Anyone else wish Alaphillipe had gone all the way??

DeadCalm

Pross wrote:

Coopster the 1st wrote:

No tA Doctor wrote:

Coopster the 1st wrote:

ddraver wrote:

It would've been fun but I think that the best guy should win really and I'd say Allaphillipe was about theeeee 5th best?

I've got to say I hope he doesn't fall in to the trap of becoming a GC rider now. Without grabbing a bunch of time when the actual GC teams were looking the other way he wouldn't have been in serious contention. He doesn't want to waste a career being the next Nico Roche when he is already the next Gilbert*

*and....maybe....don't make me....no....the next....aargh...Valverde :shock:

Unless a tour route is designed to suit Allaphillipe!

Put the highest summits early & mid-stage with lower, shorter, steeper summit finishes at the end of the stage, maybe a couple of technical descent finishes as well. Combine with a ITT that suits him. Him training and targeting the GC, and a proper support team and who is going to beat him?

Bernal, Froome, Dumoulin, Pinot, Thomas....

Bernal would lose time with a ITT route similar to this year.
Froome has been shown to be exposed on shorter steep climbs where he has not had a chance to get into his climbing rhythm.
Dumoulin could also benefit from this sort of route but in a short MTF sprint Allaphillipe is always going to win and take the bonus seconds
This sort of route would benefit the explosiveness of Pinot
Thomas would need long less steep MTF's to have his best chance.

People make that sort of comment regularly. It's almost as if he didn't leave the rest of the GC contenders in his wake on Les Planches des Belles Filles.

I seem to remember he took about 2 seconds on a rapidly gaining Pinot and less than 10 on the rest of the GC contenders. Wasn't that mostly down to Thomas timing the sprint to perfection plus partly the others keeping more of an eye on Bernal than Thomas? Thomas had lost that 5 seconds on stage 3 by that point.

KnightOfTheLongTights

VinnyMarsden wrote:

Personally I wish he had got to Paris in Yellow..he has been the most animated yellow jersey for a long time...every day the commentators have waited for him to pop and every day the little guy found something to keep the Jersey just one more day, just a pity his team lost their legs for him in the last 3 days. The Queen stage was always going to be a tester..3 climbs all over 2000mtrs, he did well to still be there in my opinion. DQS not really set up as a GC centric team so Chapeau to him, I really do feel for him, he comes across as a nice guy too, just hope it doesn't prey on his mind, in my opinion he's got the stones to get a major tour most definitely.
Then to see Pinot crying...poor fella, you could see quite clearly what it meant to him, another guy who has ridden his nuts off to try and break the Ineos stranglehold, and in so doing they have lit up this years race, and hopefully shown some of the other teams/riders that it can be done.
Iused to like the TDF, then fell out of love because of one teams total boring dominance..this year has been great...hopefully the Vuleta maintains that level of uncertainty..next thing they need to do is ban race radios and it will be even more open!!!!

Agreed. But you'll upset the Ineos fanboys.

RichN95.

KnightOfTheLongTights wrote:

Agreed. But you'll upset the Ineos fanboys.

I think you may be on the wrong forum

hanshotfirst

KnightOfTheLongTights wrote:

VinnyMarsden wrote:

Personally I wish he had got to Paris in Yellow..he has been the most animated yellow jersey for a long time...every day the commentators have waited for him to pop and every day the little guy found something to keep the Jersey just one more day, just a pity his team lost their legs for him in the last 3 days. The Queen stage was always going to be a tester..3 climbs all over 2000mtrs, he did well to still be there in my opinion. DQS not really set up as a GC centric team so Chapeau to him, I really do feel for him, he comes across as a nice guy too, just hope it doesn't prey on his mind, in my opinion he's got the stones to get a major tour most definitely.
Then to see Pinot crying...poor fella, you could see quite clearly what it meant to him, another guy who has ridden his nuts off to try and break the Ineos stranglehold, and in so doing they have lit up this years race, and hopefully shown some of the other teams/riders that it can be done.
Iused to like the TDF, then fell out of love because of one teams total boring dominance..this year has been great...hopefully the Vuleta maintains that level of uncertainty..next thing they need to do is ban race radios and it will be even more open!!!!

Agreed. But you'll upset the Ineos fanboys.

Not to go all Ineos fanboy as I'd like to think I'm not. But this issue of the race radios again (same with power meters) I don't see what difference it would make at all. As someone said over in the Froome thread - Sky/Ineos are just really really good at preparing for and winning Grand Tours, winning the TdF in particular. Take away race radios and they're still going to win. If Ineos don't have race radios then neither does anyone else.

Guaranteed the very day it's announced they're no longer allowed to use radios Brailsford and the team would be working on the next step while all the French teams are like "ah, finally our time to show some panache!"

Gimmie a break.

Pross

On the issue of race radios, I think the stage with the landslide showed how important they can be.

Pross

DeadCalm wrote:

Pross wrote:

Coopster the 1st wrote:

No tA Doctor wrote:

Coopster the 1st wrote:

ddraver wrote:

It would've been fun but I think that the best guy should win really and I'd say Allaphillipe was about theeeee 5th best?

I've got to say I hope he doesn't fall in to the trap of becoming a GC rider now. Without grabbing a bunch of time when the actual GC teams were looking the other way he wouldn't have been in serious contention. He doesn't want to waste a career being the next Nico Roche when he is already the next Gilbert*

*and....maybe....don't make me....no....the next....aargh...Valverde :shock:

Unless a tour route is designed to suit Allaphillipe!

Put the highest summits early & mid-stage with lower, shorter, steeper summit finishes at the end of the stage, maybe a couple of technical descent finishes as well. Combine with a ITT that suits him. Him training and targeting the GC, and a proper support team and who is going to beat him?

Bernal, Froome, Dumoulin, Pinot, Thomas....

Bernal would lose time with a ITT route similar to this year.
Froome has been shown to be exposed on shorter steep climbs where he has not had a chance to get into his climbing rhythm.
Dumoulin could also benefit from this sort of route but in a short MTF sprint Allaphillipe is always going to win and take the bonus seconds
This sort of route would benefit the explosiveness of Pinot
Thomas would need long less steep MTF's to have his best chance.

People make that sort of comment regularly. It's almost as if he didn't leave the rest of the GC contenders in his wake on Les Planches des Belles Filles.

I seem to remember he took about 2 seconds on a rapidly gaining Pinot and less than 10 on the rest of the GC contenders. Wasn't that mostly down to Thomas timing the sprint to perfection plus partly the others keeping more of an eye on Bernal than Thomas? Thomas had lost that 5 seconds on stage 3 by that point.

But it still flies in the face of the claim that he needs long, less steep climbs to have his best chance. He isn't Wiggins, he can be fairly punchy (see also the Mur de Bretagne stage last year).

DeadCalm

Pross wrote:

DeadCalm wrote:

Pross wrote:

Coopster the 1st wrote:

No tA Doctor wrote:

Coopster the 1st wrote:

ddraver wrote:

It would've been fun but I think that the best guy should win really and I'd say Allaphillipe was about theeeee 5th best?

I've got to say I hope he doesn't fall in to the trap of becoming a GC rider now. Without grabbing a bunch of time when the actual GC teams were looking the other way he wouldn't have been in serious contention. He doesn't want to waste a career being the next Nico Roche when he is already the next Gilbert*

*and....maybe....don't make me....no....the next....aargh...Valverde :shock:

Unless a tour route is designed to suit Allaphillipe!

Put the highest summits early & mid-stage with lower, shorter, steeper summit finishes at the end of the stage, maybe a couple of technical descent finishes as well. Combine with a ITT that suits him. Him training and targeting the GC, and a proper support team and who is going to beat him?

Bernal, Froome, Dumoulin, Pinot, Thomas....

Bernal would lose time with a ITT route similar to this year.
Froome has been shown to be exposed on shorter steep climbs where he has not had a chance to get into his climbing rhythm.
Dumoulin could also benefit from this sort of route but in a short MTF sprint Allaphillipe is always going to win and take the bonus seconds
This sort of route would benefit the explosiveness of Pinot
Thomas would need long less steep MTF's to have his best chance.

People make that sort of comment regularly. It's almost as if he didn't leave the rest of the GC contenders in his wake on Les Planches des Belles Filles.

I seem to remember he took about 2 seconds on a rapidly gaining Pinot and less than 10 on the rest of the GC contenders. Wasn't that mostly down to Thomas timing the sprint to perfection plus partly the others keeping more of an eye on Bernal than Thomas? Thomas had lost that 5 seconds on stage 3 by that point.

But it still flies in the face of the claim that he needs long, less steep climbs to have his best chance. He isn't Wiggins, he can be fairly punchy (see also the Mur de Bretagne stage last year).

Fair point. In fact, you could bring in much of his 2018 Tour win as evidence to support your point. Didn't seem so punchy this year though.

shirley_basso

DeadCalm wrote:

Fair point. In fact, you could bring in much of his 2018 Tour win as evidence to support your point. Didn't seem so punchy this year though.

The thing is this year, I assume that, if st 19 wasn't cancelled, the idea was to use Ergan as a 'risk free' hare to get all the teams chasing. Had he been caught, then GT could have launched his counter attack and been in yellow.

Then ST20 would have been to consolidate or defend that lead.

I don't know the inner workings of Ineos, but I would have said that it would have been more risky for GT to carry out that move rather than EB on ST19, and EB to be the one that counter attacked if the break was caught.