TDF 2018, Stage 16: Carcassonne > Bagnères-de-Luchon 24/07/2018 - 218 km *Spoilers*

DeVlaeminck

It's a mountain pass in the pyrenees anyway!

Anyway it's a very similar stage to the one Ocana crashed on. His biography is worth reading, one of the better ones.

Ocana's crash must have been devastating as apparently he was always obsessed with beating Merckx and having finally done it he threw it away needlessly trying to match him on a dangerous descent. He had 7 minutes but was after humiliating Merckx by stuffing him (and I've checked this one!) on the Portillon.

poweredbyidris

RichN95 wrote:

DeadCalm wrote:

I know that this descent is where Froome supposedly laid to rest for good the suggestion that he is a poor bike handler but, at the risk of invoking the opprobrium of the forum, in my opinion, he showed balls of steel rather than good bike handling skills. Going fast downhill does not equate to being a good bike handler. If I was a confident descender,* I'd be looking to not allow Sky to dictate the pace of the descent as they too often get away with doing, and try to force a mistake. It's a longshot but probably the best hope of Roglic or Bardet to put Froome under pressure.

I'm not convinced by Roglic's decending skills: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNRYgKyZBAI

"Siri: Show me a metaphor for Brexit..."

tgotb

TailWindHome wrote:

ITV4 highlights the other night had an analysis of mad descending skillz in the wind tunnel
Apparently Froome's mad effort would have cost him time.
Sagan's the most efficient.

They missed a key point though, which was that they didn't factor in the amount of power the rider could generate in each position. A slightly less-aero position might still be better if it didn't compromise power output as much as the most aero position.

phreak

Above The Cows wrote:

RichN95 wrote:

DeadCalm wrote:

I know that this descent is where Froome supposedly laid to rest for good the suggestion that he is a poor bike handler but, at the risk of invoking the opprobrium of the forum, in my opinion, he showed balls of steel rather than good bike handling skills. Going fast downhill does not equate to being a good bike handler. If I was a confident descender,* I'd be looking to not allow Sky to dictate the pace of the descent as they too often get away with doing, and try to force a mistake. It's a longshot but probably the best hope of Roglic or Bardet to put Froome under pressure.

I'm not convinced by Roglic's decending skills: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNRYgKyZBAI

Sheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet! :shock:

A random aside, the Triglav national park where that ski jump is situated is a simply stunning place to ride a bike.

rick_chasey

TGOTB wrote:

TailWindHome wrote:

ITV4 highlights the other night had an analysis of mad descending skillz in the wind tunnel
Apparently Froome's mad effort would have cost him time.
Sagan's the most efficient.

They missed a key point though, which was that they didn't factor in the amount of power the rider could generate in each position. A slightly less-aero position might still be better if it didn't compromise power output as much as the most aero position.

Surely at those speeds it's irrelevant? No-one's riding around with a 60T big ring.

rick_chasey

Unless anyone can tell me otherwise, from memory these climbs don’t ramp too much so could be ok for Dumolin & Thomas.

DeadCalm

Rick Chasey wrote:

TGOTB wrote:

TailWindHome wrote:

ITV4 highlights the other night had an analysis of mad descending skillz in the wind tunnel
Apparently Froome's mad effort would have cost him time.
Sagan's the most efficient.

They missed a key point though, which was that they didn't factor in the amount of power the rider could generate in each position. A slightly less-aero position might still be better if it didn't compromise power output as much as the most aero position.

Surely at those speeds it's irrelevant? No-one's riding around with a 60T big ring.

Yup, exactly this. Except on that descent Froome was pedaling while on the top tube. Which has never really made any sense to me.

larkim

Also they missed the fact that subtle differences in the individual riders might make one position more aero than others for that individual rider. So for the model they had in the wind tunnel Froome’s position wasn’t perfect, but I’d be very surprised if Sky haven’t tried out some of that aero positioning in a wind tunnel themselves. They’ll certainly have done it for Froome in full on TT position, I’d be really surprised if they didn’t have data for non-TT bike descending too.

tgotb

DeadCalm wrote:

Rick Chasey wrote:

TGOTB wrote:

TailWindHome wrote:

ITV4 highlights the other night had an analysis of mad descending skillz in the wind tunnel
Apparently Froome's mad effort would have cost him time.
Sagan's the most efficient.

They missed a key point though, which was that they didn't factor in the amount of power the rider could generate in each position. A slightly less-aero position might still be better if it didn't compromise power output as much as the most aero position.

Surely at those speeds it's irrelevant? No-one's riding around with a 60T big ring.

Yup, exactly this. Except on that descent Froome was pedaling while on the top tube. Which has never really made any sense to me.

When they interviewed Brailsford about it, shortly after the event, he said they'd specifically set up the gearing with that descent in mind.

davidof

DeVlaeminck wrote:

Ocana's crash must have been devastating as apparently he was always obsessed with beating Merckx and having finally done it he threw it away needlessly trying to match him on a dangerous descent. He had 7 minutes but was after humiliating Merckx by stuffing him (and I've checked this one!) on the Portillon.

You'd have to be a bit mad to go mano-mano with Merckx on a tricky descent given the Belgiums skills but Ocaña was always a hot-head prepared to go for another spin of the wheel.

bobmcstuff

The bookies chainrings rating:


Yates, Majka, Alaphilippe, Barguil
Froome, Roglic, Bardet, Nieve, Valverde, G, Dumoulin

Was a bit of an arbitrary distinction, I basically put everyone for whom you can find odds shorter than 10/1 as a 2 chainring and everyone between 10 and 20/1 as a 3 chainring...

This compares to the Inrng ratings:


Julian Alaphilippe, Omar Fraile
Majka, Nieve, Barguil, Yates, Mollema

Pretty neat overlap given how wide open it is. Valverde has been a bit off the pace on the climbs, but if he can get down the Portillon with the front group I would have thought he was in with a shout as the last 1.5km is flat, and he's obviously a fast finisher.

natrix

Sadly, I predict that the roadside behaviour will degenerate even further with Froome getting pushed off his bike or hit again................

rick_chasey

natrix wrote:

Sadly, I predict that the roadside behaviour will degenerate even further with Froome getting pushed off his bike or hit again................

Pyrenees are usually much more sparsely populated with fans, especially now there's no basque team.

So shouldn't be too bad.

The Alp has always been the worst for this stuff.

blazing_saddles

Just about to start.
This stage is set up for a really hard and long battle to get into the breakaway, but I do wonder if the parcour is sufficiently back loaded: on paper it looks a bit lightweight.

red.rider

Peloton attacked with pepper spray, race neutralised

blazing_saddles

Quite a number of the riders sprayed.
Complete standstill for eye washing.

More arsehole behaviour. This time from the French farmers.

bigmitch41

Blimey, looked like the offenders had tried to build a road block with straw bails, then riders sprayed with pepper spray, either from the protesters or the police?

kingstongraham

WTF?

lettingthedaysgoby

Bloody hell

TheBigBean

That's taking a protest a bit far.

PhilipPirrip

Brailsford was right then

bigmitch41

Pepper spray was from the police trying to subdue the protestors I think?

blazing_saddles

Unfortunately, the culprit has been ID'd as the French police.

RichN95.

ITV show that it was a cop pepper spraying on of the farmers

No_Ta_Doctor

Looks like it might have been a gendarme using tear gas on protestors with unintended consequences.

twotoebenny

Yeah I've read it's tear gas used by gendarme on protesters... wtf?

indyp

Race neutralised and all stopped few Kms after incident. Lots of riders being treated be doctors with plenty of water flushing out eyes. Looks like race will get going again soon

bigmitch41

Restarting now

No_Ta_Doctor

A couple of KM neutral start and we're back.

FocusZing

The Police are like, "Don't stand so close to me".