GrainBrain

Stage 13 Vivianni!

slcbob

I will go with a podium of Nizzolo, Groenwegen, and Gaviria with Viviani behind Sagan. Not for any good reason. Just vindictive.

MinnMan

Oh, good. In that case, welcome to the conversation.
We're looking forward to hearing about the parts you are enjoying.

aclinjury

DQS asking Joao Almeida to babysit Remco. Remco is overhyped at this point.

diphthong

nice to see nizzy get his first gc stage win. a good win for team q a.

OBoile

When you're 2nd on GC well into the race and have shown previously the ability to stay with the top climbers (and will take a bunch of time on them in the TT)... your teammates are supposed to come back for you.
Remco may not have been the favourite at that point, but he was (and still is) a strong candidate to reach the podium.

aclinjury

In the DQS world, everyone knows Remco is the favorite. Alemeida has no contract with DSQ next season. So yeah, Remco is THE favorite guy at this point.

OBoile

The fact that Almeida was 5 minutes down may have had something to do with it.
Maybe.

GrainBrain

Yeah though maybe it could've been made up in the mountains, still that's only a top 10.

It was ridiculous to watch Remco on his own for all those kilometers. It's not like Almeida would've lost much more time if he'd dropped back right away - or better yet stayed with like he's supposed to. Frustrating to think of how much energy Remco wasted.

But to play João advocate - João is proven in a three week race, Remco isn't. Tomorrow a lot of questions about this and Bernal, Yates will be begin to be answered.

GrainBrain

Nizzolo! Nizzolo! Nizzolo!



That was a great finish and a real win. Affini went from a long ways and if it wasn't for Nizzolo he'd have won. What is going on with Vivianni? He can't stay with the train to save his life. At least this time his lead out wasn't 15 places infront of him! Kanter even finished ahead!

OBoile

It's perfectly reasonable to think that Almeida may end up ahead of Evenepoel in this Giro. Remco has some massive question marks.
But, at this point (and especially as this was occurring in that stage) only Remco has/had a reasonable shot at the podium or winning. Why play it safe for a 8th overall when you can gamble for the podium and possibly a win? No team is going to leave their top performer, and 2nd overall, alone to protect a guy who's already out of the GC.

MinnMan

Don't know much about the J-V guy who took a flier ahead of the pack on the way to the line? That took guts and he almost pulled it off.

slcbob

I mostly disagree. Joao is proven to NOT be a GT rider, at least at this still early point in his career. And Remco is unproven. Both of them brimming with potential, though.

More will be clear tomorrow. Except for the other more that will be murkier. Or deceptively unclear.

I think this Giro's unpredictability is expressed nicely in the form of average points per stage in the PCS game. Look at all those miracles.



Good call today with Nizzolo. I lean toward joining ooga-booga with Carthy tomorrow. Though I'm pretty certain that if we agree AND are right two days in a row then the end of days is near. So maybe that means Cepeda will come out before his 17 stage slumber and thrill a few of us. Or our Simon (now or never, lad?) burns some of the powder he's been dryly hoarding. Or Bernal just stamps his authority on it all. Or Remco answers his critics.

I used to be indecisive but this year I'm just not sure.

MinnMan

Yates.

one4smoke

You have to wonder just how much that August 15th crash took out of Remco. Was so, so strong up to that point. Still have a wait and see outlook, but one cant help but wonder.

diphthong

that is the number two pick...

diphthong

cepeda needs to wake up. dani martinez will likely be active. if bernal were farther down the gc ladder, martinez would be my pick for stage 14 or 16 or both but thinking he’ll be relegated to servicing bernal unless something drastic happens.

slcbob

No kidding. I wonder if Italy put him at the head of their Olympic delegation so they don't lose him to Jamaica in the last few hundred meters of the march on.

GrainBrain

I watched Horner explain the sprint. Can't imagine how Oss felt the moment Affini went up, and Oss looked underneath his arm pit and only to see a JV rider not pulling thru. Hard to think this was planned by JV but maybe Groenen radio'd up to say best chance for a win was by surprise? Maybe it was that last second Giro passion got to Affini and there was terse conversations in the team bus after?

Looked up Affini on pcs (again, *cough*) and he's a TT specialist. I had already forgotten he was second on stage 1 TT. Yet he had a ton of DNFs this season - all the classics he was in.

GrainBrain

Just checked in to see that a break has formed, a strong one! 7 minutes up, and they feature Affini with Bennett! Wow how come the peloton keeps letting Bennett get away? He clawed back 10 minutes the other day ...

GrainBrain

Great ride by Tratnik! Fortunato winning on mount zonclon for contadors team paves the way for big opportunities. Nice job holding off the effing idiot running alongside! Wild amount of fans but that idiot was too much and ruins the fun.

Remco looks really tired, Horner didn't pull any punches about his descending skills and thinks he should've stayed out. I disagree the whole point of all this seems to have been a practice run of sorts. You might as well get your butt handed to you by the best descenders in the peloton.

Vlasov out the back, doesn't look like Yates can get any time on Bernal unless Bernal pops. Oh what could have been for Bahrain and Landa!

MinnMan

Yates looked fresh and strong with a little over a km to go, but those gradients were too much for him.

diphthong

stage fifteen...team bh goes all out and drops most of the sprinters in those last 16 km over the last two climbs. sagan.

slcbob

That's a quality script but this is the Bizarro Giro with the script flipped.

A pity about the crash and neutralization ending Sagan's breakaway attempts and Buchmann's great ride.

Only one or two more of these 10+ min breaks and Mollema will be back in the GC race, though light on matches to burn.

diphthong

mollema does seem to be gaining strength in the last week. stage sixteen will be another good test of form.

team q a has carved out a decent little giro for themselves.