Tour de France Stage 12 *spoiler*

micron

In all the talk of would he or wouldn't be a team player, Vino delivers an exemplary teammate's ride to draw Saxo's fire

Love that climb at Mende - psychological advantage to Contador - Schlecklette will need a good 2 minutes before the TT. Rodriguez could spoil the party, too (get on that third step anyway). Schlecklette surely has to have doubts about the ability of his team to defend in the Pyrenees, Jens Voigt or no Jens Voigt...

secretsqirrel

micron wrote:

In all the talk of would he or wouldn't be a team player, Vino delivers an exemplary teammate's ride to draw Saxo's fire

Love that climb at Mende - psychological advantage to Contador - Schlecklette will need a good 2 minutes before the TT. Rodriguez could spoil the party, too (get on that third step anyway). Schlecklette surely has to have doubts about the ability of his team to defend in the Pyrenees, Jens Voigt or no Jens Voigt...

+1
I think that some people might misunderstand Vino? Based on an incident whilst riding for T-Mobile, the fact that he is highly motivated, and also having a great deal of influence, people appear to judge him by Lance's standards. Not always a bad thing, but I see him as a totally different character.
He has come to terms with getting older, getting criticized, 'the dark years', and now all that seems to matter is his team. Sure when the legs are good he can't resist an attack. Thank god!
I hope Contador will stay with Astana as I hope that the guts are not ripped out of this team yet again. That looks unlikely to happen at the moment, but even if it did, I have no doubt that the resilient Vino will rebuild and re-invent the team yet again.

Now, tell me he's flawed, a doper, a cheat, selfish, and I can stick my fingers in my ears 'cos I'm an Astana fan 'boy'.

rick_chasey

Anyone else feel like they were watching the Giro?

The Tour needs more of these tricky finishes.

It doesn't always need to be a mega mountain stage where there are massive time gaps for it to be good.

Cav's win in stage 19 of the Tour was similarly exciting, since they shoved a massive 2nd cat just before the finish.




The Giro does them plenty more often and is a winner as a result.

Even just a little 500m steep sprint for the line that they forget to tell the riders about.

Pross

Yep I said earlier in the thread I feel a few more stages in this area or the Vosges with several shorter hard climbs would be great and open the race up.

FransJacques

You're very correct Rick, I was thinking as I was watching the climb "This isn't typically TdF, France doesn't seem to have many steep climbs, of if it does, the route planners don't use them". It didn't look typicall tou, but now that you mention t it did look typically giro.

As with Napoleonic war theory, the French like big, long, drawn out set-piece battles up big but not too step mtns, whereas the Italians have learned they cannot compete on a one for one basis with the French and have adopted more guerilla tactics (terrain-wise).

So come on ASO, bring out your 15% ramps!