diphthong

congrats to carthy and ef. brutal stage. i'll support the notion that kuss looked to be the strongest and could have won. dunno about easily tho.

was shocked, shocked!! that mas went on the attack. looked good.

grossschartner...wth did he come from?

slcbob

Good question. Where did GroBchartner, Grosschartner, yeah, him come from?

And Vlasov?

And where did almost all of TJV come from?

Where did Tom Dumoulin go?

With the wacky 2020 year on top of the surge of new kid on the block break-throughs into the spotlight, whether from team leader casualties and next-man-up-itis or intentional you-da-man commitments from teams to the young guns, it's getting harder and harder to follow this magnificent hot mess of a sport. For me at least. Some of you seem to be doing OK.

GrainBrain

It was ridiculous to see Froome rocking and rolling for Carapaz on the Angliru; only to watch Sepp Kuss casually ride up to Roglic and hand him a bottle. Lucky for Roglic to have such a loyal domestique, could've been like Soler getting pissed off and waiting for Quintana last year

Also, Cofidis has done a ton of work to get Martin into the kom jersey!

diphthong

looks like the top three teams are still in the same order, with an outside chance of any of the following three teams able to slip in and nab that last podium place.

stage thirteen itt with the climb at the end may muddle things further vs clarifying them. out of the remaining stages, seventeen looks to have the most difficult
finish and if there are riders within 45 seconds of the red jersey (currently carthy and dan martin), they can possibly wait until the final salvo to attempt a podium climb.
poels, vlasov and grossschartner are going to have to go from farther out. stage sixteen looks to be a potential ambush stage with a winding course.
perhaps a breakaway with one (or more) of the last three riders mentioned on sixteen to draw back 3-5 minutes. dunno if carapaz and roglic would chase any of those
riders until their advantage threatened within 1.5 minutes on the gc. mas is in an interesting place...too close to be let go on a breakaway but too far to affect the top four
guys (barring a reversal of fortune(s) on the itt). mas will have to do something really special late in stages to climb onto the podium. we'll see what he throws down in the itt.

most likely scenario is roglic winning the itt and regaining the red jersey. dunno how mas, martin, carthy and carapaz rearrange themselves afterwards.

Iride01 

In the TdF's ITT, Roglic had Mas by :49, Martin by 3:35, Carthy by 5:00 and Carapaz by 5:57.

But that last 1.8 Km looks like something that will make some wish they hadn't rode the first 31.9 Km so hard. Might be another stage the deck just gets tossed in the air and see what cards fall where.





https://www.procyclingstats.com/race...today/profiles

USAZorro

Martin, Carthy and Carapaz had no reason to put in a 100% effort in the Tour.

I do expect Roglic to take some time on the other contenders though.

diphthong

perhaps we find mas in second after the itt. at the start of the vuelta, my podium was roglic-carapaz-vlasov in that order with mas in 4th.
vlasov has some riders to leapfrog but i think he's got the ability on stages 16 and 17 to make it happen. his key is not losing any more time to carthy,
valverde and martin (and carapaz) and possibly gaining 30+ seconds on them all. dunno about his tt abilities tho. shall be fascinating.

roglic is my pick for tomorrow. ion izaguirre is my second fave. mas looked great on the angliru.

canklecat

My jaw is still sore from watching that Angliru stage. I must have been sympathetically clenching my teeth during that final push. That final few kilometers was legendary.

Roglic sounded like a true gentleman afterward, sounding regretful that Kuss had to sacrifice his chance at a stage win in order to support Roglic.

At this point I kinda wanted to see everyone who finished that climb within a minute of each other on a podium together, Super Cooties or not.

I can also see why other racers in past decades have cursed the organizers for including Angliru. It looks brutal.

slcbob

What are the chances Froome does anything in the TT? Even a top 20?

Caretaker

I have low expectations of Dan Martin in the TT but hope he proves me wrong. A realistic goal for him in this Vuelta is a top five and anything better will be amazing.

diphthong

d martin holding steady and within striking distance of the podium. mas fell back farther into no man’s land. the 6-10 gc riders will hafta organize and drive a significant break that sticks...bad weather would help that...but possibly only one of those riders climbs back into semi-contention. i’ll pick vlasov to go out on a gc bender on stage sixteen.

Iride01 

Good point!

Caretaker

Dan Martin did better than I expected and looks reasonably safe in 4th. He's just under a minute off the podium and not impossible that he might make it by the end of stage 17 on Saturday.

Stage 17 is the only remaining mountain stage where something might happen to change the top of GC.

slcbob

For stage 14, I could pick Geraint Thomas and have about as good a chance of getting right as I would with Bagioli and Formolo.

I wonder if Vlasov will have enough leash to get in the big break.

diphthong

stage fourteen...valverde.

slcbob

^ Love it. If that happens, the only sad thing will be that I didn't call it.

diphthong

stage fifteen...no good feel for this stage other than it being a seemingly breakaway friendly stage. picked nans peters, dion smith and geschke in the pcs game.
let's go with peters ftw.

GrainBrain

Great setup and sprint on UAE, whole lot of UAE riders celebrating Must be something special to win after 6 hours and wet conditions. Bagioli missed it but Morkov is the greatest leadout guy, very clever bluff to snuff Ackerman.

slcbob

I guess that must have been an angry peloton. So much for that breakaway.

It's a little worrying that Ackerman is almost costing me my lock on the maillot mierda. Heck, he almost pulled me out of the leading 1,000 overall. Thankfully, the Worst Pace Scenario is not nearly as worst as it could be.

It looks like another breakaway stage tomorrow, so of course that means Bennett or Roglic will take it. I'm doing almost as good as the election pollsters.

diphthong

picked cavagna for the pcs game so may as well here. stage sixteen...go remi!

diphthong

cavagna in the two man break with 35 kms left to go. go remi!

diphthong

caught with 2.5 kms left after being out in the break for 137.5 kms...ugh. good try, remi. another horrible prediction on the wrong side of the ledger.

one4smoke

Man, I sure was pulling for Cavagna. Damn peloton!

slcbob

Pollster cred!!! Roglic and Trump both grab second place.

USAZorro

I was too, as he's on my team. He doesn't seem a GC contender, but he's going to be a breakaway threat who may eventually be as renowned as Jens and DeGendt.

Tomorrow pretty much decides it all. Liking my team choices here - Roglic, Carapaz, De La Cruz and Grosschartner (my apologies for the limited keyboard skills). I truly suspect that this is where Dan Martin and Carthy both lose a bit of ground. It's late in the race for Dan, and Carthy is likely to go a bit beyond his limit because Vaughters always presses his riders too hard at crunch time.