Four groupettos (as Bob Roll likes to say). Poels is in full attack mode. Suffering in store for Roglic and Thomas. These guys are incredibly tough but they’ve got to be wondering wether the best of the race is behind them.
WTF are they talking about? Roglic lost like 20% of his skin in that crash and Thomas is seriously damaged as well. They’re losing time because they’re seriously injured, not because they haven’t put in a large enough effort into the early racing season.
Honestly, Roglic should abandon and prep for the Vuelta.
SWEET! Valverde still in the lead group.
If I’m not mistaken, Simon Yates is a hot weather climber. I don’t think he’ll attack today.
Long way out to attack for someone who doesn’t actually need time.
Yeah, I don’t know why he continues to burn energy.
I suppose time gained now is time he won’t need to gain in later stages when things aren’t quite this chaotic.
Well, he doesn’t have the team to ride from the front the way Roglic did last year, or as is traditional for Ineos/Sky. So I guess he’s figuring attacking is the way to go, so if a stage later gets out of hand he has a cushion and doesn’t have to depend on Majka & McNulty being able to outclimb Porte and Carapaz.
Pretty clear at this point who the strongest rider is, though.
Who’s in that Chase 1 group of 4 riders?
I think Woods has cracked.
It’s not really a group. According to letour website data they’re all over the place. But nearest behind aside from Teuns is Ion Izaguirre and Simon Yates, and then a ways further back to Wout Poels and Guillarme Martin. But Pogacar is charging through all these guys.
My video stream appears to be about a minute behind letour live data so I should probably stop checking it.
He’s just in an entirely different league.
Roglic might have been on par. He beat Pog at the Tour of the Basque Country, was it? Including putting 30s into him in a short ITT.
Hah! Tadej now in line for time bonuses at the top of the climb and the stage finish.
Tuens has a deathwish.
I think Teuns will make it. Pogacar won’t go in full risk mode, he’s happy to get yellow and doesn’t need the stage win.
Sounds like Carapaz is making some gains.
Won’t comfort him after having been eaten alive by Pogacar.
Well, that was impressive.