Fair play to TD, he's paced his way back, but Lopez has jumped.
Cycling thread
- Thread starter Bruce Wayne
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Oh no, now Pinot has gone. No real honour among that group. All sat on his back and then stuck the knife in at the first opportunity.
It's another 4,000m of climbing tomorrow so not over by any means, but what kind of shape they'll be in after today is anyone's guess.
Wowza. No news on Yates for quite a while. Reckon he must have lost 30 minutes by the time he gets to the end. Can't have been well today.
Hard to imagine anyone attacking much tomorrow. They must all be wiped out. Snide behaviour from the three in TD's chase group. Had they worked he'd probably still be in pink. As it was it was more like a time trial, man against man.
On the performance, it's perhaps worth remembering that TD put 1m15s into Yates in a 34km time trial a few days ago, and no one thought that at all unusual. This was essentially an 80km time trial.
Armel
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That’s an incorrect comparison. Tom DumoulIn is the best TT rider of the bunch, he’s the WC. Yates isn’t the best TT’er so very plausible. Also the 30 K TT was just that, no previous mountains or anything similar.
The Landis comparison is also incorrect. Landis was the best rider -with doping- in that TdF, he had one bad day. Froome was far from the best rider in this Giro, and now he suddenly does this.
Landis won by over 5 minutes against a chase group of over 30 of all the gc contenders. Froome was against TD on his own.
I mean was he doping when he gained a minute on the descent of the Finestre?
This should be the attitude of everyone at this point to be honest.
Froome is doping. Most of those competing are doping. It's now clear that they can't be stopped from doping - so let them dope.
Anything is better than being insane and pretending what Froome is doing is possible without 'a little help'.
My own eyes.
Not going to pretend I have anywhere near your knowledge of the sport, as I patently don't, but I have a passing interest, have read into the history in recent years and watched that today - I felt it was an unbelievable stage, both in terms of entertainment, drama and performance, but the key word being 'unbelievable'. I didn't believe a moment of that attack.
But that's just it, why was it unbelievable? I presume you watched the stage. He took most of his time on the descent and is widely regarded as a stronger climber than TD, who was also chasing him pretty much on his own. It wasn't 'that' unusual for a 5 time GT winner to do that. He's not a particularly likeable character, but sometimes you have to just doff your cap at history being made. Sky have rightly been criticised for their robotic style at times, but this whole race has been incredible, and if he ends up winning such a race then it's only right that a move of such bravado was what has won it.
As an aside, I've seen the following timings for where he gained time.
Finestre climb 37s
Finestre descent 1 min 15
Sestriere climb 49s
Sestriere descent 25s
Valley 15s
Final climb 3s
So 1 min 40 gained descending, where Dumoulin seemed to waste a lot of time keeping a group together that then sat on his wheel all the time.
I also think I'm right in saying that his ascent of Finestre was the slowest time up it in the race to date (2005, 2011, 2015 were the other editions). Meanwhile, Carapaz was the quickest up the final climb, yet was 3 minutes slower than Nibali when he went up it in 2014.
Finestre climb 37s
Finestre descent 1 min 15
Sestriere climb 49s
Sestriere descent 25s
Valley 15s
Final climb 3s
So 1 min 40 gained descending, where Dumoulin seemed to waste a lot of time keeping a group together that then sat on his wheel all the time.
I also think I'm right in saying that his ascent of Finestre was the slowest time up it in the race to date (2005, 2011, 2015 were the other editions). Meanwhile, Carapaz was the quickest up the final climb, yet was 3 minutes slower than Nibali when he went up it in 2014.
http://tiz-cycling.racing/videos/giro-ditalia-2018-stage-19-full-stage/ has the full stage if anyone's interested.