He's two years older than Bernal, and has been doing Grand Tours since age 20 with little trouble. Your 5th Grand Tour at age 24 is a great time to get some practice riding GC on the big stage. There's no pressure. The pressure is on Porte.

I just thought it was a little curious to send him up the road. They said they were all-in for Porte, yet send his best support climber up the road all day. And I don't think they sent him up the road in order to drop back and help Porte later. Either they don't have much confidence in Porte and are chasing mountain classification as a backup....or they're seeing how he can hang in there with the big boys to see if they want to "promote from within" for the post-Porte era or spend money going after Landa or somebody.

I think there may be an underlying reason why Ineos really backed off today. Poels is usually one of their big workhorses and he was one of the first to drop off. I think they know that even after the ITT, their team leadership won't be cemented until after stages 14 and 15. So instead of 7 domestiques, they'll only really have 6, and Poels will have to act as head lieutenant for those stages. Whoever is behind (Bernal or Thomas) after stage 15 will fall into the head lieutenant role and the other 6 guys can slot back into their normal pecking order.

Racing more aggressively... seems a lot like they bluffed and got called out.

Ineos have the quality of riders that they can sit at optimum power for the climb, in the knowledge that if a rider goes on the attack he will have to slow eventually as Ineos are riding the optimum modelled power for the climb. As I see it, the only way the other teams are going to challenge this is to work together to launch four or five of their best off the front. They don’t have the domestiques to challenge the hegemony of Ineos. They need to burn their domestiques collaboratively breaking free the big guns.

The problem is that once, say, Quintana, Landa, Pinot, Porte, Yates, Uran and Martin they’ll never work together all the way to the line, and the Ineos train will grind past them.

With Froome out, I’m hoping this TdF is a bit more exciting...

I'm looking at putting a bet on today's stage winner, not been following this Tour at all (work)

Who's your money on???

Edit looking at the odds, I'm guessing it's a sprint finish

Groenewegen 13/8
Vivani 13/8
Ewan 11/2
Sagan 6/1
Kristoff 12/1
Nizzolo 33/1
Matthew's 33/1
Colbrelli 33/1

Why are odds on Kristoff and Matthew's so long?

Contrast that to EF. That finish seemed tailor made for Rusty Woods, but he stayed glued to Rigo the whole way. That looks more like a team all in for their leader than Trek.

EF rode well. Great support from Woods for Uran and of course today was Tejay's trademark WTF day. :) Although in fairness Tejay is a better long and steady type of climber.

How about 14 riders with a VAM over 1800 for 20+ minutes up that climb? Amazing.

George Bennett is looking terrific this year. Looks like he might have resolved some of his issues that have been affecting him physically.

Owe. I have an urge to call out sick for a rest day just after reading that.

Tejay is in a crash today, doesn't look good just now.

Would not be disappointed if it was van Aert today. Or Matthews. They worked so hard for him Wednesday and he was gutted to have misplayed it. Colbrelli has been lurking...

I went for Kristoff to finish in the top 3 to tripple my money prety much.

10th! Awful betting!

My favorite story so far of this Tour for me: Jumbo-Visma is looking like this first team that might actually be able to pressure Ineos (maybe, perhaps). Jumbo-Visma had a really good Tour in the 2018 Tour and looking even better so far this year. There have been numerous interesting stories in the press lately about their long term strategy. They're building a serious force for the future and the team is full of talent. After the 2012 destruction of Team Rabobank, they're back.

What happened to Quintana? They had to send the team back to bring him back.

btw, could Ineos be any more boring? Seems like everybody else has someone trying something.

I love Tony Martin on that team. It seems like most stages so far are like "Alright, looks like we've given the break enough of a leash at this point. Over to you, Tony" and then it's the panzerwagen on the front of the peloton motoring along. What a workhorse.

They haven't seemed particularly strong. Poels, Castro, Kwiato haven't really looked up to getting up the road or (yesterday) going to the front and really shedding GC pretenders. They're probably just being cagey, dialling back the support train in week one when Thomas and Bernal are perfectly capable of looking after themselves. I assume we'll see Poels and Kwiat looking super strong at some point.

Nature break right before the sprint.....about as dumb as it gets. More on the director i would guess.

It looks dicey for Tejay tomorrow. I am not a fan of him, but I really feel for him after seeing what he had to slog through today. For me, he's always a bit fragile mentally. Coming into this tour, he seemed to be in a good place mentally with less pressure, so I thought this may be the tour he actually does something like really helping Rigo in the high mountains and hang with the GC leaders. I hope he starts tomorrow, and get to rest day 1, and finish the tour.

Tejay is out. Bummer for him and team

That sucks for him.

From what I read, he said he looked down to check his bike and didn't see the traffic furniture before it's too late.

re thursday stage - my take is that several teams have helpers that can ride deep into the final (don't know if that will stay true deep into the 3rd week alps). maybe ineos can't just strangle everyone this year and maybe gaudu, aru, lutsenko, de plus, bennett, ciccone/mollema, etc.. can light it up for their team leaders (looked like only Pinot was ready to put his boy gaudu on infernal tempo patrol yesterday).
very curious if tomorrow is raced a bit harder than thursday with JA wanting those bonus secs and yellow. i'm thinking we'll know very early by how hard it is to make the break and how hard the field rides behind (something tells me trek doesnt want to ride all day and may send mollema after that early break). hope these next 2 stages are entertaining!

If I did that, OK. But this is a highly paid professional with many years and plenty of grand tour experience making a rookie mistake. Sorry, no sympathy.

Yeah, that's a bummer. Seemed like he was having a good year and had a good attitude, so I'm really sorry to see this happen. Definitely an oddball crash - it's not often you see a scuffed-up face and chest like that. I'm glad it's not more serious.

Yes and no with Tejay's situation. I think there was a lack of discipline on that team. Most of the time when I look there are 2-3 EF riders here or there in the peloton. The EF team looks as disorganized as a classroom of students without a teacher.

The commentators and we know from experience that a team is better off when they are doing something purposeful in a race. Just floating around in the peloton at the back, on the sides and not having work to do is one way to get hurt. EF would be better at protecting it's riders if they were in a pace line IMO.

Tejay is responsible for Tejay. Yet what about Chris Froome blowing his nose at high speeds on a TT bike on a recon? We have also had some fine triathletes go down stupidly. There does seem to be a correlation between more attentive/purposeful riding and just riding when it comes to going down.

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Indoor Triathlete - I thought I was right, until I realized I was wrong.