I'd be worried about Sagan making the time cut after a 44k all out ttt effort. No time to recover after the Sprint and straight into a cat 2 climb. 3000 m climbing and 120k to go - ouch! Gotta set my alarm early.

I was up late last night on some work stuff....so slept in and see that Trentin is the one really encroaching on the Green now as Sagan missed the break. Kamna is in the break with Alaphillipe and a big crew that can stay away.

Trentin will be marked now by DQS as well, although he really hasn't been a threat in the big bunch sprints at the end - only in the intermediates.

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"It's good enough for who it's for" - Grandpa Wayne

Sivakov finally scored some Velogames points so I've got that going for me.

Wednesday Stage on Col de Loz in the Meribel area.....last part 4.5 km paved over a ski run at 18-24% . So can the UAE keep the breakaway close enough to take the bonus points at stage finish?

Sadly, Egan Bernal has abandoned the race and will not start stage 17.

It is probably a good thing. If his back is hurting and he's way out, better recover and get better for another day. The kid has a long career ahead. I can't say I was a fan of him after last year, but after his fight for the first 14 days, I am cheering for him to recover and win many more.

Dev

Good God, that climb is Zoncolan-esque. What a brute.

Its a ski resort road paved over. Yes, Zoncolan-esque. This section was built for a healthy Bernal or Quintana....my observation is that people who live at high altitude are generally small and thin. Roglic can be distanced by a sub 60 kilo athlete on this with similar watts per kilo. The climb is between 1800-2300m above sea level (Henri DeGrange Souvenir) and it is 18-24 percent. Its probably like a 22-28% climb at sea level.

I anticpate a Jumbo train to the last 4.5 km till it gets in black then from there it is mano mano. I am hoping Richie Porte keeps his powder dry and being a bit smaller can have an advantage on the very top of this.

I am cheering for Porte today who has largely kept his powder dry with 7 km to go. He is the smallest of Pogacar, Roglic and himself....so if he managed his energy well, he can have an advantage.

Boring.
They just came in practically according to the general ranking.
Nothing happened although on paper this was the most promising stage.

Two training partners from the same country and the same coach are taking the same drugs they took 20 years ago. Hope y'all aren't so naive this time around.

Ok OK...while I won't say it was boring it just put a general elastic band stretching the GC more or less (some changes in 3rd to 8th place), but now who wants to try that climb to the top of the ski resort in Meribel?

Based on today, I just realized there is an amazing point to point half Ironman tri course that takes you over Madeleine to Meribel and then the run is the 21.5km climb to Col de Loz. Looks like there is a lake near Epierre near the base of Madeleine (@ kny, looks rather "Savage")

Ok, that is just an insane bike path. How many people are really going to ride that? What sort of speed would you hit on that bike path?

I read up that it is a bike specific road connecting Meribel to Courcheval. You can see it on Google Maps if you just ask for directions between Meribel and Courcheval and pick the bike or walk option. I definitely want to do that but if the pros are on 34x30 not sure what I need to get to the top....and coming downhill in the rain would be like death on that amount of steepness but you can time it to take the chair lift down too. I'd live to run it, take the chair lift down and then bike it and ride down if it is dry.


Its funny, the wikipedia entry was literally updated 5 minutes after yesterday saying Lopez won: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Col_de_la_Loze



https://www.google.com/...3469!2d45.414659!3e2

Speaking of Lopez, and his nickname

As we all know by now, he received the nickname Superman after thieves [I've heard variations on the story: it was either two or four] tried to steal his bike while he was on a training ride, and although he was stabbed in the leg, he would not relent and fought them off

In last year's Giro, he punched out a fan who got in the road and knocked him off the bike

I dunno, but close-in, mano a mano combat [and anger issues, possibly?] sounds like more of a Batman thing to me

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"What's your claim?" - Ben Gravy
"Your best work is the work you're excited about" - Rick Rubin

I want to know about these 4 theives...the guy is 59 kilos....were these thieves 49 kilos? I mean, a flyweight WWE type event would have broken out during a bike ride!!!!

speaking of rider weights on the heavier weight side, Sam Bennet seems to win every intermediate sprint and is building a gap on Sagan that is bigger and bigger and winning every intermediate sprint. I think his gap is more than the relegation delta now.

This is the best and most accurate comment ever on Slowtwitch.

Not sure if it’s been said, but i feel like they have Sagan proofed this years race and he still had a chance. He missed out early with what seems like some bad positioning in the sprints, came back, just to have ~45 point questionably taken away from him. It seemed like in the past there were stages with 3-4 sprint points as well as hills that only Sagan could get over. This year there is only like 1 sprint point per day and they made the hills just so that even Sagan couldn’t keep up over them. An easier course for the pure sprinter to get points/harder for a more all around cyclist to get points , and losing those points did him in.

Sagan was a runaway favorite to win green before the race started, and Bennett wasn't even contesting the early intermediate sprints. I also don't think you are recalling 3-4 sprint points correctly.

Sagan has been unable to win stages this year, which has made a big difference, and of course the relegation was huge. Had he not been relegated, the tactics would have been very different and there's still a good chance he would have won green. Bora was forced to do a ton of work and hope for some luck to close that huge gap, and it didn't work out.

For the last decade there has been an average of two or three intermediate sprints per stage. A lot of those were free points for Sagan. He only won one stage last year and that was on a hilly stage. Bennett has only
won one stage this year. It’s the one rider that sneaks in between Bennett and Sagan that has made all the difference. 4 points a stage makes a huge difference over the course of 21 stages.

Here is a link to the stage profiles for 2019, where Sagan won green by almost 70 points. Looks like no more than one intermediate sprint to me.

Yes, that one rider who sneaks in between Bennett and Sagan matters. What's different this year is that it has consistently been Bennett's leadout, Morkov, who is a rider sneaking between them. It's not a big conspiracy to make the race anti-Sagan, he just lost.

EDIT: It looks like 2010 is the last tour that seems to fit your description, where there was consistently more than one intermediate sprint. That year points were 6-4-2 for intermediate sprints. Total sprint points were roughly similar for each stage but the payoff was very different, and often they were scooped up by the breakaway.

The biggest questions for me out of this Tour is what could Van Aert accomplish?

Seems like green jersey could have easily been his. Could he lose enough weight to win a grand tour (probably would need a lot more flat TT miles, and then hold on in the mountains)?

Yes looks like my post should have read.... before the last decade there was an average of three intermediate sprints per stage. Am I that old that I thought it was more recent?