stage I've seen so far. Commiserations to knockout (and all the other top GC contenders). And congrats to Moser. Looks like Vuelta and TdF will save your season. The Tour is obviously still far from over, and as Roman said, Moser might have some difficulties in controlling the race. But I can't imagine the AI going THAT crazy again... Hopefully the new version won't have this kind of Artificial Dumbness anymore (can't seriously call that "intelligence"...).
Bad stage for us overall as well, fortunately it doesn't matter that much. Rohendi did a great job and seemed to be on an awesome day, until Kudus smashed everything. And Darbellay sadly throws away any hopes of a Top 20 finish already, not even ending up in the Top 50. Even behind "world class climbers" like Sergis or Madouas. But the other GTs have shown that 78 climbers just perform completely randomly, can be almost Top 10 on one day and barely Top 100 on the next... Now he's got no excuses for not joining breaks at least ^^
Thanks for the report. Not sure what I'd have done in that situation as a reporter, in any case I would've been really annoyed by such a dumb engine...
Thanks for the positive comments. While I have defended some of the AI outliers I can't defend this one. Evonik should have chased hard at some point and they never did. I considered rerunning this stage but I have a pretty high bar to do that and for a few reasons I decided not to. The main one being if it had gone badly and Kudus lost time I doubt I would have considered a rerun. Can expand on that at the end of the race but want to avoid spoilers.
I agree with DD's comment on the AI waiting for flat that doesn't exist to chase. I also think TT is overvalued so lower TT riders are given more leeway than they should be.
Knockout - no worries I can get this impacting your motivation.
Wait, what?!?! 
