This is the GC standing, end of the 10th stage: http://www.giroditalia.it/eng/rankings/
Dumoulin is 2:23 to the good of Quintana, with 11 stages remaining.
4 of the stages will be climbers [including the Stelvio], still one more ITT on the finale.
I'll predict Quintana will pass Dumoulin in the mountain stages for pink, and the winner will be decided in Milan.

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res, non verba

so when does NQ get the jersey back and how big of a lead does he need?

tomorrow (5/17) - a 2, two 3s, and a 2
Saturday (5/20) - a finishing cat 1
Tuesday (5/23) - fer sher. gotta have it after this

not tomorrow; he's going to be too knackered by today's effort. Perhaps Saturday, more likely Tuesday.

How big a lead? Say 1 min 45, perhaps a bit less. Dumoulin would be tired by the final stage as well, doubtfull he'll be as effective. I'm not sure about the bonus second situation, but Quintana may be able to pad his lead with those (so the actual gap at the end of the stages doesn't need to be as large). It favors Dumoulin that there aren't as many MTF this year

The "going out out a limb" part was tongue in cheek, but I was pretty sure about Dumoulin being in pink after today.

However, I didn't think Dumoulin would be that much faster than everyone else. Quintana (and Pinot) were worse than I thought they'd be.

Given today's performances, Quintana will need at least a two minute lead over Dumoulin going into the final stage. That could happen. The loss of Kelderman won't help, but Dumoulin will probably just follow Quintana's wheel for as long as he can when they get to a mountain stage. Should be lots of fun to watch!

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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.

rather, i think Dumoulin will let Quintana ride away and just ride at a sustainable pace

Quintana will have to attack on the penultimate or an earlier climb to make a real difference

What's going on today? Who all are in this breakaway group 2 min up on the pink jersey Dutch Windmill guy?

Am I seeing Pinot attacking solo off the pack, ~ 2 min up on Dumoulin?

No, he's only a handfull of seconds ahead of the Maglia Rosa group. Chase group is a large group of riders that have been away for a long time. Leaders are Rolland and Fraile.

Great racing ahead of a 220 k day coming up. Nice ride by Rolland, great ride by Fraile. Good on him. I thought Rui was going to come around them all.

Lotta good racing yesterday in Cali.....

looking for someone with more bike racing knowledge than me:
did the Bora squad try to drive Gaviria into the boards by blocking his leadout man into him?

https://t.co/mAhBILBJql


with a few hundred to go, the Bora and QS riders were bumping harnd. then they stopped. but once Gaviria started his flyer up the right side, it appeared that the Bora rider spotted him and tried to drive the QS rider right to cut off the lane. good on him, the QS rider knew Gaviria was coming and held the right side open.

so says my untrained eye.

Thomas from the Sky Team has abandoned. He said his knee that was banged up on the Blockhaus stage has gotten worse every day. Considering that, his ITT was amazing. I wonder if his ITT position puts less stress on the injured part of the knee than his road position, or he just "dealt with it" in the ITT as there was more pain from elsewhere in the body, but at lower intensity on long stages it is really apparent.

http://www.cyclingnews.com/...ns-the-giro-ditalia/

Dev

Looks like Selig of Bora actually blocked Ewan. Richeze of QS took a bump from Ewan to keep space for Gaviria on the right - amazing work from Richeze.

One could also say that Selig was making space to allow others to come on the left but to my eye he pulled off too much to the right. Others might see it differently.

Richeze was complaining about Selig constantly bumping in every sprint - seems a bit overly agressive.

I also thought the 700m to go attack from Postlberger was a great tactic - didn't expect to pull it off but he did force QS to close him down and that disrupted their train.

Gaviria has amazing cat-like sprinting qualities. He appears to be much bigger than Cav or McEwen who have similar characteristics.

I believe it was a slight downhill so that would have helped Gaviria a bit compared to Bennett or Ewan. He's a few lbs heavier than Bennett and quite a lot heavier than Ewan.

or his time-trial position puts more stress on the knee. he could get through it once for the itt, but that extra stress on top of the (previous day?) crash maybe put the knee too far gone to recover this week?

dev, heard you and konaexpress are riding in Gatineau park tomorrow. have a fun time, and watch out for the racing cars. they seem to be worse this year.

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run well, run happy
george

It was a really cool sprint to watch. Richeze absolutely knew what he was doing, and his attempt to make space for Gaviria on the barrier was super smart and legal.

Gaviria is a little bigger than Bennett and Ewan, but at 70-71kg, he is pretty average in size for a sprinter. In addition to his ridiculous kick and maneuverability, his team has also mentioned several times how aerobically strong he is compared to other sprinters. He's probably marginally fresher at the end which makes it a little easier for him to unleash. His combination of skills is going to allow him to win a ton of races.

McNulty wrote:

Lotta good racing yesterday in Cali.....

Damn, Talanksy is hurting people. Great TT today.

He needs to group up the young Cannondale guys and teach them the ABCs.

OK, it seems that Fleck needs to change the title of this thread to, "Cervelo releases new disc brake aero road bike with built in optional motor" at Giro. It seems like no one on ST is really interested in some of the best racing going on:

Here is today's stage profile. It is the first day that the climbers can try to do some damage on climber Dumoulin. Movistar has to shut down any breakaways so that no one can steal the stage time bonuses. Quintana needs to take every second of time bonus he can. Same with Nibali and Pinot. Those three teams should be motivated to keep things together until the climb up to Oropa. There should be a replay of the drag race to the foot of Blockhaus:

i am intrigued by this stage. it could be a slug fest if it was at the end of the tour. sadly i suspect it will go down like Etna or the post TT stage; lots of staring, a few feints, but in the end, all drama, they all have Tuesday on their mind.

and good points about the doping. the race organizers don't get enough of the beating for the doping. some of these courses, wtf. of course no 'normal' person could do that. it would be carnage. and so, the UCI and the ASO look like the WWE. SMH.

(edit: i just realized that was in the other thread)

If you look at the Tour de Ski (XC ski World Tour race), basically a 12 year old kid could easily finish all stages every day with some effort. The stages are short enough so that it's full on racing, but a human does not need WWE style enhancement to just complete the thing and not be shattered. If you do any of these Grand Tour Queen Stage type of days, definitely a rest day before and after is needed for "real humans". I understand that pro athletes can race hard and recover faster than the rest of us tourists, but even they have their limits. When people used to say that athletes in the 80's raced less hard in cycling and the giro was a 4 hour cigar smoke followed by 1 hour of racing there was some truth to that. With access to less high octane dope, the peloton knew for self preservation things had to be paced out to just survive through the three weeks. Now with higher octane dope, and better prep, while not as insane as the Tour in terms of racing from the gun every day, it's not a cigar smoke/espresso stop tour for 80% of each day. Basically back then, there were equivalently stupid stages, but the peloton self preserved. It would be like an unwritten NFL rule where for 6 quarters, they would play touch football and the refs would roll with that, because the organizers decided to have 8 quarter games instead and it would turn into tackle football only in quarters 7 and 8.

Quintana attacks, TD brings it back, and then attacks Quintana just as a "bring it bro" kind of moment.

What a finish! I got home from work in time to watch the last 10k...probably the best finish I've watched so far this year. I definitely did not expect Quintana to get dropped.

they should have more cobbles on climbing stages

i recall Dumoulin taking seconds on people in the 2015 Vuelta during similar circumstances, albeit on flat ground

Yup, so much for a dull stage. Fantastic finish. Can't wait til Tuesday. I just hope TD doesn't grenade

Quintana is under pressure and mentally on the back foot, He tried to do too much today and paid the price.

i don't think he's on the back foot; not until after 2 of the mountainous stages are over. Sunweb looked awfully weak in the final. If Quintana decides to attack on the penultimate climb or even earlier, Dumoulin might lose time. Sunweb will need to send people into the break to make sure that someone actually accompanies Dumoulin in the later kms of a stage