B_Doughtie wrote:
So Froome does not need to go ballistic to get back yellow, he just needs to play the odds that his teammate will have a bad day and go back into helper mode. Trying to attack his own teammate while the guy is in yellow will just feed the press frenzy anyway at this point. -----------
Yes but how is it likely that GT will have a "bad" day without pressure from Froome. That's the thing.....GT has never been allowed to be in this type of leadership position has he, he's always been a grunt in the pace line that falls off when he's hit his limit. So then it becomes, what's going to make him have a bad day? All the GC guys have bad days *mostly* from the continued pressure from Sky every single day. Can GT call off some of the pressure?
That's the beauty in that it's likely to take Froome "attacking" his own teammate to win it, if he "waits" for him to have a bad day that pressure is just going to grow. Imo Froome's ally's are pretty much GC guys 4-8th who still need to attack. He can latch onto their wheel and get help from them to drive the pace and it looks like a peaceful tactic and not Froome "attacking" his own teammate. GT's "ally" is TD who really only needs to sit in on Froome's time and he'll likely get Froome in itt. The problem with both is the time to GT, I think it has to get below 30s going into the iTT.
I think what happens is Nairo/Landa/Bardet attack, Dumoulin goes, Froome has the excuse to mark Dumoulin, and Thomas gets dropped on his bad day. This is the only way Froome attacks his teammate in yellow. In essence Froomes rivals become his allies on the intra squad one upmanship!
Dev