Yes. That’s why even though the Tour had some exciting stages, overall it was a boring race.
This has been a very entertaining Vuelta and we could still see changes in the TT tomorrow. The mountain stages were fantastic, mostly, and the sprint stages had good story lines too. As GT’s go - extremely good watching even though Roglic was always the huge favorite for GC.
Today’s stage was sooooo good. We had a breakaway opportunist almost hold on, a surprise winner with a last ditch blast for glory that worked, Emirates rode superbly, Haig dug really deep, Yates did what he could, Movie was Movie (LOL). What more could one ask for in only 125 miles?
Only issue I had with today’s stage was seeing that god awful ugly AG2R kit on the podium. I mean, seriously, that kit is a crime. Non Chapeau.
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Bizarre
Dark day in the land of the escarabajos 
. Good stage tho!. 2 monster mountain stages and a classic in one week 
Seems a bit rough calling the man a quitter.
It could pay to find out what actually happened before labelling someone you’ve never met with that label.
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Shame for Superman. Thinking back at the stage:
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He was on the wrong wheel (should have been on Mas’ wheel if possible). Looked like Bernal knew he didn’t have the legs and was setting up for Yates to attack. Can’t tell, but am wondering if Bernal let the gap grow, essentially flicking Lopez. It wouldn’t be unreasonable to do that and Ineos has been doing various versions of the Saturn Sit Up in recent races. If bored today, I will go watch the tape again and see if that happened. It’s still on Lopez to be in the right spot, but that would be a bit of race craft.
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Anyone who has raced knows how split decisions, generally made under stress, can completely change outcomes. A good friend with a bunch of national titles calls them “lazy decisions”. In the moment it hurts and you don’t want to hurt more. So you convince yourself the gap will close, someone else should pull, etc. Then it’s over and if it doesn’t work in your favor it’s a lazy decision. Because you can almost always go deeper. The corollary is what we teach newbies - never give up. If you can persist for 5, 10 20 seconds more the pace will probably change. Obviously GT racing a bit different from cat 3/4 but the principles apply.
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Lopez was not giving up. He was trying his best to close the gap and was simply isolated. Been there, done that (but not at that level). It is very hard physically and worse mentally. Imagine your (on edit, delete this word: “first”. My bad!) GT podium slipping away, you are on the rivet… how is your decision making in that moment?
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Something happened with the team car. We don’t know what it was. But we do know it’s Movistar. So whatever advice or words were exchanged we know that tactically they were the wrong ones. I’ll add “LOL” to keep it light, but those guys have so much talent and so few results that at some point you need to fire the manager. Where’s George Steinbrenner when you need him???
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Yates tactics (or legs) let him down. He seemed to not be fully focused on Haig and maybe wanted the stage win instead? That’s silly. Roglic was always going to take the sprint and Yates might have given up a chance at the podium with the start + stop stuff. Or maybe he didn’t have the legs. I thought he had Haig cracked at one point and then slowed up.
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Bahrain is a much better team than I thought. Calling Padun back was correct even if it cost the the stage. They gained a podium (probably - TT still to come) and a white jersey. It’s great to see teams work like that as teams.
TL:DR – This has been a pretty darn good race. Actually all three GTs were fun this year. As I age, am more of a classics guy, but this was fun. Tnx to the forum dwellers for the back and forth and dialogs which made watching and fan buying even more enjoyable.
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Not his first GT podium. The guy has been 3rd already twice, once in LaVuelta, once in the Giro.
He is probably the best climber in the world for long climbs at altitude. Every time he finishes a GT, he is at least top 10.
I speculate that missing the 2020TdF podium weights a lot in his head, and he melted mentally when that nightmare repeated again. Let us hope that this embarrassing incident doesn’t derail his career. He needs to get back in the horse. He’s supposed to race Lombardía ….
Cheers
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Thought the announcers said first podium and admit didn’t check. Fair enough and I’m still cutting him some slack for the withdrawal.
Any news in the Columbia (or other) press on what happened to cause the withdrawal?
cycling tips have an article with comments from his coach/father in law. Much drama, I mean Movistar.
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The words Movistar and drama go together like “cookies and cream” or “Movistar and poor tactics” or “Movistar and inexplicable performance in your 40s”.
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That’s a bit uncalled for. Also calling someone else’s body type “disgusting” regardless of what it is, is also over the top.
They’re athletes at the top of their game, would you call an Olympic weightlifter “disgusting” because they’re carrying extra weight for their sport?
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it has nothing to do with their “body type” and all to do to the unnatural condition they put themselves to start the GT to begin with in order to be competitive. Roglic, Pogachar and many others look like normal healthy humans. H
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If we take BMI (arguably a terrible way of measuring but still). Heights and weights taken from Wikipedia
Roglic: 65kg @ 1.77m → 20.75
Mas: 61kg @ 1.77m → 19.47
Haig: 70kg @ 1.90m → 19.39
None of them are classified as underweight. (which is less than 18.5) so they’ve still got a while to go.
You say to start the GT, but this photo is taken at the end of the GT
Roglic is also wearing a looser jersey than the other two
Exactly, they start very lean, so by the end of this experience they look like that. They are too tall to be at the very top. H
Is today “Make Inappropriate Holocaust Comparison Day” on the forum? That is two posts like this today (different posters)
There are a lot of ways to refer to people who are extremely thin without comparing them to people who were forcibly starved to death and victims of genocide.
Seriously….WTF?
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Bringing this back on topic, while the gc wasn’t very much in doubt, the rest of the small places were really exciting. Even down to the last day, so many things were up for grabs.
I thought the discussion by ant and Hannah at the end about roglic’s legacy was very interesting. He’s a prolific winner, but wonder where he’ll sit in the pantheon of great cyclists if he never wins the tour.
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I’ve had a little time to digest Lopez’s abandon. My initial reaction was it was an indictment of the rider - he and Bernal were in similar situations and Bernal held on and gave his all both Saturday and Sunday whereas Lopez ‘gave up’
However, upon further reflection I think it may be more an indictment/comparison between a relatively healthy team and an an unhealthy one. Ineos supports their riders but the general feeling I have about Movistar is that it is results first, and Spanish riders first.
Obviously this is all from the outside, and we’ll likely never know (although I am looking forward to the documentary of this season, of course) for certain. Just where I ended up after thinking about it a bit
On a separate topic, @hdas where’d you end up, post-Vuelta, on the Pogacar, Roglic, Bernal, and Carapaz discussion we were having earlier? I still feel that the first two are a step above and really the class of GC riders at the moment, have you changed your mind?
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Pogacar and Roglic clearly the two to beat, and I think Pogacar is at least half a level above Roglic. I still hold out some hope that Bernal can rise to the challenge. He’s young enough to have quite a bit of growth potential, and wasn’t in peak form this Vuelta having already done the Giro, had covid, and had back issues. Guess the question mark is whether the back issues can be managed sufficiently to enable him to race at his full potential over 3 weeks. Guess the other concern is that Bernal dodges the other 2 - e.g. if managing his back means that he can only be in prime form for one GT per season, he may well be tempted to target the Vuelta and try to get the full set of 3 grand tours, rather than going toe to toe with the Slovenians in peak form at the Tour. Less chance of that with Roglic, he’ll be desperate for a Tour win.
Carapaz is a great racer and opportunist and not at his best this Vuelta after targeting Tour and Olympics, but I don’t think he can get close to the Slovenians in prime form over 3 weeks. Ran Roglic close at last year’s Vuelta when both had already raced the Tour, but should have been at his peak in this year’s Tour and couldn’t land a punch on Pogacar.
Ineos potentially facing some pretty lean years in the Tour by their standards. If Bernal can’t match the Slovenians then the only other rider on their books who might be able to at some point is Pidcock, and that’s a big long shot given that he’s really only focused on one day racing so far.
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Yes they are….but statements like his help normalize what happened in the past and shows a callous disregard to those who suffered those atrocities, not to mention any Jewish members on this board.
Again, there are many ways to characterize people who may be too thin without comparing them to people who were intentionally starved to death. You can even still have your exaggerated metaphors and analogies.
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