Giro 16 - Stage 19 ***Spoilers***

kleinstroker

Pinerolo → Risoul, 162 km

One of the key mountain stages of this years Giro, and almost the last chance for the likes of Valverde to make an attack on the pink jersey.



The Colle Dell'Agnello as of yesterday.. looks ace!

ugo.santalucia

The Italian side of the Agnello is a tough climb... a bit more luck with the weather (read rain) would make this into a Galibier-Deux Alpes scenario, where anything can happen... shame the forecast is good (but watch out for tomorrow!). That's where a brave attack should begin. The Risoul is not as hard and unlikly to make big gaps on its own

Nibali will have a go at taking the stage and whatever time he can take (or lose), hopefully Valverde will attack too... so far we have seen people losing time, but not much in the way of people gaining time, which is the more exciting bit

Bring back Pantani, this would be his day!

blazing_saddles

The Podium Cafe has a good piece on climbing the Agnello from the Italian side:-
http://www.podiumcafe.com/2016/5/26/117 ... ellagnello

Mechanism

Valverde isn't great at high altitude and Nibali has got burnt by attacking so they could play it safe. A breakaway with Nieve, Dombrowski, Atapuma etc vs the GC riders would be interesting.

bobmcstuff

WFH today, should be able to watch the lot

ugo.santalucia

Mechanism wrote:

Valverde isn't great at high altitude

That's surprising for someone with a big freezer full of red bags as he had...

Mechanism

ugo.santalucia wrote:

Mechanism wrote:

Valverde isn't great at high altitude

That's surprising for someone with a big freezer full of red bags as he had...

Waitrose frozen summer fruits?

ugo.santalucia

Mechanism wrote:

ugo.santalucia wrote:

Mechanism wrote:

Valverde isn't great at high altitude

That's surprising for someone with a big freezer full of red bags as he had...

Waitrose frozen summer fruits?

Not Waitrose no, they were branded Fuentes, must be the Spanish equivalent of Lidl...

RichN95.

Mechanism wrote:

Valverde isn't great at high altitude and Nibali has got burnt by attacking so they could play it safe. A breakaway with Nieve, Dombrowski, Atapuma etc vs the GC riders would be interesting.

So far the primary effect of a Nibali attack is Nibali being dropped soon after.

ugo.santalucia

RichN95 wrote:

Mechanism wrote:

Valverde isn't great at high altitude and Nibali has got burnt by attacking so they could play it safe. A breakaway with Nieve, Dombrowski, Atapuma etc vs the GC riders would be interesting.

So far the primary effect of a Nibali attack is Nibali being dropped soon after.

On the Gazzetta he seems very positive, not sure what this is based on, but he says he has big plans for the next couple of stages, so let's see...

Mechanism

ugo.santalucia wrote:

RichN95 wrote:

Mechanism wrote:

Valverde isn't great at high altitude and Nibali has got burnt by attacking so they could play it safe. A breakaway with Nieve, Dombrowski, Atapuma etc vs the GC riders would be interesting.

So far the primary effect of a Nibali attack is Nibali being dropped soon after.

On the Gazzetta he seems very positive, not sure what this is based on, but he says he has big plans for the next couple of stages, so let's see...

Presumably he won't be worried about losing his 4th place if it all goes pear-shaped.

ugo.santalucia

Mechanism wrote:

Presumably he won't be worried about losing his 4th place if it all goes pear-shaped.

Hopefully... Valverde and Nibali could really do with helping each other, but they need the Dutch to have a bad moment or it's all pointless. I am not quite sure how he managed to become that good that quickly, but so be it...

bigmat

To be fair, Kruijswijk has always gone well at the Giro and has clearly targetted GC this year. I think the other contenders aren't quite first rate and are making him look good. Chaves is up and coming with a weak team, Valverde is past his best and hasn't fully focussed on the Giro, Nibbles hasn't been consistently on his game for the last year and a half, Zakarin would have been closer but for his TT mishaps and obviously Landa - well, still not quite sure whathappened to him! I suspect the first rate GC men (Froome, Quintana, Aru, Contador) would probably win this race quite comfortably and the likes of Pinot and Porte might also have had a good shout.

bobmcstuff

ugo.santalucia wrote:

Mechanism wrote:

Presumably he won't be worried about losing his 4th place if it all goes pear-shaped.

Hopefully... Valverde and Nibali could really do with helping each other, but they need the Dutch to have a bad moment or it's all pointless. I am not quite sure how he managed to become that good that quickly, but so be it...

You're starting to sound an awful lot like someone else who used to post on here.

joelsim

RichN95 wrote:

Mechanism wrote:

Valverde isn't great at high altitude and Nibali has got burnt by attacking so they could play it safe. A breakaway with Nieve, Dombrowski, Atapuma etc vs the GC riders would be interesting.

So far the primary effect of a Nibali attack is Nibali being dropped soon after.

Following by a gutted look. It happened on the first summit stage and on every one since.

joelsim

bigmat wrote:

To be fair, Kruijswijk has always gone well at the Giro and has clearly targetted GC this year. I think the other contenders aren't quite first rate and are making him look good. Chaves is up and coming with a weak team, Valverde is past his best and hasn't fully focussed on the Giro, Nibbles hasn't been consistently on his game for the last year and a half, Zakarin would have been closer but for his TT mishaps and obviously Landa - well, still not quite sure whathappened to him! I suspect the first rate GC men (Froome, Quintana, Aru, Contador) would probably win this race quite comfortably and the likes of Pinot and Porte might also have had a good shout.

^This

ugo.santalucia

bigmat wrote:

To be fair, Kruijswijk has always gone well at the Giro and has clearly targetted GC this year. I think the other contenders aren't quite first rate and are making him look good. Chaves is up and coming with a weak team, Valverde is past his best and hasn't fully focussed on the Giro, Nibbles hasn't been consistently on his game for the last year and a half, Zakarin would have been closer but for his TT mishaps and obviously Landa - well, still not quite sure whathappened to him! I suspect the first rate GC men (Froome, Quintana, Aru, Contador) would probably win this race quite comfortably and the likes of Pinot and Porte might also have had a good shout.

You are probably right, it's just testament of how mediocre the field is this year... same as the Russian guy wininng the mountain time trial...

ugo.santalucia

bobmcstuff wrote:

Did you see the Vuelta last year?

What do you mean? In relation to Kruiskijk?

bigmat

ugo.santalucia wrote:

bigmat wrote:

To be fair, Kruijswijk has always gone well at the Giro and has clearly targetted GC this year. I think the other contenders aren't quite first rate and are making him look good. Chaves is up and coming with a weak team, Valverde is past his best and hasn't fully focussed on the Giro, Nibbles hasn't been consistently on his game for the last year and a half, Zakarin would have been closer but for his TT mishaps and obviously Landa - well, still not quite sure whathappened to him! I suspect the first rate GC men (Froome, Quintana, Aru, Contador) would probably win this race quite comfortably and the likes of Pinot and Porte might also have had a good shout.

You are probably right, it's just testament of how mediocre the field is this year... same as the Russian guy wininng the mountain time trial...

Oh I don't know about that, that Russian guy was probably an entirely different story!

DeVlaeminck

The good thing about Nibali is he isn't going to ride for fourth - even if he ends up losing out by it he's going to have a go - much like Contador. We just need the likes of Chaves and Valverde to have the same attitude and we could still have some excitement - problem is you can understand Chaves defending his position and Valverde has always been one to let others take the initiative and pick up what he can playing the percentages.

ugo.santalucia

DeVlaeminck wrote:

and Valverde has always been one to let others take the initiative and pick up what he can playing the percentages.

Glad to see someone else thinks Valverde is a successful wheelsucker

ddraver

There are only a few people who really think other wise no?

ugo.santalucia

ddraver wrote:

There are only a few people who really think other wise no?

Those that look at the palmares will say that he is a great champion... after all he won bags of classics... those that don't can't forget how he lost the Worlds in 2013 due to a lack of wheels to suck

bompington

ugo.santalucia wrote:

ddraver wrote:

There are only a few people who really think other wise no?

Those that look at the palmares will say that he is a great champion... after all he won bags of classics... those that don't can't forget how he lost the Worlds in 2013 due to a lack of wheels to suck

Don't mention the bags

bobmcstuff

ugo.santalucia wrote:

bobmcstuff wrote:

Did you see the Vuelta last year?

What do you mean? In relation to Kruiskijk?

Pretend I never said anything

blazing_saddles

ugo.santalucia wrote:

ddraver wrote:

There are only a few people who really think other wise no?

Those that look at the palmares will say that he is a great champion... after all he won bags of classics... those that don't can't forget how he lost the Worlds in 2013 due to a lack of wheels to suck

Much of this GC is made up of wheelsuckers far less successful than Valverde.

rick_chasey

:roll:

If it's so easy for Valverde to win sucking wheels, why does everyone let him?

ddraver

same reason they let Gerrans win.

The two of them are near identical riders..

bigmat

ddraver wrote:

same reason they let Gerrans win.

The two of them are near identical riders..

Just the grand tour win and multiple GT podiums to separate them, really...

Not a Valverde fan, but his palmares speaks for itself - as others have said, if it was so easy to just follow wheels then others would be doing it and getting those results. Both him and Gerrans ride to their strengths and get results, fair play to them (I'll leave the Puerto thing to one side for the purposes of this discussion...)

ugo.santalucia

I am not dismissing Valverde's palmares, just don't like the way he rides and don't think he is one of the greats of the sport like his palmares seems to imply

manic_esso

Rick Chasey wrote:

:roll:

If it's so easy for Valverde to win sucking wheels, why does everyone let him?

Because thankfully there are some riders who have the balls to try and take the race on otherwise none of us would watch the sh!t that would otherwise prevail