Paris-Nice 2013 Stage 5 **SPOILER**

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Comments

  • frenchfighter
    frenchfighter Posts: 30,642
    I know many of you respect inrg. Have a read of what he has to say. Cheers.

    Did Talansky throw the race away on the Lure? No. Some will say he should never have attacked, that he should not even have lifted his rear off the saddle but instead rode high tempo. But his attacks on the Montagne de Lure were a good idea, or at least the first and the second moves helped. They thinned the group, no longer did Talansky have to watch 20 riders but, he could now focus on Porte, Tejay van Garderen and Lieuwe Westra. Yes, the third attack saw him go into foreclosure thanks to oxygen debt but it did thin down the group.

    Hopefully the American’s attacking spirit does not evaporate because it was risk-taking that got him the overall lead in the first place when he gambled on the descent to Brioude and paired up with Porte to bridge across to the lead group with a few kilometres to go on Stage 3.

    Richie Porte’s the clear winner, taking the mountain stage and the final time trial. But only for the sake of calculation, let’s imagine Talansky did not do three attacks but instead came in with Porte on the Montagne de Lure and won the sprint. He held a seven second lead at the start of the stage and if he won the stage Talansky and Porte did not place in the top three then Talansky would have extended his lead to 17 seconds. Since Porte won on the Col d’Eze by 23 seconds the difference on the Montagne de Lure didn’t matter, the Australian would have overhauled him anyway by five seconds.
    Contador is the Greatest
  • Pross
    Pross Posts: 43,462
    Sounds fair enough. I think a lot of people expected Talansky to be closer than that in the TT and potentially be quicker than Porte though.

    BTW I'm still struggling to see how Porte would have won a lot sooner or even sooner had he been on a different team. Are you suggesting he would have beaten Wiggins last year if he'd been at Saxo?

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