Or even try to go for yellow. He was merely bait. The others had to chase him to keep podium position. If they don't chase, he takes bonus seconds and possibly a podium spot and Froome gets a free ride. It's great tactics when you have two of the strongest 5 riders in the race.

I'm confused by you responding to me as I did not once claim Landa would take or had a shot at taking yellow. But nevertheless, undermining your statement, when Landa attacked, he did in fact become virtual 3rd place rider and was within 30 second overall behind Froome until Froome subsequently attacked Bardet and bridged the gap back up to Landa. Landa did have his chance; he wasn't able to maintain his pace.

our local boy Joe d will be rockin the lime there for Cdale......

Barguil is a monster. That was a heck of an impressive ride. Can't imagine it will be long before he's going after the GC with a full team supporting him.

In the end, Bardet and Uran had their chance, but the closest any of the GC guys came to having an attack stick were Landa and Froome. When one team has the two of the five strongest guys in the race, the best domestique in the race in Kwiatkowski, and by far the strongest time trialer of anyone remotely close on GC, they're going to be tough to beat. And all of this is with Niaves on bad form in the Alps and Thomas having crashed out.

Don't mean to accuse anyone of anything untoward, but I'd be very interested to hear what Sky knows that everyone else doesn't. With all the data teams have at their disposal, between heart rate, power meters, lab testing, nutrition and sport science, cycling so often feels like a math problem that's been solved. But Sky seems to have solved it better than everyone else. Maybe it's just the money at their disposal and the fact that they concentrate so much on the Tour instead of other races. But this is the sixth year in a row they've come to the Tour with strongest team. What are they doing differently from the other teams?

The money and concentrating on the Tour is a huge part of their success. To some degree it feels like the other teams don't feel like they can beat Sky and spread their A team legs between the other Grand Tours and show up to the TdF with 80-90% of their horsepower. If Movistar shows up with their Giro A team, with all of them tapered and rested and not fried like Nairo and Valverde does not crash out, we MIGHT be looking at another picture, but Movistar never put it all on the line

Sky have solved the math problem quite simply - they've got the biggest budget and the most single-minded pursuit of their main goal. I doubt they're doing anything particularly different to other teams but they're doing it with better riders, a better support operation, and with nearly everything focused on winning the Tour.

Everybody else has fewer dollars and backs more horses with them. That's the math problem.

You managed to misspell Izoard 3 times ;-)

I can understand why the TdF will never be as popular as the NFL ( or even WWE wrestling) in the US. We're waiting/hoping for fireworks today but they never came.

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"Human existence is based upon two pillars: Compassion and knowledge. Compassion without knowledge is ineffective; Knowledge without compassion is inhuman." Victor Weisskopf.

It was just as fun as the NFL in 1996 when Riis and the NFL players were equally doped out. Now cycling has a bio passport, so the riders have to play it out in survival mode....or you have more 2.5 hour stages vs 5+ hour stages. You can have doping and excitement with 5 hr stages or more clean riding and excitement with short stages. More clean riding and long stages and you only have idiots like Contador going at it from 100km + out on Col de Fer and hope that passion gets you over Galibier for the stage win. But at least he gave us entertainment

I am using my "stupid Quebec Anglophone brown immigrant" get out of Jail with a kick in the butt card to get out of bastardizing the fine French language. During TdF month, at least the French tolerate stupid non French speakers. In Quebec you get zero tolerance.

OK....ultimate quote from yesterday's stage,

"DARWIN ELIMINTATING THE WEAK"

Darwin Atapuma and Winner Anacona are the two coolest names in the peloton. I am assuming Winner will be on deck at the Vuelta!

I haven't seen any mention on ST about what appeared to be thermal scanning from a motor bike during Stage 18. The guy with the scanner on the back of the motorcycle pulled it out of sight when the tv motorcycle was focused on him, but the pulled away and back, then focused on the scanning again. I didn't see this in other stages and there was nothing mentioned by Paul or Phil so perhaps the checks are common now and being downplayed? I was laughing a little because they were scanning well back in the field:)

It is good they are scanning. I saw that mentioned on the Izoard stage by Robbie McEwan on our Canadian feed.

Coming back to the Landa attack Froome, I don't think that he can cut it as the GC leader on a team. He is just giving away too much time on ITT's and once outside of Sky he will be even slower on ITT's because he won't have as strong a team to sit behind for 95% of the riding so he'll have gone through a grand tour burning more Kilojoules. At Sky he's been able to shine when he attacks because Sky has the most amazing "even pacing" strategy over 3 weeks. They minimize useless surges and energy sapping efforts until they are truly needed. Froome rides the ultimate in terms of energy distribution. Once he goes to another team, the team directors are not smart enough to realize they are doing a cycling equivalent of the Alaskan Iditarod sled dog race. Brailsford and crew are the ultimate mushers. He knows how to squeeze the most out of his sled dogs on the most consistency energy expenditure such that they can literally rebuild their body through most of today's stage for tomorrow's stage by keeping metabolism as low as possible for the longest possible period. The other teams race like idiots like they are in a 1 day classic every day treating tomorrow and next week as an afterthought. Once Landa is out of that, he does not even make top 10. I bet you if Contador raced for Sky and Sky could control him just based on his ITT yesterday, Contador finishes second. They would keep his silliness in check and get him to save his energy for when it counts.