Why yes. Yes he can. Decent lead out.
If liking Ineos is wrong, I don’t wanna be right. They’re doing what they can with what they’ve got. Tarling and Turner gave it a good go.
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Wouts leadout today was reminiscent of MvDP recent lead outs at the Tour for Philipson, full on beast mode.
I guess we will never know, but yeah if he wasn’t sick at the start he might have given Pederson a battle royal for the sprint jersey (and maybe actually won said battle).
Put me squarely in the hating the Sky/Ineos club, but you really gotta love the new look team, I mean the way they rode on the gravel stage was just pure anti ineos of old, just rip up the playbook and explode the race stuff.
maybe Wout (vs Mads?) tomorrow? it’s a finish where Gilbert won before. of course - GC dudes could also try to get in the mix - pidcock, del toro, ciccone…
true gc stages probably have to wait til tuesday (voices carry), but maybe sunday…
no crashes for gc dudes please (Roglic, i’m typing to you) - let’s get a good finish to this race!
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Ehrlich has been crushing TTs and pursuits lately, including taking the IP at Pan Ams in April, and winning the TT in our local UCI 2.2 stage race by over a minute (she was also leading on GC going into the final stage).
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The finish tomorrow has Pidcock written all over it but Wout seems to be finding form, Lil’T has cards in the form of Mads, Vacek and Ciccone, and then you’ve got plenty of other GC guys who would like their chances here, starting with Del Toro, but you could see Ayuso, Roglic, either of the Yates bros going for it too. On the other end of the spectrum guys like Corbin Strong and Paul Magnier have potential here, though perhaps are candidates for the break?
I guess the question is what the break looks like and which teams want to control things.
agreed - the fight for break will be a tell whether the big dogs want to scrap for some bonus seconds. they hit finish hill with 20k to go so they’ll see it once and the red bull seconds are about 10k to go on a slightly bigger hill.
i’d think uae want nothing to do with this - let break go. lil t and lisa have great chances so they may not be ok unless they have strong reps in break.
assuming break gets pulled back - it will be telling how much UAE is willing to take control in the set up. Do they back raging del toro more than Ayuso? staying out of the lead in could hurt their positioning and chances (certainly for mcnutty and yates - those 2 aren’t nearly as likely to fight for positions).
of course a few bonus seconds compared to Sunday and Tues - it could be peanuts.
Looks like the break is being kept on a pretty short leash, and from the looks of it Lil’T, Lisa and Q36.5 are doing most of the work. No surprise Pidcock and Wout are being backed. I wonder who Trek has in mind for this. It’s actually not a bad finish for Ciccone and he’s battling for that Top 3 position so would like the bonus seconds, but they’ve got other guys who might be more likely candidates here.
We’ve already seen Del Toro fighting for bonus seconds at intermediate sprints, so I’m assuming he’s up for a little punch up at the end, though UAE don’t seem particular eager to work for that outcome (and don’t have a reason to with those other teams clearly taking responsibility for setting up the finale).
Maybe Rog takes a little flyer.
Gee must have come into this race with some illness. The first week or so he seemed off, but the past few stages he looks like I’d expect.
What a wild mix of riders at this finale.
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Holy Gaucamole what a finish effort! cream rises?
My favorite (the whole final 45 K was awesome) was seeing raging DT sit down at 120 meters - kind of a WTF are Mads and Wout doing???. Even with sitting down (and getting up again to hold that 3rd) he was WAY in front of Primoz et alii.
ok tomorrow SHOULD be gc truce before Grappa sunday…
Yeah fun race, lots of action. Vacek doing Vacek things and it was looking good for him for quite a while there. No surprise to see Del Toro going for it but yeah, seeing him vs watt bombs of Wout and Mads made for an interesting contrast and probably quite the experience for him to be on the receiving end of said bombs.
Mads is so strong, he’s just amazing. There’s a recently released doc series on him called Chasing Cobbles that doesn’t seem to be available here but is apparently on Max… or AppleTV… or possibly Prime video (though not here). Anybody seen it?
Big MTB races this weekend! MvdP, Puck and Hatherly all make their return to XC racing.
Cant find it but what is the record for most stage wins in single giro?
Alfredo Binda with 12, back in 1929. In modern times Alessandro Petacchi with 9 in 2004.
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Who in this thread lives in Ottawa ?
That’s me (though there are at least a half dozen other Ottawa folks “out there” in the main forum.
9 in 2009 is absurd, how?!?
9 in 2009… I’m going to say BS - before Sagan - and when very good climbing fast finishers started to get multiple domestiques to drop sprinters.
Tadej’s 6 in Giro AND Tour last year is also absurd!
Does Mads have another one in him…??
It was 2004. Italian sprinter, on Italian team built for leadout train, rides Italian Grand Tour designed with lots of sprint stages.