Swings and roundabouts, Froome had pulled everyone to the top of the last mountain.

You could make that same statement about all 4 riders and then they wouldn't have caught bardet.

i may be wrong, but i think Barguil hasn't won anything since those two stages of the 2013 Vuelta

Watching the stage again, a lot of that descent was new pavement. Robbie McEwan was thinking it may even by new since the Dauphine. In any case, with the recent rain it was still wet and maybe oily. A solo descent in that or being the front guy would have been much better than how tight these guys were. Fuglsang, actually played it pretty smart on a lot of it, leaving a larger safety gap even though the downside was potentially getting dropped.

I am also still totally confused on how Porte ends up going off the left side of the road. It makes zero sense. His momentum should pull him to the outside (which is what happened after the crash). I wonder if just before he went off the left he had flatted and a soft rear wheel was losing traction. The view from the camera is obscured since Martin is behind him so you don't see that shook out to send him off to the left.

Does anyone have any updates on the Demare time cut. Cycling news shows him no longer in the points standings, so I assume a bunch of them are formally out of the TdF

Dev,

I agree, super weird the way Porte crashed on the inside of that turn. He seemed to be going straight into the inside rather than swinging out wide. If not a flat then maybe just bonkie from the effort of the day and loss of concentration.

Uran's mechanical stems from Porte's crash.....Porte takes down Dan Martin who bashes against the wall of rock and is spit back out onto the road. At that point Martin's heel hits Uran's rear derailleur, just as Rigoberto sneaks by. Uran was running an 11x30 cassette today and then ~2k later, when he rolled back to neutral support, I think he just asked the tech to pull the plug on the Di2 so it would drop to the 11. It was "mostly" flat so he'd be down to two choices: 39x11 and 53x11. Fascinating on how the pieces fell together on the day.

Not just Damare OTL but the 3 FDJ guys who rode with him out too (Delange, Konovalovas, Guamieri). So FDJ is down to Thibaut Pinot and ??? Le Gac (last man on GC - I think he's been dealing with an illness since day one), Cimolai (who's only 5 up from Le Gac), Vichot & Molard (those last two are ahead of Pinot on GC). The ups and downs of FDJ!!!

Ian

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Ian Murray
http://www.TriathlonTrainingSeries.com
I like the pursuit of mastery
Twitter - @TriCoachIan

Quite a few out either from crashes or time limit:

OTL Juraj Sagan (Svk) Bora-Hansgrohe

OTL Matteo Trentin (Ita) Quick-Step Floors

OTL Mark Renshaw (Aus) Dimension Data

OTL Ignatas Konovalovas (Ltu) FDJ

OTL Jacopo Guarnieri (Ita) FDJ

OTL Mickael Delage (Fra) FDJ

OTL Arnaud Demare (Fra) FDJ

DNF Jos Van Emden (Ned) Team LottoNl-Jumbo

DNF Robert Gesink (Ned) Team LottoNl-Jumbo

DNF Manuele Mori (Ita) UAE Team Emirates

DNF Richie Porte (Aus) BMC Racing Team

DNF Geraint Thomas (GBr) Team Sky

It looked to me as though he got on the wrong side of another rider and had nowhere else to go.

Will have to look again to be sure.

As for not pullin for Froome. They weren't. They wanted the stage win and the time bonuses and to catch Bardet. And if they hadn't worked hard how close would the guys behind have gotten? Racing another 5 for the win is better than a other 7.

Demare couldn't find a car to hang onto? Je suis desole'.

Sucks about Porte. He was (and has been this season) looking like he could win it.

Awesome ride by Rigo!!!!!!!!!!! Good for Cdale.

From Mavic twitter page:


I was watching and wondered why Rigo kept motioning for support on the descent. Then saw them working on the RD. He really struggled on the little rise in the last 10K. Standing and spinning very slowly at half the cadence of the others.

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It doesn't really matter what Phil is saying, the music of his voice is the appropriate soundtrack for a bicycle race. HTupolev

I think we would need to see the video around 5-10 seconds earlier to see how the line into that turn that Porte went on the inside of got set up (or even before the exit of the previous turn to see how they came out which sets up the next one). It's just funky that he ends up going off the road on the left side. Makes no sense without seeing why he was on that trajectory in the first place. When he goes off the road he has not even started the coutersteer with his left hand to turn left and his back wheel is pointing "right" instead of "left" (as you would expect at that point when he should have been set up to execute and come out of the left turn. So it just seems like we're not seeing the full picture from 5-10 seconds ago.

[/quote]I was watching and wondered why Rigo kept motioning for support on the descent. Then saw them working on the RD. He really struggled on the little rise in the last 10K. Standing and spinning very slowly at half the cadence of the others.[/quote]
not only the struggle on that little rise but it took him forever to wide up that 53x11 for the sprint - making the win all that more incredible.

Ian

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Ian Murray
http://www.TriathlonTrainingSeries.com
I like the pursuit of mastery
Twitter - @TriCoachIan

I missed the sprint as my crappy steep hill link feed cut out. First time in years that I have not bought the NBC TDF package. But after the Sagan miscarriage of justice I "quit" the Tour this year. Ok, I couldn't resist peeking in today.

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It doesn't really matter what Phil is saying, the music of his voice is the appropriate soundtrack for a bicycle race. HTupolev

no Sagan, no Porte to challenge the Froomer and Sky, can't root for Aru who clearly went on the Zakarin diet plan....so hoping Rigo and Bardet and Martin hang in and maybe somebody else blows up at some point

APparently Martin has said Porte locked his rear and that sent him out of control. Weird that it would send him there though.

If he locked his wheel in the previous turn, then it makes sense where he ends up. Kind of like a slalom skier. You have to set up during this gate to enter and come out of the next gate. If you set up wrong in this gate, you might make it through this one, but you don't have a chance in the next gate. If something locked up before we see the video it makes sense where Porte is on the left side heading for the inside. That's the only thing I can think of. When the video starts in this article:

http://www.velonews.com/...-porte-afraid_443211


we're already not seeing the whole picture of what happens before

See, this is the definitive answer to whether you should use 2x.

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'It never gets easier, you just get crazier.'

This +100
Wtf? Why ffs arent they letting froome doing all the chase work the last kilometers?

This is the stupidest thing ever. These guys already gave up and are battling for 2nd and 3th place. Disgusting too watch.

Compare this with the Giro... There they at least fighting for the 1st place.

makes zero sense for aru to pull. had he done ZERO work the group would have caught bardet. he may have had more legs to go for the time bonuses. instead, froome takes another 4 seconds on him. poor fulsang, did all that work, for nothing. //

Sometimes you just get to a point where you have to concede to a guy on the day and fight the battles that are behind you. If he or anyone else did what you advocate here it could have ended the chase all together. And in the end Froome still has yellow, only now the guys breathing down their necks in the top 15 are much closer. I don't think drilling that break was a mistake at all, it was what it was so you make the best of a rare situation to put time on guys that for sure will be challenging you later on. It would have been a wasted opportunity after forcing that rare little break to just let it expire, or not take full time advantage of it. You think if everyone sits on Froome is still going to pull his guts out? No way, he did the single hardest job and that was to form that little group, no one else was going to do that. The fact that he would still participate in it was a bonus for them, not something to look at and think maybe I could be a passenger here.


In the end you live to fight another day, but now with more distance between you and the next dozen riders, I would say good day for all of them that finished in that break..

Totally spot on. Really good analysis.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rVlE1Mhu4WA
This is the porte crash, Kirby says "damp in places....." and then porte goes off
Man, that looked painfull, wishing Richie a full speedy healing..
Dan Martin was lucky he didn't break something
Uran is my new hero, gets a bent derailleur from Martins flailing foot, goes down to 2 geaRs, and still wins a brunch sprint from some of the best riders on the planet.

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res, non verba

x2. I have a hard time criticizing Aru there.

YES 10x

I was screaming at my TV (happens every year, the others except Bardet are racing for 2nd only, unfortunately)

I disagree with you. You make Froome work (he would have, wouldn't want to lose too much time to Bardet) and try to attack him closer to the finish to gain time on him. The thing is they don't believe they can beat Froome, so they race for 2nd.

Those two paragraphs don't make sense. Pick one.

Want to see Nairo drop, then you can't complain that Aru and Fulgsang worked to keep their margin on him. (I'm sure Aru and Fulgsang are happy to see NQ drop as well.)

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?

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It doesn't really matter what Phil is saying, the music of his voice is the appropriate soundtrack for a bicycle race. HTupolev

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.