asgelle

Why do you keep calling it a TTT?

MinnMan

I see them as comparable in magnitude.

MinnMan

Yup. (100-90)*156 is 16 riders. Makes my point stronger. But 100 riders is a round number that suits the argument.

spdntrxi

If everyone went 100% like maybe only the guys in the top10 before the stage started... the rest were soft pedaling to make the time cut. This is stage racing.

Trakhak

I've been following European pro bike racing since the days of Poulidor and Merckx - saw them fight it out on Mont Royal before the finish in the 1974 World Championships. Even after the outing of so many dopers in the years since the Festina affair and the Armstrong revelations, I choose to think that the members of this generation are either not doping or are using PEDs that confer only a tiny advantage compared to the recent past.

Recapping some points made earlier: a few of the general recent changes have included training and nutrition having undergone revolutionary improvements, aero coming to be appreciated as a far more important factor than before, and macho gearing having been supplanted by the use of 12-and-13-sprocket cassettes with pie-plate-sized low sprockets.

Also, in the last few Tours, the average length of the stages has been going down, while the riders sometimes treat the longest stages as low-speed, informal "rest days." Very different from the from-the-gun stages every day in the 2000's and 2010's.

Re the JV vs. TP rivalry; could be that Jumbo-Visma having so much stronger a team than UAE is the main factor. Jonas exerts himself only when necessary, with his team towing him around the rest of the time while controlling the action. Pog, on the other hand, looked to be on the limit in the previous stage, probably thanks to having had to do so much work unassisted.

Remember the days of Sky/Ineos being called "robots." They were unspectacular but efficient, and they kept winning the Tour, year after year. (Yes, TUEs, asthma inhalers, shameful, but at best, only the feeblest of "marginal gains" compared to EPO.)

It won't surprise any of us if Jonas, Pog, WVA, or any of a number of other greater or lesser lights turn out to have been doping. But until then, the lazy cynicism of "They're all doping, and I don't care that they are" will continue to be an uninteresting dead end in discussions like this.

Eric F 

The data is just data, and I understand stage racing. None of this is new to me.

What stands out to me is how much faster Pogi and Jonas were than the other top results. Additionally, the fact that Jonas was ~5% faster than Pogi is stunning. After those 2, there were 13 riders within a minute of each other. I expect that every one of them were putting in their best effort to hold or improve their GC position.

spdntrxi

The data is data, but it's in a large way corrupted. So it's pretty useless outside maybe top 10.

As for JV smoking Pog. Equipment and position or the ability to hold a aero position and then the bike change for Pog. JV was taking the descent in the aerobars while a lot of others in the basebar. On the final climb I saw JV on the aerobars often and Pog on the hoods or even the tops in a very upright sitting position. These guys are fast enough where aero still matters. (me not so much)

Eric F 

I would like to think that the difference was all in those things. I’ve been watching bike racing for a long time. This result feels wonky

Shadco 

If you watched tp was plodding compared to JV who was railing it from the start ramp to the finish. Wva had been emptying the tank every day and has failed to duplicate his results from last year. One wonders how many of the rest of the field thought they had a shot, I’m thinking not many.

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Paul Barnard

Thank you. I don't dabble in this space often, so as someone implied, I wasn't thinking about a spoiler.

Jeff Neese

Maybe just stay off the internet until you've watched. This isn't a movie, that has "spoilers". For actual sporting events that have already occurred, the results are called "news". It will be reported and people are going to talk about it, all over the internet, as soon as it occurs. It's up to you to avoid the news, if you want to be surprised.

MinnMan

What do you know?


It happens every year during the TdF. People show up in this subforum who haven't got a clue how things work here.

Shadco 

and for that reason I stay out of this section of the forum until I’m caught up. Same for pace line.

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Jeff Neese

So what's the "blackout" period for discussing real-time news? If I say I can't watch it at all until the weekend, will everyone hold their discussion until I'm caught up? Are you guys always a certain number of days behind?

roadcrankr

No idea why you keep defending the faux pas. The OP clearly made a mistake by putting a spoiler in the title.
Discuss it all day long. I'm sure I'm not the only one affected by this here.

Jeff Neese

Just trying to understand the rules. Is there a different forum for discussion of TDF current events, including up-to-the-minute results?

MinnMan

What is it about "Thread Title" that you don't understand?

Eric F 

It's not about the discussion within the thread, it's about the thread title. Some folks don't browse the forums by section, but by "New Posts" which lists posts from all sections, sorted by most recent activity. Proper etiquette would be to put "SPOILER" in the thread title so those who don't want to know will stay out of the thread.

Paul Barnard

I sure did. My apologies to those who I spoiled the fun for.

gpsblake

Apologies, just a typo on my part for putting in the extra T.

And no spoiler for today but it's a must watch stage including vehicles getting stuck on the mountain and blocking the road for other cyclist.

Paul Barnard

You are making it more complicated than it is. As I originally wrote the thread title, anyone who perused the topics of discussion would have been tipped off to the results. As it stands now, someone who had not yet seen the time trial and wasn't up to speed to the race status, could read the thread title and know not to dive into the topic. We can and did discuss the results in this thread, but with the mod changing the thread title, we didn't spoil it for those who may have been scanning the forum threads.

PJay120

If you look at the overall standings for Stage 15, the day before the TT, many riders had nothing to gain from riding the route in 36 minutes versus 39 minutes. Most would get no notable benefit from moving up in rank from, say, 50th, to what? 45th place? So, as people are noting, yes, overall, the majority of riders do the work, but not like those in the top ten.

It is not so much that JV is super human, but that he was one of a few where riding all-out was worth the effort.

https://www.letour.fr/en/rankings/stage-15

philbob57

And today JV let ____ win so as to quiet suspicion that he dopes? But he smoked TD, so that increases suspicion.... As for doping in the TdF, I think it was over 100 years ago that the organizer announced they would NOT supply dope that year, which implies, perhaps, that they did at a previous Tour. In the '50s, Anquetil is supposed to have told DeGaulle that 'of course' he doped.

Perhaps JV and TD are using PEDs. With all the (reasonable) suspicion, though, my guess is that any PEDs will be exposed. Sports see records broken again and again, so it's eminently possible that PEDs are not involved. Right now, the only evidence is that TD's and JV's performances are head and shoulders above their colleagues. That is a lot less conclusive than, say, tapes, videos, or photos, and it certainly isn't enough to convict.

Eric F 

Someone before made the estimate that 10% of the riders rode the TT to the best of their ability. Roughly speaking, that seems about right. After Jonas and Pogi, there were 13 riders within a minute of WVA. It seems reasonable to assume that all of those - and probably a handful of others - were giving it 100%. Battling for 45th place probably isn't happening, but the battle for top 10 is real.

hrdknox1

[QUOTE=msu2001la;22957053]How much time did the bike change add?
I'd love to see some more detailed stats. The actual change was probably around 15-20 seconds to slow/stop, swap and accelerate back up to speed. But did the lighter climbing bike actually save him any time, or did the lack of aero cost further time?[/QUOT
The bike change had little to do with the end result. Yeah it cost him time, but not enough that he wouldn't have lost time to Vingegaard who was faster especially before the climb.