Forget the average. He had a 400W effort for 28 minutes followed by a 400W effort for 24 minutes. That's the power-to-weight ratio of the Falcon Heavy. Insane.

There is a pretty good episode of the podcast "The Adventure Stache" featuring Sepp Kuss and a few other pro mountain bikers who came up through the Durango Devo program together.

the podium missed a huge break....5 minute gap....this is crazy....the directors are going to eff this up....the riders should be drilling it and sort it out later.....what a move by DQS

Quintana, the stone faced Inca warrior, is in this break. The guy still wants to win the race. It's impressive given his size and the crosswinds and the flats and the big DQS guys drilling it. Good on him.

like they just said - makes tomorrows' stage interesting if Lotto-Visma has to expend a lot of energy today to close down break
4 DQS riders in break (crosswinds zen masters)

HAHAHA! It's classic.

That’s not what happened, they were disrupting chase. Astana is the one with questionable tactics. Roglic getting VERY lucky today and bailed out by them. Could have easily lost entire race to Quintana otherwise.

Hmm...I don't know. Soler looked like he was going close to full gas at the same time the gap dropped by ~30 seconds and Valverde went back into virtual 2nd.

Edit: And as I type this Movistar riders are still taking full turns in the chase. Pulling through hard.

Edit Edit: I think it is plausible that Soler was trying to soften up the peloton so Valverde could try to force a split. Which did briefly work.

This was my take too. It looked to me that Movistar was attempting to further break the chase group and isolate out a few leaders. I didn't get what Astana did and you are right; Roglic got luuucky.

haha love that. Some massive efforts. When I saw that he released his power data I was not expecting to see those kind of numbers from him. I figured he'd put in a few 5.8 w/kg efforts, which obviously are still mega, but damn. He is truly special.

Don't know WTF Bennett was thinking. He had that break dead to rights until he went waaaay early.

Gilbert: BOSS. DQS shows em how to close the deal.

well he flinched and made a panic move i guess
is Gilbert a favorite for Worlds ??

They might go hard at times so that any help behind doesn’t get back on; they have to break the chasers too. Movistar wants to win race. Sure they’d prefer it to be Valverde but can be certain they’ll be happy with Quintana instead of Roglic.

Jumbo and UAE blew it today and got outplayed. Had Astana not taken it up, Quintana could have taken 15 minutes or more. Probably not going to matter in end by kudos to Movistar for throwing a haymaker.

Agreed.

And Gilbert and DQS did show em how its done. Big Tractor DeClerq lead the way again for Phil Gil to go.

Gilbert has to be in the talk of a favorite for worlds. Right behind MVdP.

Agreed. Love the tactics. I tuned in late expecting to see a boringish stage - not the case.

Gilbert is looking damn good—that was impressive. Will be interesting to see the other contenders in action this weekend at Can. Sagan has been riding his MTB in Utah while MvDP lights up Britain. Show time for him now.

Perhaps whatever Gilbert lacks in raw power, he can compensate with racing guiles. M vdP often seems a bit too eager, and that could easily be exploited by Gilbert.

That was a phenomenal day. Tim De Tank owned the whole stage, set up Phil Gil AGAIN, and nice flyer by Stybar. Wow. Love it when the big guys make the race. That was cool.

I wonder if Movistar has one more haymaker left in them. GC teams (and protected riders) are going to be shattered tomorrow. If Movistar can get their boys to set a decent tempo on the first 2 climbs I think there is potential to see a lot of isolation with 60 km to go. Launch Quintana and even though we know it likely won't stick to the end, at least force Roglic to chase while Valverde and company sit in.

I dont give Movistar that much credit today, it was DQS that gets all of the credit, the had their WHOLE team in the break, how epic is that?, if Bennett had even one teammate in the break he wins the stage, a big Kudos to Quintana for being there and sticking it, also Sunweb was doing a fair bit of driving for Kelderman.
Behind Movistar was actually chasing to protect Valverde's place so it was another case of Movistar vs Movistar, in fact if not for Movistar Quintana might have been in red right now.
Yes further on Astana was chasing very hard with their full squad but in the beginning Movistar was doing lots of chasing, I would have to assume that Quintana can't wait to get the heck out of there.

We've been lulled into GC race style and forgotten DQS' one-day badassery.

You got that right. When they take their shot they have a strikingly high hit rate.

It was impressive how he bridged over to Bennett without bringing anyone else. When the entire break had to have known he was going to counter when Stybar got caught.

I was beating up on Bennett above. And I think he would have been better off holding fire until 200m to go. But it's also worth noting that it caught everyone off guard, and was the winning move. If not for one guy.