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Vuelta Stage 4 + 5 + 6 combined thread
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Looks like a chance for Matteo Trentin for Quickstep. Mainly downhill to the beach at Tarragona on the Mediterranean coast. Looks like this Vuelta is hitting all my beach spots from my 1988 bike tour:



On stage 3 Froome took a bonus 3 seconds in the intermediate sprint (which put him into the red jersey). Will anyone contest the sprint at 167.7K? After this "sprinter stage" the next day is an uphill finish on a day with multiple Cat3 climbs. Who else do you guys think can challenge. The sprinter competition profile does not feel TdF like!
Last edited by: devashish_paul: Aug 23, 17 20:35
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Re: Vuelta Stage 4: Downhill to Taragona for the Sprinters [devashish_paul] [ In reply to ]
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Today's stage demonstrated that I don't know squat! I wouldn't of thought Sky would go all in this early.

I haven't really looked at the sprinters that are racing, but just to be a contrarian I am going to guess that some up and coming talent uses the QC train to steal the lead. Degenkolb isn't probably also a decent bet. That guy needs a decent win this year.

Edit: I looked at the start list and there are officially no sprinters at this race. Kreder from Aqua Blue is my 50-1 pick. The Kreder brothers could put together the occasional win when they rode for Garmin.
Last edited by: grumpier.mike: Aug 21, 17 21:25
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Re: Vuelta Stage 4: Downhill to Taragona for the Sprinters [devashish_paul] [ In reply to ]
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I have been looking forward to this stage only because my daughter worked in Tarragona teaching English. Such a beautiful area.

Tarragona is the city right next to Cambrils the site of the second terror attack last week.

My choice to win Degenkolb.

All I Wanted Was A Pepsi, Just One Pepsi

Team Zoot, Team Zoot Mid-Atlantic

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Re: Vuelta Stage 4: Downhill to Taragona for the Sprinters [grumpier.mike] [ In reply to ]
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grumpier.mike wrote:
Today's stage demonstrated that I don't know squat! I wouldn't of thought Sky would go all in this early.

I haven't really looked at the sprinters that are racing, but just to be a contrarian I am going to guess that some up and coming talent uses the QC train to steal the lead. Degenkolb isn't probably also a decent bet. That guy needs a decent win this year.

Edit: I looked at the start list and there are officially no sprinters at this race. Kreder from Aqua Blue is my 50-1 pick. The Kreder brothers could put together the occasional win when they rode for Garmin.

On the one hand I am not surprised that there are less pure sprinters given course topology, but on the other hand, I would have expected some lower tier sprinters to not bother with the TdF and go for the Vuelta because bagging some stage wins is better for someone's Palmares than a pile of 3rd to 7ths. Having said, that if you are a sprinter and don't believe you can win then you probably lost 98% of the battle anyway!!!
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Re: Vuelta Stage 4: Downhill to Taragona for the Sprinters [devashish_paul] [ In reply to ]
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Is cycling.tv working for you? It tells me I'm in blackout...
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Re: Vuelta Stage 4: Downhill to Taragona for the Sprinters [Scheherazade] [ In reply to ]
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Scheherazade wrote:
Is cycling.tv working for you? It tells me I'm in blackout...

I was defocused with work (LOL) so I could not tune in yet. I clicked on cycling.tv and was able to get the free stage 4 coverage right now with 36K to go. Starting tomorrow, the free coverage ends. Last nite I was able to go on cycling.tv and watch the last 40K in detail. it was awesome. For some reason, they don't start the paid subscription today ($12 USD) and have given stage 4 for free and deferred payment to tomorrow.

Dev
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Re: Vuelta Stage 4: Downhill to Taragona for the Sprinters [grumpier.mike] [ In reply to ]
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Sky riders charge ahead to sweep up any intermediate sprint points so no other GC guys get them. Brilliant. Why are all the other teams so lame on these details?
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Re: Vuelta Stage 4: Downhill to Taragona for the Sprinters [devashish_paul] [ In reply to ]
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I don't know why people hate on sky, they are the smartest team in every GT. Yesterday they perfectly position froome in the intermediate sprint and gobbled up the 2nd place time bonus as well. Then on the run in to the climb they absolutely rip the first 500m putting guys instantly on the limit then ride tempo to set up froome. This is textbook racing and it is fun to watch. Today they are constantly on the front with several riders ready to protect Froome.

The Vuelta is the most fun GT to watch, lots of action from the start and teams seem to take more risks.
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Re: Vuelta Stage 4: Downhill to Taragona for the Sprinters [Ron_Burgundy] [ In reply to ]
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They're not liked simply because they're so dominant in the Tour, nobody likes that kind of dominance unless it's your team/country that's winning. In Sky's case they're not particularly popular in the UK either, partly because of ongoing concern over the Wiggins TUE saga and partly because in some quarters Froome isn't seen as being very British given that he grew up in Africa, now lives in Monaco, and has never lived in UK.

I agree with you though that from a racing perspective they're good to watch. 2012 was one of the dullest Tours ever (apart from the excitement of watching a Brit win for the first time) because Wiggins is simply a diesel engine. Froome has always been fun to watch though, I think it's almost a shame his team is so dominant because I think his natural impulse is to attack but with Sky he doesn't need to that often. We've seen him put in crazy attacks that leave him and his team spent the next day. He's attacked on descents, attacked in cross winds, in this year's Tour he was even attacking his own team mate when the smart thing was to sit back and let the other GC contenders do the work while Landa was up the road.

I'd love to see more of the Froome from Vuelta 2011 and TdF 2012.
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Re: Vuelta Stage 4: Downhill to Taragona for the Sprinters [cartsman] [ In reply to ]
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cartsman wrote:
They're not liked simply because they're so dominant in the Tour, nobody likes that kind of dominance unless it's your team/country that's winning. In Sky's case they're not particularly popular in the UK either, partly because of ongoing concern over the Wiggins TUE saga and partly because in some quarters Froome isn't seen as being very British given that he grew up in Africa, now lives in Monaco, and has never lived in UK.

I agree with you though that from a racing perspective they're good to watch. 2012 was one of the dullest Tours ever (apart from the excitement of watching a Brit win for the first time) because Wiggins is simply a diesel engine. Froome has always been fun to watch though, I think it's almost a shame his team is so dominant because I think his natural impulse is to attack but with Sky he doesn't need to that often. We've seen him put in crazy attacks that leave him and his team spent the next day. He's attacked on descents, attacked in cross winds, in this year's Tour he was even attacking his own team mate when the smart thing was to sit back and let the other GC contenders do the work while Landa was up the road.

I'd love to see more of the Froome from Vuelta 2011 and TdF 2012.

I agree with your assessement. I do like watching Sky's tactics and Froome racing even though I am not really a Sky fan. I am a fan of guys/teams who can win by being thorough in most instances, and then every so often just do wild attacks driven by "passion".

Today's stage, was somewhat boring. It was a sprinter stage with really no much of a sprinter competition (relatively speaking). It almost felt like Quickstep had to do nothing but obviously they did enough to win. Tomorrow multiple Cat 3 climbs and an uphill finish. Should be interesting.
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Re: Vuelta Stage 4: Downhill to Taragona for the Sprinters [grumpier.mike] [ In reply to ]
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grumpier.mike wrote:
Today's stage demonstrated that I don't know squat! I wouldn't of thought Sky would go all in this early.

I haven't really looked at the sprinters that are racing, but just to be a contrarian I am going to guess that some up and coming talent uses the QC train to steal the lead. Degenkolb isn't probably also a decent bet. That guy needs a decent win this year.

Edit: I looked at the start list and there are officially no sprinters at this race. Kreder from Aqua Blue is my 50-1 pick. The Kreder brothers could put together the occasional win when they rode for Garmin.

I picked Degenkolb for my fantasy team and he's done nothing [Zero points, after 2 sprinters stages]
Trentin becomes the 100th rider to have won atleast 1 stage in each of the 3 GTs.
Sky looks really strong right now, I hope QS, ORICA, or BMC can challenge them at some point

res, non verba
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Re: Vuelta Stage 4: Downhill to Taragona for the Sprinters [RoYe] [ In reply to ]
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Nothing useful to add to this thread other than declaring that Darwin Atapuma has to be the coolest name in the peloton. I don't know why, but it gets my vote. It's like this name should belong to some kind of a national monument or towering peak somewhere inaccessible in the Andes.

Other than that, he rides for UAE whose team director is Giuseppe Saronni. Saronni was the 1983 Giro Champion the year I got into cycling as an 18 year old. In 1985, I was bike touring in Italy heading from the coast in Venice towards Cortina d'Ampezzo in the Dolomites. Our route cross paths the reverse way of the Giro that was going from Val Gardena down to Venice. We got kicked off the road by the Italian caribinieri and forced to wait in driving rain in the Dolomites freezing for what seemed like 2 hours. 2 days before Saronni had won the first mountain stage into the Dolomites. Saronni was wearing the Maglia Rosa until the day before when Roberto Visentini took the Maglia Rosa. Every evening we would end our riding at a local bar and watch the Giro in every village with Italian old guys while we sat around in our bike gear with our touring bikes parked outside with Canadian flag on there. Literally, we never paid for drinks or dinner....Canadian flag, bike gear on, touring bikes outside, and the local elders bought us free stuff while we watched the Giro with them and cheered for the Italian strongmen (Saronni, Visentini, Moser).

. Hinault was over in France and challenging the Italians for the Maglia Rosa. Team 7-11 was there as the first American tourists. It was the second Grand Tour I got to watch "live" having bumped into the 1984 TdF in Grenoble the day Lucho Herrera took the first big Colombian stage in on Alpe d'Huez. These two trips got me hooked on grand tour racing. I did not realize that Saronni was the team director of UAE until I was looking at the entire team line up. History comes full circle as a fan.

OK detour from Vuelta 2017 to Giro 1985. If you are American and you see Teejay racing in the Vuelta, thank the likes of Ron Kiefel for breaking down the path...or for us Canadian's with mike Woods, we had Steve Bauer on Hinault's team that year.
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Re: Vuelta Stage 4: Downhill to Taragona for the Sprinters [devashish_paul] [ In reply to ]
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Adding stage 5 to this thread, since it seems most of us did not care about the Grand Tour void of any real sprint competition.

So here we go on Stage 5....lots of Cat 3 climbs and the first uphill stage finish. Aru and Bardet better try something. Hopefully Teejay can hang in podium range, but this will be the first test. I want to see what Nibali does after being dropped on the stage 3 climb.



This stage profile does not look like it would be approved for the IM Barcelona group ride though!!!!
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Re: Vuelta Stage 4: Downhill to Taragona for the Sprinters [devashish_paul] [ In reply to ]
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Looks like the final is really steep for only 400-500m. I am thinking one of the Ardennes guys has the best shot. Too bad Valverde or Dan Martin aren't here.That would be the easy pick.

I predict a reduced group of 60 hitting the bottom with a typical Ardennes style slugfest coming into the final. Allaphilipe (probably spelled wrong) of Quick Step takes the win. My long shot is Woods. The best placed GC guy is Bardet. He is pretty punchy if his form is OK, but I will probably be disappointed when Froome kills everyone (the Vuelta needs a little drama so I am going with long shots to keep it interesting).
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Re: Vuelta Stage 4: Downhill to Taragona for the Sprinters [grumpier.mike] [ In reply to ]
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grumpier.mike wrote:
Looks like the final is really steep for only 400-500m. I am thinking one of the Ardennes guys has the best shot. Too bad Valverde or Dan Martin aren't here.That would be the easy pick.

I predict a reduced group of 60 hitting the bottom with a typical Ardennes style slugfest coming into the final. Allaphilipe (probably spelled wrong) of Quick Step takes the win. My long shot is Woods. The best placed GC guy is Bardet. He is pretty punchy if his form is OK, but I will probably be disappointed when Froome kills everyone (the Vuelta needs a little drama so I am going with long shots to keep it interesting).


Hi Mike according to the Vuelta website, below are the climbs today. Last 3.4K at 10%. Not long, but I think too long for a classics guy. It would have been more of a Valverde or Dan Martin climb, the other climbs only seem to be large enough to shed sprinters:

Mountain passes & hills BenicĂ ssim / Alcossebre 175.7KM


Km 23.8 - Alto del Desierto de las Palmas7.8 kilometre-long climb at 4.8% - category 2
  • Km 55.3 - Alto de Cabanes7.3 kilometre-long climb at 4.4% - category 3
  • Km 87.6 - Coll de la Bandereta4.6 kilometre-long climb at 7.6% - category 2
  • Km 125.2 - Alto de la Serratella13.2 kilometre-long climb at 3.7% - category 2
  • Km 175.7 - Ermita Sta. LucĂ­a. Alcossebre.3.4 kilometre-long climb at 10% - category 3

Last edited by: devashish_paul: Aug 23, 17 6:26
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Re: Vuelta Stage 4: Downhill to Taragona for the Sprinters [grumpier.mike] [ In reply to ]
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Degenkolb out from bronchitis.

cycling.tv has another day of free coverage today.
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Re: Vuelta Stage 4: Downhill to Taragona for the Sprinters [devashish_paul] [ In reply to ]
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As a U.S. cycling fan, Teejay! is the the ultimate tease. Every time you count him out, he does just enough to make you think, "well, maybe...." And then every time you think he's looking great, he blows up and disappears.
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Re: Vuelta Stage 4: Downhill to Taragona for the Sprinters [Scurracane] [ In reply to ]
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Today was a good test of for the GC as the last 3.4km climb was a brute. Tejay came out only losing 8sec when Contador attacked hard with 400m to go. The surprise was how much Bardet lost, and also Nibs fell off the back of top GC group with about 800m to go and lost 30sec or so. Froomey, Chavez, Tejay and Contador look to be the strongest after this first test. I don't much about the Woods guy from Cannondale, but he climbed well and looked good too.

This is shaping up nicely, I would say.



"Only those who risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go." T.S. Elliot | Cycle2Tri.com
Sponsors: SciCon | | Every Man Jack
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Re: Vuelta Stage 4: Downhill to Taragona for the Sprinters [CPT Chaos] [ In reply to ]
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CPT Chaos wrote:
Today was a good test of for the GC as the last 3.4km climb was a brute. Tejay came out only losing 8sec when Contador attacked hard with 400m to go. The surprise was how much Bardet lost, and also Nibs fell off the back of top GC group with about 800m to go and lost 30sec or so. Froomey, Chavez, Tejay and Contador look to be the strongest after this first test. I don't much about the Woods guy from Cannondale, but he climbed well and looked good too.

This is shaping up nicely, I would say.

Darn, the entire work day got in the way and I have a ton of stuff to get done tonite for a customer opp tomorrow and I have family around and need to talk to them while working and can't watch the replay YET!!!
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Re: Vuelta Stage 4: Downhill to Taragona for the Sprinters [devashish_paul] [ In reply to ]
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Just watch the last 20min, it covers all the action



"Only those who risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go." T.S. Elliot | Cycle2Tri.com
Sponsors: SciCon | | Every Man Jack
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Re: Vuelta Stage 4: Downhill to Taragona for the Sprinters [CPT Chaos] [ In reply to ]
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super pumped for our hometown boy Woods hanging with Froome and Contador and dropping Nibbles and Bardet!

OK, adding stage 6 to this thread...lumpy profile, nothing that should blow apart the GC. Biggest climb at the end is 9.1K average 5%....almost feels like a big chainring climb for the classics guys!



After 5 stage already 2 min between the top 15:

1.GBRFROOME Christopher21TEAM SKY18h 07' 10'' 2.USAVAN GARDEREN Tejay38BMC RACING TEAM18h 07' 20''+ 00' 10''3.COLCHAVES RUBIO Johan Esteban41ORICA - SCOTT18h 07' 21''+ 00' 11''4.IRLROCHE Nicolas36BMC RACING TEAM18h 07' 23''+ 00' 13''5.ESPDE LA CRUZ MELGAREJO David11QUICK - STEP FLOORS18h 07' 33''+ 00' 23''6.ITANIBALI Vincenzo151BAHRAIN - MERIDA18h 07' 46''+ 00' 36''7.ITAARU Fabio131ASTANA PRO TEAM18h 07' 59''+ 00' 49''8.GBRYATES Adam48ORICA - SCOTT18h 08' 00''+ 00' 50''9.GBRYATES Simon49ORICA - SCOTT18h 08' 19''+ 01' 09''10.CANWOODS Michael91CANNONDALE DRAPAC PROFESSIONAL CYCLING TEAM18h 08' 23''+ 01' 13''11.NEDKELDERMAN Wilco61TEAM SUNWEB18h 08' 38''+ 01' 28''12.FRABARDET Romain81AG2R LA MONDIALE18h 08' 47''+ 01' 37''13.RUSZAKARIN Ilnur101TEAM KATUSHA ALPECIN18h 08' 50''+ 01' 40''14.FRABARGUIL WARREN62TEAM SUNWEB18h 08' 53''+ 01' 43''15.NEDOOMEN Sam69TEAM SUNWEB18h 09' 03''+ 01' 53''
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Re: Vuelta Stage 4: Downhill to Taragona for the Sprinters [devashish_paul] [ In reply to ]
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I got to go with a break tomorrow. 36k downhill to the finish isn't likely to do anything for Froome because it would take too many committed riders to hold a gap over that distance.

A break of 10-15 goes in the first 20k. Bora and Lotto probably need to go all in for a stage win, so they put their best foot forward tomorrow. 4 guys make it over the last climb and we have a sprint between them. Sky rides tempo all day and a largeish field finishes 6 minutes down.
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Re: Vuelta Stage 4: Downhill to Taragona for the Sprinters [grumpier.mike] [ In reply to ]
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Team Sky's classics heavy weight Gianni Moscon dropping the mountain goats again after multiple climbs today. Not suspicious at all.
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Re: Vuelta Stage 4: Downhill to Taragona for the Sprinters [Hybridlete] [ In reply to ]
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Hybridlete wrote:
Team Sky's classics heavy weight Gianni Moscon dropping the mountain goats again after multiple climbs today. Not suspicious at all.
Oh shut up.
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Re: Vuelta Stage 4: Downhill to Taragona for the Sprinters [BayDad] [ In reply to ]
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This is the Contador/Pantano combo I was hoping for in the TDF, glad were getting it in the Vuelta
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