Dumoulin surprised me at the cobbles today, but the final week is going to be the real test.
Lots of cat 1/2 climbs in one stage several days in a row.
If he's still leading his rivals going into final final TT, then the pink is his; if he's trailing Quintana by 2 minutes or more, Quintana will probably win.
If Dumoulin is behind by less than 2 minutes........

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Geschke and Ten Dam are riders capable of getting in a break and helping TD. Hope they are in shape and have just been keeping their powder dry to this point. I don't recognize the names of any of the other remaining Sunweb riders (w/ Kelderman out). Are any of the others capable of providing support?

Stage today looked meh till 4-5 km to go and ended up super.

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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

OK, so I missed watching today's stage and went for a ride but did not expect Quintana to be outgunned by Dumoulin for the stage. I guess we now know who is the boss of this peloton! Hopefully everything we see is what we see and there is no magic going on at Sunweb. I'm a fan of Dumoulin but it's feeling a bit too good to be true at the moment. Fingers crossed that the Dutch Grand Tour curse can be broken by this guy though. He's really riding like the boss of the peloton!

I just watched today's highlight video and how Dumoulin just took control over the race:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvJiP0fbPxM

This feels like the Indurain transformation to me.

Well I hope so, being Dutch myself, after the bitter crashes of Kruijswijk and Mollema in the last two years. Dumoulin said himself in an interview that he was very glad but surprised he won the stage. He said the stage was favourable for him because it was all flat with only the climb at the end. Let's see how he'll do Tuesday. And indeed, we still have Kruijswijk and Mollema🇳🇱

I thought Dumoulin would be able to stay with (or at least very close to) Quintana on today's stage, but seeing Dumoulin leave Quintana behind (on any hill) was surprising.

The climbs next week will be a bigger challenge for Dumoulin, but he sure looks good after today's stage.

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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.

Today's stage has a 2000 ft "bump" before the finish in Bergamo:



They are on that section now, with Maglia Rosa group together. Small breakaway group 49 second up. No major players in that from what i can see

http://www.streaming-hub.com/lequipe-21-live/

Quintana crashes, but no major damage on the first descent. It looks like Dumoulin sat up and slowed down the Maglia Rosa group to let everyone re group...at least it looks like that.

Yep, very nice of Dumoulin to do it.

didn't realize that the stage finish is the same as the 2014 Giro di Lombardia, with that infamous gate of death with 1km left

edit: thank goodness i'm wrong about this. they choose a slightly different finish

Odd finish. Quintana "sprints" into 2nd place for the stage.

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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.

Yeah, he won me over with that move. As you guys know, I was critical of Movistar keeping the rev's up when the race was on at the bottom of Blockhaus and Thomas and Yates were down. Most people responded with "when the race is on no mercy". Glad to see Dumoulin react differently. He may have had the chance to put Quintana right out of contention today, but let him back in and then Quintana even got to claw back some bonus second due to his 2nd overall on the stage!

interesting thing is that movistar were the ones on the front pushing the pace on the descent when quintana crashed
"Gorka Izagirre led Quintana on the descent, but came into a curve a bit hot and Quintana had to brake hard to avoid overlapping wheels in the turn. He still slid out into the dirt and tumbled into the crash barrier. He was not hurt and quickly got going again. Unfortunately, his Movistar team car stopped just after the corner and several riders went close to hitting it - including two Movistar riders."

i think it wouldn't have been unreasonable to take advantage of that situation, clearly just not dumoulin's style - he wants to win with his legs.

Nothing odd about time bonuses, those 6 seconds will come in handy on the last stage TT

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I think he was more referring to Quintana sprinting.....

As for the bonus seconds - on a day when Tommy D had the grace to pull the peloton up when a GC competitor was down (exactly a week after the crash that took out Thomas, Linda, Keldermann) Quintana & Movistar lost me. Then again, they lost me with the pink shorts and the "what red flag?" last time.

Maybe.

Dumoulin effectively has 4.5 minutes to work with in high mountains. Baring a complete implosion or bad luck, last week he showed he only has to stay within himself this week to bring it home. The terrain favors Quintana and doubtful Dumoulin can climb with him, but he doesn't need to with that kind of cushion.

Queen Stage tomorrow. Many say it is best, and maybe last, chance for contenders to break Dumoulin.

Will Dumoulin give up pink or significant time?

Will someone from the break win? And if so, who?

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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

Tomorrow is the "coppi cima ", but by no means the last chance to test Dumoulin.
Quintana will try to take back a minute or two Tuesday, a few minutes thursday, friday, and saturday also.
Duloulin will still be in the pink, but not sure for how much longer

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break should stick tomorrow.....I'm going with a Cannondale guy.....:)

In reference to the sprint on Stage 13; here's Bennett's point of view.

Says that Richeze deliberately blocked and bumped leadout guy to block out Bennett at about 250m. Has been getting aggressive with Selig and Muhlberger the last few stages.

"With his sprint done, Gregor Muhlberger pulled over to the left 50m later to let Rudi launch me from his wheel but as soon as he did Richeze came up alongside him and drove a shoulder into him to try and block my path to the line."

Worth a read

http://www.independent.ie/sport/other-sports/cycling/sam-bennett-richeze-told-rudi-hed-make-him-crash-the-next-time-if-necessary-35735661.html

yea, that's interesting. I watched that part five or six times. I can't speak to the bumping before Bennett got loose, other than to say there was a lot, but these two comments sound like sour grapes.

to the first, the street had painted lines, you could see it was Ewan banging on Richeze to close out Gaviria on the right. Richeze held a straight line. to his credit. the banging by Ewan was late and looked pissy. I guess it could have been retaliatory.

and as far as "closing the door", man, that horse was gone

Edit: and great find on that interview. such drama in these big races. races within races.

To be fair, the piece is probably ghost-written by a journalist from an interview with Bennett. They're always going to try to phrase it to get some controversy.

I think nearly everyone thinks that Richeze was in the right to take a bump from Bennett. The shenanigans described a couple of hundred meters earlier wasn't captured on camera so we only have the interview.

For good measure, here's a description of the sprint from stage 5. Breathless stuff.

""MOVE UP! WAIT! GO!"
From 1.5km to 1.3km to go felt really long today because I wasn't comfortable at all. On the roundabout, with 1.2km to go, I lost Rudi's wheel when my handlebars got hooked on the guy on my inside as we leaned into the sweeping U-turn at 55kph. As my bars were higher than his, they caught underneath and I had to shoulder him to get them off.
In order to keep my speed up, I tried to pedal around the curve but could feel my shoe brushing off the tarmac, and with my arse on the tip of my saddle and all my weight on the front of the bike, my back wheel started to skip.
Trying to keep my wheel on the ground, accelerate and overtake the guy in front of me, I used up a bit of energy to get back up to ninth in line behind Rudi and Lukas.
Elbow
Suddenly, we had just 600m to go, and with the other lead-out men pulling off the front, Quickstep came up the outside with their sprinter and former pink jersey Fernando Gaviria in tow.
One of them went straight to the front, while Max Richeze jumped in on Rudi's wheel in third place. I used another bit of energy trying to go around him, with the Brazilian sticking an elbow in my arse just to let me know he was there and make it that bit harder for me. To be honest, though, I didn't even notice it until I watched the replay. It's all part of the game and didn't bother me. With Rudi now opening up his lead-out on the front, a headwind in the finishing straight meant I knew I had to time my sprint perfectly to have any chance of winning the stage."

i'd say stage 18 (Thursday) and, to a lesser extent, stage 20 would also matter. Key is to get Dumoulin isolated on the penultimate climb and have Dumoulin chase Quintana up the penultimate climb, through the valley, and on the final climb. Doubtful that he'd be distanced by a lot with attacks just on the last climb

Bump from Ewan - I should have said

Quintana himself doesn't seem suited to being off the front for very long, though. He seems to do best at quick strikes rather than just riding people into submission. I think the risk to Dumoulin is collusion among the top 4-5 guys. If Pinot or someone goes on the penultimate climb and everyone forces Sunweb to chase, Dumoulin could be alone very quickly. I think the risk to Dumoulin is just completely cracking on the final climb from having to close gaps himself over a period of an hour or more.