trail wrote:
H- wrote:
Want to see Aru and Fulgsang refuse to work, then Froome will too, and NQ comes back. How stupid would Astana look then? Got a gap on the climb and then piss it away. Do you really think you might see this happen? Can you imagine what Vino would do to them if they did that?
This. In cycling you always seek to narrow the odds. Aru and Fuglsang narrowed the odds.
I chuckle at everyone who suggests that Froome would have worked if Aru and Fuglsang hadn't. That's not how bike racing works. If you want the GC leader to do work, send someone dangerous up the road. No one dangerous was able to get up the road, and it wasn't going to happen after the crest of the climb. There was no dropping Froome at that point. So you might as well stick a dagger in Quintana. And then hope a chink in Froome's nearly impenetrable armor appears sometime in the (considerable) remaining stages.
Let's look at this another way. Bardet is up the road, Froome in the middle, Quintana behind. Quintana is on fried legs from the Giro, but he's still "kind of close enough to worry about". Bardet, is fresh and a threat for the win. In week 3 when everyone is on fried legs, maybe Quintana is more of a threat. By driving hard, Aru+Fuglsang are eliminating as much as they can future threats from Bardet and Quintana (and Martin). Froome would be motivated to do the same rather than let Bardet get more of a lead and Quintana/Martin get closer. So everyone in that group kind of had to hammer hard for the same reasons.
Last edited by:
devashish_paul: Jul 10, 17 6:35