The Pre-Tour de France thread v2.0

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  • RichN95.
    RichN95. Posts: 27,147

    Wiggins in 2012?


    People forget that Froome lost a minute and a half on stage one due to a late mechanical/crash
    Twitter: @RichN95
  • TheBigBean
    TheBigBean Posts: 20,553
    RichN95. said:

    Wiggins in 2012?


    People forget that Froome lost a minute and a half on stage one due to a late mechanical/crash
    Do they? He'd out performed Wiggins and arguably lost the Vuelta as a result of him. He should have been given assistance in the tour and treated as an equal, but in those team days Sky only had one plan.
  • gsk82
    gsk82 Posts: 3,461

    RichN95. said:

    Wiggins in 2012?


    People forget that Froome lost a minute and a half on stage one due to a late mechanical/crash
    Do they? He'd out performed Wiggins and arguably lost the Vuelta as a result of him. He should have been given assistance in the tour and treated as an equal, but in those team days Sky only had one plan.
    Wasn't it a short uphill finish? How would teammates have helped? Particularly since he was probably second to last in the line, behind most of them.
    "Unfortunately these days a lot of people don’t understand the real quality of a bike" Ernesto Colnago
  • mididoctors
    mididoctors Posts: 16,776
    edited July 2021

    Can the best team beat the best rider?

    It's an interesting proposition

    No. They can't

    My conclusion is this, when it comes to the climbs a team is of limited use.

    'Team' all you want, the best rider is just going to follow your wheels until you've exhausted yourselves

    If INEOS are going to use their superior team they need to engineer something in the valley roads
    What's the plan for Ineos that stops Pog just loading a pocket full of gels and following their only rider within half an hour on GC?
    Make him do it ..once did it to indurain dam near worked
    "If I was a 38 year old man, I definitely wouldn't be riding a bright yellow bike with Hello Kitty disc wheels, put it that way. What we're witnessing here is the world's most high profile mid-life crisis" Afx237vi Mon Jul 20, 2009 2:43 pm
  • mididoctors
    mididoctors Posts: 16,776
    Movistar had froome isolated early in that stage and made the mistake of attacking him on the climbs
    "If I was a 38 year old man, I definitely wouldn't be riding a bright yellow bike with Hello Kitty disc wheels, put it that way. What we're witnessing here is the world's most high profile mid-life crisis" Afx237vi Mon Jul 20, 2009 2:43 pm
  • TheBigBean
    TheBigBean Posts: 20,553
    gsk82 said:

    RichN95. said:

    Wiggins in 2012?


    People forget that Froome lost a minute and a half on stage one due to a late mechanical/crash
    Do they? He'd out performed Wiggins and arguably lost the Vuelta as a result of him. He should have been given assistance in the tour and treated as an equal, but in those team days Sky only had one plan.
    Wasn't it a short uphill finish? How would teammates have helped? Particularly since he was probably second to last in the line, behind most of them.
    A teammate could have given him a wheel or a bike. A teammate whose job was to do just that.
  • RichN95.
    RichN95. Posts: 27,147

    gsk82 said:

    RichN95. said:

    Wiggins in 2012?


    People forget that Froome lost a minute and a half on stage one due to a late mechanical/crash
    Do they? He'd out performed Wiggins and arguably lost the Vuelta as a result of him. He should have been given assistance in the tour and treated as an equal, but in those team days Sky only had one plan.
    Wasn't it a short uphill finish? How would teammates have helped? Particularly since he was probably second to last in the line, behind most of them.
    A teammate could have given him a wheel or a bike. A teammate whose job was to do just that.

    Richie Porte did. The beauty of this forum is you can go back and read the spoiler threads from the time. Most of the discussion was whether Cancellara could have done anything different to beat Sagan who sat on his wheel in the finale.
    Twitter: @RichN95
  • TheBigBean
    TheBigBean Posts: 20,553
    RichN95. said:

    gsk82 said:

    RichN95. said:

    Wiggins in 2012?


    People forget that Froome lost a minute and a half on stage one due to a late mechanical/crash
    Do they? He'd out performed Wiggins and arguably lost the Vuelta as a result of him. He should have been given assistance in the tour and treated as an equal, but in those team days Sky only had one plan.
    Wasn't it a short uphill finish? How would teammates have helped? Particularly since he was probably second to last in the line, behind most of them.
    A teammate could have given him a wheel or a bike. A teammate whose job was to do just that.

    Richie Porte did. The beauty of this forum is you can go back and read the spoiler threads from the time. Most of the discussion was whether Cancellara could have done anything different to beat Sagan who sat on his wheel in the finale.
    Looking back at the race, he got it with 5km to go and yes it was a tricky uphill finish, so perhaps he couldn't have done much better than he did as there would have been a lot of stragglers in the way.
  • ddraver
    ddraver Posts: 26,383
    edited July 2021
    @rick_chasey @TheBigBean

    You know how you were discussing the merits of using Football Manager to judge players in the Euros and I joked about what it would be like to do that with Cycling..?

    Well,



    (I do rather like that)
    We're in danger of confusing passion with incompetence
    - @ddraver
  • TheBigBean
    TheBigBean Posts: 20,553
    ddraver said:

    @rick_chasey @TheBigBean

    You know how you were discussing the merits of using Football Manager to judge players in the Euros and I joked about what it would be like to do that with Cycling..?

    Well,



    (I do rather like that)
    Team B&B Hotels being the only team to miss out on a single stage win across the entire 100 simulations.
  • Lanterne_Rogue
    Lanterne_Rogue Posts: 4,091
    I'm rather amused by the way that in no possible world does B&B Hotels manage to win a stage.

    WvA becoming a mountain specialist is a bit odd though - I wonder if that's gameplay reasons? My immediate suspicion is that the game is happier to let powerful riders get out in breaks than real cyclists are, perhaps for gameplay reasons.

    Looking at the reddit post itself the three biggest sprinters (Ewan, Demare and Merlier) take about 28% of the wins, so five and half of the 8 sprint stages that are expected. Nearly a third of the sprint stages (presumably) going to the breakaway feels a bit toppy to me, given the way the Tour is raced, but I don't know what others think. It'd tally with the idea that the game is happier to let strong riders into the break though.
  • rick_chasey
    rick_chasey Posts: 72,540

    I'm rather amused by the way that in no possible world does B&B Hotels manage to win a stage.

    WvA becoming a mountain specialist is a bit odd though - I wonder if that's gameplay reasons? My immediate suspicion is that the game is happier to let powerful riders get out in breaks than real cyclists are, perhaps for gameplay reasons.

    Looking at the reddit post itself the three biggest sprinters (Ewan, Demare and Merlier) take about 28% of the wins, so five and half of the 8 sprint stages that are expected. Nearly a third of the sprint stages (presumably) going to the breakaway feels a bit toppy to me, given the way the Tour is raced, but I don't know what others think. It'd tally with the idea that the game is happier to let strong riders into the break though.

    So they do this thing a lot for Football manager and tbh it's as much about understanding the algorithm and how it plays out en masse, as well as hilarious transfers.

    PCM is decidedly less sophisticated (far fewer variables to work with, and hundreds of millions of pounds less development spend) so the result makes sense.
  • Lanterne_Rogue
    Lanterne_Rogue Posts: 4,091
    Yeah, that's what I was trying to get to really. You can see how a certain set of assumptions leads to WvA and MvdP suddenly competing for the polka dots (and it'd be a fun edition of the Tour to watch), and it's interesting to try and work out where the assumptions break down in reality.
  • rick_chasey
    rick_chasey Posts: 72,540

    Yeah, that's what I was trying to get to really. You can see how a certain set of assumptions leads to WvA and MvdP suddenly competing for the polka dots (and it'd be a fun edition of the Tour to watch), and it's interesting to try and work out where the assumptions break down in reality.

    Yeah. In FM20 for example, a top level wing-back is massively overpowered, as is the 4-2-3-1 gegenpress system (related) - that's been played out in various "done over 100 seasons" type simulations, and as it's a much bigger franchise you get real nerds doing experiments to test out the limits of the algorithm.

  • RichN95.
    RichN95. Posts: 27,147
    ddraver said:


    I think this must be how rozzer32 does his PTP picks
    Twitter: @RichN95
  • Pross
    Pross Posts: 40,454

    ddraver said:

    @rick_chasey @TheBigBean

    You know how you were discussing the merits of using Football Manager to judge players in the Euros and I joked about what it would be like to do that with Cycling..?

    Well,



    (I do rather like that)
    Team B&B Hotels being the only team to miss out on a single stage win across the entire 100 simulations.
    Doesn't take a world class statistician to work that one out - are they actually in the race?
  • gsk82
    gsk82 Posts: 3,461
    edited July 2021
    gsk82 said:

    RichN95. said:

    A surprise selection by Bahrain with the omission of Padun

    Maybe they don't trust him either.

    His national federation don't trust him for the Olympics either. I can see where this is going.

    Edit: Padun that is
    "Unfortunately these days a lot of people don’t understand the real quality of a bike" Ernesto Colnago