So Wiggins has 2:23 to Nibali in third; 3:19 to Evans in fourth.
Add in the ITT and you have 4:30/5:00.
That’s the ball game folks.
I wouldn’t be too sure - Wiggins got dropped today and only stayed in it because Froome held up the group on orders.
I think if he really was given his head, Froome could win this himself.
He won’t be allowed to for as long as Wiggins stays in it. Certainly looks like a done deal now, but all it takes is for Wiggins to have a bad day.
It doesn’t surprise me that Evans cracked at the end. I only stayed up to watch till they were over the Croix de Fer. Evans looked good on the attack for all of about 2 minutes, after which he was clearly struggling to even hold Teejay’s wheel. After that he was hanging about at the back of the yellow jersey bunch, regularly slipping off the wheel in front. He seemed cooked, and cooked he was.
I notice BMC are still bravely claiming that a victory is possible. I don’t think so. Even on the “Evans gets better in the third week” theory, I don’t think so. Froome is clearly the only one who can trouble Wiggins, and he’s under team orders.
Wiggins said in an interview after that the crowd noise on the mountain made it difficult to hear the team radios, and when the actual instructions were “slow, slow” Froome heard “Go, Go” and jumped off the group like a man possessed. It was only 20 secs later when he was corrected and told to wait that he dropped back and rejoined the rest.
Was wondering last night, when Froome popped out of the pack, if a similar tactic might work in Sky’s favour now that they have two riders who could potentially win the GC. If Froome had the legs and took off in a breakaway*, then Sky could rest up in the peleton and make BMC or Liquigas do all the chasing for a change as they’d have to bring him back, and if they did then Wiggins is still sitting pretty in the chasing group, and that would give Rogers, Porte and BH a bit of a day off too, maybe. What could the other teams realistically do to counter a move like that, do you think?
- IF being a big assumption here, and also allowing for the fact it’s probably a bit silly of Sky to change a (so far) winning strategy for something a bit wacky.
The constituents in breakaways are not random. The GC teams only let breakaways that don’t contain any GC contenders go. Anything with a GC contender in it is chased down immediately.
If a GC contender goes alone all the other GC teams will use their numbers to chase him down. If a GC contender tries to get into a breakaway with others, they will not work with him because they know that a breakaway with a GC contender in it will always be chased down.
That depends again on how ‘immediately’ they could bring him back, and it still makes the other GC teams do some work chasing for a change, even if only for a short time. Sky have been out front controlling the pace and the chase nearly every day, I’m sure they’d like to step back for a bit, if at all possible. (although working out front is arguably the safer bet anyhow, with the amount of crashes there have been so far).
Anyhow, it was but a passing thought, of no consequence.
Well, even Britain’s confirmed drug cheats are winning stages on the Tour this year.
What’s with all the flat tires today?
Yeah, v odd - CE on his third flat. Speculation from Phil that it might be tacks on the road or somesuch.
Great stage at the moment - Sagan is a beast.
The tacks story has been confirmed by a few sources (the BMC team is one of them); pretty much everyone was affected it seams… Roland isn’t going to be popular the next couple of days.
Question about strategy-I assume that nobody (not even the green jersey guy) who was in a position to challenge Wiggins for the yellow jersey/overall lead was in the breakaway group which ended up beating the peloton by 15 minutes. What happens if someone who IS in a position to take the lead decides to join one of these breakaway packs? Does the yellow jersey rider go after him, or does he assume that by racing ahead the other guy is going to wear himself out in subsequent stages?
If someone like Evans took off he would immediately be chased down by yellow and his team. Or they would lift the tempo enough that Evans was only a few seconds off the front. No way they would ever let him out of sight though.
I remember Armstrong a few years ago bridging a gap to a small breakaway. Pissed everyone in that group off as it guaranteed that the break was going to fail.
Froome gave a pretty frank interview to l’equipe yesterday, few quotes here, basically saying he’d have the Tour in the bag if he wasn’t riding for Brad.
Good to hear him speak his mind, and maybe he thinks he has to show his arse a wee bit if he wants to lead a team next year, but still sounds a bit hypothetical. Wiggins is in pole position because he has the credibility for Sky to build a team around him to contest the tour. Froome hasn’t had that stature by a long way, so to say he could win this from Wiggins’ team doesn’t do him much credit IMHO.
The Froome discussion leads me to ask this question of the cycling historians: When was the last time winner came from the ranks of a team rather than the designated star? Or has such a thing never happened since the advent of team tactics? Actually how long has the current team system been in place anyway?
I think team managers will be very wary of hiring Froome as a GC leader until he has a lot more consistency under his belt. And that “consistency” would need to include consistency in the field of “not being caught juicing”.
I think it’s a bit premature to say that Froome would have the tour ‘in the bag’ except for Brad. Brad beat him in both time trials, and while Froome did ‘attack’ a few days ago (by mistake, it seems), he looked pretty cooked during parts of that stage. I don’t know why everyone assumes he was the ‘stronger climber’ there - Wiggins didn’t respond to the attack right away because he clearly didn’t need to; it was a teammate and he clearly expected Froome to come back to the bunch. I don’t think we’ve really seen Wiggins dig deep the entire tour other than the ITT…while the tour has had some great moments and interesting stages, the GC competition has been pretty dull. The Sky team is just too strong (and Froome is benefiting from the team every bit as much as Wiggins is).
But great sportsmanship from Wiggins the last couple of days, from pulling on the front as a leadout for a teammate, to neutralizing the race to let Evans and the others catch up.
Contrast that to Contador’s ‘Oh, I didn’t see Andy drop a chain’ stunt a few years back…
In fairness, dropping a chain is part of racing. Having tacks strewn across the road is not.
Rumor is a big name has been done for doping.
Waiting for story… please let it be Wiggins/Froome–need to nip this in the bud.
…damn. But seriously, why would he bother this year?
Without Johan there to manage the doping, it all goes to hell obviously.