Giro 2020 - Stage 1: Monreale – Palermo 15 km ITT *Spoilers*

Pross

RichN95. said:

jimmyjams said:

If only top-5 was meant by Rich95, I don't disagree with you, but then I wonder why Knox and Zakarin, and to an even greater extent, why Oomen and Ciccione were included in Rich95's list. I'd be very surprised if any of them end up top-5.

I didn't give it that much thought. I just got the list off this tweet. There's only so much room on a tweet. (I left off Hagen as he's really not that good). If you've got a problem then take it up with Felix

https://twitter.com/saddleblaze/status/1312003987122651136

Can't be many people who rated Yates above Thomas.

RichN95.

Pross said:

Can't be many people who rated Yates above Thomas.

The British media have been falling over themselves to show that they don't rate Sky/Ineos riders for a decade now.

I get the feeling that they think that someone who won back to back MTFs in the Tour isn't a good enough climber. Although to be fair Yates won Tirreno, not Thomas.

ddraver

Friebe didnt either...

Still unsure if Gee's attraction to the ground has really been cured?!?

blazing_saddles

RichN95. said:

Pross said:

Can't be many people who rated Yates above Thomas.

The British media have been falling over themselves to show that they don't rate Sky/Ineos riders for a decade now.

I get the feeling that they think that someone who won back to back MTFs in the Tour isn't a good enough climber. Although to be fair Yates won Tirreno, not Thomas.

Yes and Dani Martinez won the Dauphine while Tadej Pogačar only managed 4th.

Pross

For me, despite the Vuelta win, Yates' third week is a more likely issue that Thomas' climbing.

andyp

Really? In the 2018 Giro he knew the time trial in the third week would be key and rode aggressively to build a time buffer ahead of it. The plan failed because he went too deep in doing so.

Later that season in the Vuelta, he knew the third week would be decisive and reigned in his attacking instincts a bit in the first two weeks to peak in the third week. He was in the lead as early as stage 9, but was still able to race aggressively when it mattered, i.e. the stage to Naturlandia in Andorra on the last Friday of the race to take the win.

I think he learned a lot from his Giro performance in 2018, so is more mature in how and when he races aggressively.

blazing_saddles

andyp said:

Really? In the 2018 Giro he knew the time trial in the third week would be key and rode aggressively to build a time buffer ahead of it. The plan failed because he went too deep in doing so.

Later that season in the Vuelta, he knew the third week would be decisive and reigned in his attacking instincts a bit in the first two weeks to peak in the third week. He was in the lead as early as stage 9, but was still able to race aggressively when it mattered, i.e. the stage to Naturlandia in Andorra on the last Friday of the race to take the win.

I think he learned a lot from his Giro performance in 2018, so is more mature in how and when he races aggressively.

At the Giro he was trialing against Dumoulin and Froome, at the Vuelta, over just 32kms, he was trialing against Kruijswijk.

Here he's got Thomas over 65kms of trialing.

I would suggest he is going to have to be very mature when he races aggressively in this GT as he going to need to produce two more big time trials.

Pross

Maybe but then, as pointed out above, Thomas won back to back mountain stages in the Tour but people seem to think his climbing is a weak point. I think people confuse not being a typically built climber who doesn't get out of the saddle and make sudden accelerations with not being a good climber despite the evidence of the last 10 years.

kingstongraham

Pross said:

Maybe but then, as pointed out above, Thomas won back to back mountain stages in the Tour but people seem to think his climbing is a weak point. I think people confuse not being a typically built climber who doesn't get out of the saddle and make sudden accelerations with not being a good climber despite the evidence of the last 10 years.

But Froome was a pretty good climber in 2018.

The difficulty for Yates is that he again needs to get time almost everywhere else, in order to overhaul the TT of Thomas. He needs to be aggressive from now onwards, and risk blowing again.

inseine

On paper ( and in the 2018 Tour) Thomas is the perfect GT rider. He can climb, he can TT and he's a good one day rider so shouldn't get caught out on the lumpy or windy days. If he stays upright he's unbeatable.

DeadCalm

The loss of Lopez is a big blow for Astana. I suspect that Astana's game plan was to try and isolate Thomas as much as possible using guys like Rodriguez* and then have Lopez try to soften Thomas up with a series of kamikaze attacks which hopefully Vlasov and Fuglsang could exploit. Yates might have been able to benefit too.

(*that Rodriguez who caused Majka to raise an eyebrow in the Vuelta a couple of years ago)

brundonbianchi

That was a superb effort from G. This could be a fascinating Giro.

brundonbianchi

kingstongraham said:

Pross said:

Maybe but then, as pointed out above, Thomas won back to back mountain stages in the Tour but people seem to think his climbing is a weak point. I think people confuse not being a typically built climber who doesn't get out of the saddle and make sudden accelerations with not being a good climber despite the evidence of the last 10 years.

But Froome was a pretty good climber in 2018.
.

But he’s no good on a TT rig, when it’s windy.

shirley_basso

Oof

bobmcstuff

I was all for giving Yates a decent ranking, as he was being overlooked on quite a few rankings, but putting him above Thomas is crazy talk with 3 TTs. He's already lost 26 seconds on the first one and it wasn't very long.