2024 Tour de France Fantasy League, and general TdF discussions.

[::: :::]

And no Primoz today

[Foggy_Goggles]

Question about the crash yesterday. I hear the talk about whether that center divider should have been marked, but why don't the riders have all the course info? They've got radio and on bike mapping and such. How does the collective brain of the peloton not have a handle on it?

[::: :::]

There have been situations in the past where the Tour has removed road furniture for the race & replaced it when the stage was through. I imagine they don’t do much of that given the expense.

But yesterday’s issue wasn’t knowing the dividing curb was there — they were already in the divided road. The crash occurred because a rider’s wheel got caught up in it as he was avoiding a brief slow up in front of him (micro slinky effect in the peloton). Then he fell across the divider into the peloton in the other lane.

[TBS]

^^^Yup - no place to go.

And Roglic was not up front, where he should have been.
Maybe it’s because he came to bike racing late, but his bike handling skills are right down there with Jan Ullrich & Chris Froome

[TBS]

Oh, and fuck Maxim Van Gils- should be DSQ

[xyz]

Jasper wins. Good for his mental health. Seems like he takes losing extra hard.

Lance was saying yesterday each town should remove all the road furniture for the stage. Replace after. Not cheap but I tend to agree. It freaking dangerous for the peloton. Surely a town benefits from the tour passing through. It should be a requirement.


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[grskier]

Jasper wins. Good for his mental health. Seems like he takes losing extra hard.

Lance was saying yesterday each town should remove all the road furniture for the stage. Replace after. Not cheap but I tend to agree. It freaking dangerous for the peloton. Surely a town benefits from the tour passing through. It should be a requirement.


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road furniture, like the concrete medians!?

If that's the case.. yeah no. They don't make that kind of coin to make removing concrete and replacing it with something that is able to be taken out and put back in, plus the time, cost and energy for the additional maintenance on everything because you have removeable things, or are rebuilding concrete (a 30 year design life) every time the tour decides to blow through for a few minutes.

[xyz]

The erected furniture should be bolt on bolt off. Those median curbs should go. Even harder to see. They F up some guys a lot. Expensive? Yes. Perhaps the tour, towns and country should all chip in. Or redesign them so they can be removed replaced easily.


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[dan_pdx]

The medians yesterday seemed particularly low and easier to overlook than what we've seen in other towns. Even putting some colored paint on them might have helped.

Bummed out for Roglic, he maybe still had a shot at the podium until the crash yesterday

[xyz]

In the last few kms today the crosswalk shad double steel bollards still erected. Not even marked. Ffs. Those are can be very easy remove and replace.


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[jackattack]

Oh, and fuck Maxim Van Gils- should be DSQ

either way someone was going into the barrier on that one.
capiot should have held his line, but looking left over the shoulder led him to drift further after van gils was in the gap. yeah, the shoulder looked violent but self preservation often is.
big mistake? yes.

[TBS]

Big difference between defensive (protecting your position) and offensive (barging thru space that doesn’t exist).
Van Gils never had the room to get both he and de Lie through.

And the irony is that deLie was trapped behind the crash. So all that carnage for nothing.

UCI fines Van Gils CHF1500 and docks him 60 points for his conduct
https://www.cyclingweekly.com/racing...-france-sprint

It is not the first time the 24-year-old has got into trouble with the UCI's commissaires. Last year, Van Gils was handed a 25-day ban from competition after he slapped another rider on the back of the head at the Japan Cup Criterium in October.

[TBS]

Thinking about Saturday…

Will UAE let a break go if it includes Gee or Ciccone? They are more than 7 min. behind Tadej, but less than a minute behind Yates.

Can UAE control a break with Ayuso gone and Yates likely a little tired after today’s adventure?

Will Evenapoel or Rodriguez make a play?

[xyz]

As a tadej fan I hope he keeps it in his pants tomorrow. Just protect your lead. Let jumbo or remco try their luck with a move.


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[jackattack]

Thinking about Saturday…

Will UAE let a break go if it includes Gee or Ciccone? They are more than 7 min. behind Tadej, but less than a minute behind Yates.

Can UAE control a break with Ayuso gone and Yates likely a little tired after today’s adventure?

Will Evenapoel or Rodriguez make a play?

I wouldn’t be surprised to see Yates go in a break. If the break fails he’s ahead to link up with a tadej attack. If the break succeeds he could move up considerably.

I think tadej is bluffing. I don’t think he has the ability to sit back.

[TBS]

But will Soudal and Visma let Yates go? Six minute gap between Yates and Evanapoel/Vingo right now.

And I agree Tadej has not yet learned to ride to manage time gaps

[::: :::]

The aerobic capacity of these guys is insane…

Healy looked like he might have the breakaway down today
Then Yates flew away & seemingly could have blown to the finish were it not that his leader caught up in no time after a wait in the group
Then Pogacar blew past him

Better UAE tactics today

[xyz]

Oooff. tadej and UAE on another level. Sending Yates up the road, making Healy look like a punk, setting up tadej. Jonas just doesn’t have the pop.

Tactics played out well. Aggression paid off this time. It is a bike race after all. He respected the yellow by going for it.

TD didn’t look fresh as a daisy after the stage like he usually does tho. Maybe he went super deep.

Jonas needs to be the aggressor if he wants a chance. He can’t really respond to tadej acceleration



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[TBS]

Let’s see how things go in the Alps. Vingo tends to do better on the longer steady climbs in the Alps, Pogi does better on the shorter explosive climbs in the Pyrenees.

[xyz]

I wonder if these teams have police scanners or something so they could listen in to each other’s team radios.


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[::: :::]

Better UAE tactics today

Coming back to this…maybe I’m not quite understanding the actual strategy

my impression on how the finale played out:

UAE’s idea of sending someone dangerous up the road to threaten podium positions is a fine one on paper. But it was less than 5k to go. And seemingly TVLaB responded appropriately: they let Yates go & put a reasonable pace on but didn’t try to reel him in. And they didn’t really need to work much more until Yates actually put in a gap that added up to danger for podium contenders. Yates was 6:59 off the yellow jersey to start the day, so my guess: he’d have to get into a 3+min gap before TVLaB got too worried. With less than 5k to go, it seemed a non-issue.

And Yates clearly had legs & churned right thru to the head of the race. I bet he could have kept going.

Then Pogacar jumps. Yates had a 5s gap. Why now? Visma wasn’t reacting at all to Yates. Was Pogacar worried that Yates might get the stage?

I’m guessing number 2, but that’s pure speculation.

Then, he barely hung out with Yates when he bridged up. No resting tow to the flame rouge or really much at all.
Kinda awkward team strategy in play, no?

So while UAE beat the GC teams down well, shedding most domestiques, the attack portion just seemed ham fisted.

What did you guys think?

[TBS]

Pretty much agree.

I think Tadej couldn’t control himself. In an interview he said that instinct rather than plan motivated him to jump when he did.

Let’s see how UAE Soudal and TVL recover for tomorrow’s stage. It’s a beast and to my eye UAE has burned a lot of matches - and now they’re a climber down. It also looked like maybe WVA and LaPorte were taking today off to be ready for tomorrow.

Tomorrow will be great whatever the outcome

[Skistack]

Yeah, if anybody had chased Yates then Tadej was ready to counter attack. When that didn’t happen he said fuck it, I’m going. The gain was not insignificant, but let’s see what his team has left tomorrow.


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[xyz]

JHC. Tadej. Alien status. Jonas had his shot today. His terrain with his team showing up. He made his move But clearly tadej is stronger, in every way.

Not even covid will knock him out. He was just infected prior to race.

This is over unless tadej seriously blows a fuse.


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[jackattack]

6.9w/kg?!! Unreal