TDF 2020: Sept 7th. Rest Day Rumours and Rumblings

124

Comments

  • mididoctors
    mididoctors Posts: 16,646

    To be fair, not many riders have won it when they're scarcely out of the jnr ranks. He has a LOT of time on his side.

    We all thought that about Ullrich, IIRC ;-)
    We did tbf he did win the vuelta half fit
    "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: 16,646
    The issue was more bernal than mega jumbo . That HC climb was topped by a bunch sprit FFS .
    "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
  • davidof
    davidof Posts: 3,032
    These guys on the road outside the house. I've just told them "if you are not in the team don't wear the kit. It's da rulez" but they seem to be foreigners.


    BASI Nordic Ski Instructor
    Instagramme
  • m.r.m.
    m.r.m. Posts: 3,312
    Doesn't count without the fully decked out bike. 😉
    PTP Champion 2019, 2022 & 2023
  • m.r.m.
    m.r.m. Posts: 3,312
    davidof said:

    These guys on the road outside the house. I've just told them "if you are not in the team don't wear the kit. It's da rulez" but they seem to be foreigners.


    *Scenes from stage 15*

    Kwiatkowski and Castroviejo waiting on Bernal.
    PTP Champion 2019, 2022 & 2023
  • m.r.m. said:



    Kwiatkowski and Castroviejo waiting on Bernal.

    Good job Ineos famously bring their own pillows.
  • m.r.m.
    m.r.m. Posts: 3,312
    davidof said:

    These guys on the road outside the house. I've just told them "if you are not in the team don't wear the kit. It's da rulez" but they seem to be foreigners.


    The food cart of the famous Ineos mountain train.
    PTP Champion 2019, 2022 & 2023
  • davidof
    davidof Posts: 3,032
    m.r.m. said:

    Doesn't count without the fully decked out bike. 😉

    They've gone the whole hog getting replica team bikes and all that
    BASI Nordic Ski Instructor
    Instagramme
  • zest28 said:

    Pross said:

    Is it just me thinking that when the big guys of the classics drop the minute climbers up a mountain, then we are rewinding an old tape and it means there is a new drug in town?

    What? One that you feed to your domestiques but not team leaders? Seems highly unlikely. When the likes of Uran and Porte are up there everyday it suggests it just isn't as hard a pace as people are suggesting and that a few riders are badly out of form / ill. I wouldn't be surprised to see some Covid positives among the riders in today's results.
    The pace was hard. What JV did was:
    - Make use of WvA his cyclocross expertise by setting a short super hard effort to get everybody tired (after that he went chilling on Bernal his wheel)
    - Then Tom Dumoulin as a time trail specialist than went on time trailing JV up the mountain to punish everyone their tired legs.

    The reason why guys like Pogacar can deal with this, is because he is an excellent time trailist himself and can deal with these hard efforts. Richie Porte is also not bad in time trailing.

    This was not a slow and steady climbing pace that suits Bernal what JV did.

    You are over complicating what is a simple equation... going uphill is almost entirely a power/weight affair and Bernal should have one of the highest ratios in the peloton, if not the highest.
    If that proves not to be the case, then it's either because he is in bad form or ill, or because JW & company have found a way to boost their W/kg beyond that of a minute Colombian climber.

    The all "he prefers a high tempo" or "he prefers a punchy attack" is irrelevant... on a climb like that it's W/kg, you have it or you don't
    left the forum March 2023
  • gsk82
    gsk82 Posts: 3,439

    zest28 said:

    Pross said:

    Is it just me thinking that when the big guys of the classics drop the minute climbers up a mountain, then we are rewinding an old tape and it means there is a new drug in town?

    What? One that you feed to your domestiques but not team leaders? Seems highly unlikely. When the likes of Uran and Porte are up there everyday it suggests it just isn't as hard a pace as people are suggesting and that a few riders are badly out of form / ill. I wouldn't be surprised to see some Covid positives among the riders in today's results.
    The pace was hard. What JV did was:
    - Make use of WvA his cyclocross expertise by setting a short super hard effort to get everybody tired (after that he went chilling on Bernal his wheel)
    - Then Tom Dumoulin as a time trail specialist than went on time trailing JV up the mountain to punish everyone their tired legs.

    The reason why guys like Pogacar can deal with this, is because he is an excellent time trailist himself and can deal with these hard efforts. Richie Porte is also not bad in time trailing.

    This was not a slow and steady climbing pace that suits Bernal what JV did.

    You are over complicating what is a simple equation... going uphill is almost entirely a power/weight affair and Bernal should have one of the highest ratios in the peloton, if not the highest.
    If that proves not to be the case, then it's either because he is in bad form or ill, or because JW & company have found a way to boost their W/kg beyond that of a minute Colombian climber.

    They're called ketones.
    "Unfortunately these days a lot of people don’t understand the real quality of a bike" Ernesto Colnago
  • ddraver
    ddraver Posts: 26,348
    This doesn't actually make that thing look that big...

    We're in danger of confusing passion with incompetence
    - @ddraver
  • gsk82
    gsk82 Posts: 3,439
    ddraver said:

    This doesn't actually make that thing look that big...

    The poor performance could be down to the amount of time they're spending promoting that monstrosity
    "Unfortunately these days a lot of people don’t understand the real quality of a bike" Ernesto Colnago
  • zest28 said:

    Pross said:

    Is it just me thinking that when the big guys of the classics drop the minute climbers up a mountain, then we are rewinding an old tape and it means there is a new drug in town?

    What? One that you feed to your domestiques but not team leaders? Seems highly unlikely. When the likes of Uran and Porte are up there everyday it suggests it just isn't as hard a pace as people are suggesting and that a few riders are badly out of form / ill. I wouldn't be surprised to see some Covid positives among the riders in today's results.
    The pace was hard. What JV did was:
    - Make use of WvA his cyclocross expertise by setting a short super hard effort to get everybody tired (after that he went chilling on Bernal his wheel)
    - Then Tom Dumoulin as a time trail specialist than went on time trailing JV up the mountain to punish everyone their tired legs.

    The reason why guys like Pogacar can deal with this, is because he is an excellent time trailist himself and can deal with these hard efforts. Richie Porte is also not bad in time trailing.

    This was not a slow and steady climbing pace that suits Bernal what JV did.

    You are over complicating what is a simple equation... going uphill is almost entirely a power/weight affair and Bernal should have one of the highest ratios in the peloton, if not the highest.
    If that proves not to be the case, then it's either because he is in bad form or ill, or because JW & company have found a way to boost their W/kg beyond that of a minute Colombian climber.

    The all "he prefers a high tempo" or "he prefers a punchy attack" is irrelevant... on a climb like that it's W/kg, you have it or you don't
    if needed a punchy attack they would have brought Moscon.
  • gsk82 said:

    zest28 said:

    Pross said:

    Is it just me thinking that when the big guys of the classics drop the minute climbers up a mountain, then we are rewinding an old tape and it means there is a new drug in town?

    What? One that you feed to your domestiques but not team leaders? Seems highly unlikely. When the likes of Uran and Porte are up there everyday it suggests it just isn't as hard a pace as people are suggesting and that a few riders are badly out of form / ill. I wouldn't be surprised to see some Covid positives among the riders in today's results.
    The pace was hard. What JV did was:
    - Make use of WvA his cyclocross expertise by setting a short super hard effort to get everybody tired (after that he went chilling on Bernal his wheel)
    - Then Tom Dumoulin as a time trail specialist than went on time trailing JV up the mountain to punish everyone their tired legs.

    The reason why guys like Pogacar can deal with this, is because he is an excellent time trailist himself and can deal with these hard efforts. Richie Porte is also not bad in time trailing.

    This was not a slow and steady climbing pace that suits Bernal what JV did.

    You are over complicating what is a simple equation... going uphill is almost entirely a power/weight affair and Bernal should have one of the highest ratios in the peloton, if not the highest.
    If that proves not to be the case, then it's either because he is in bad form or ill, or because JW & company have found a way to boost their W/kg beyond that of a minute Colombian climber.

    They're called ketones.
    Playing with metabolic rate and fat/sugar burning doesn't lead to great advantages... that's like those fuel additives you put in your petrol tank and make you save 1-2 mpg... but you won't turn your Golf into a McLaren.

    If you want to go harder and increase your power output, you need more oxygen, which is always the limiting factor. If muscles had more oxygen, they could contract faster and produce more power... Blood doping has traditionally proved to be the method of choice to deliver more oxygen to the muscles... someone might have found better blood doping or someone might have looked at the oxygen delivery from a different angle... you have a pump, a gas exchange membrane a pipe system and a carrier, so far they've only altered the amount of carrier, but you could look at how the pipes work, how the membranes work...
    left the forum March 2023
  • david37
    david37 Posts: 1,313

    On the bonk issue, Bernal himself said he fed properly. He also hasn't claimed injury (other than the back issue, which he said he didn't want to blame) or illness. He just didn't have the legs. But rare to see a rider of his calibre break so badly and not be able to limit losses. I still think he might not be well.

    As for how hard JV made it - the WvA section might have been tough, but the riders left at the end suggests it wasn't an astronomical pace, and though I don't get into the Twitter W/Kg debates, it looks like the last climb was under 6.

    I think a lot of the performance differences we're seeing is down to the weird Covid season. Some riders and teams have clearly come through it a lot better than others. I don't think we're seeing new unbeatable riders emerge (and all the new mystery drug twaddle), I think we're seeing riders who handled lockdown better, for whatever reason.

    It's also clear Ineos didn't get their preparation right. They should have known way, way earlier who their squad were, and been right on top of both their numbers and the psychology of the team. Dropping in Carapaz, who was targeting the Giro which starts a month later, was desperate. He evaporated as leader and I don't think I've seen him do anything much as a domestique. And for all the chat about whether Thomas should have been included, they needed to handle both his form (which is currently looking good) and his ambitions. This is stuff they should have had a handle on months ago. I think they're badly missing both Ellingworth and Portal.

    I think youre right, Portal was a key part of the team.
  • Matti66
    Matti66 Posts: 190
    Brailsford getting ill too .
  • Re. Bernal... "not having the legs" is nonsense. The difference between a super day and a bad day it's not 7 minutes on the finish line... it's more like whether you can be with the top bunch in the last 500m or you have to lose 10 seconds.


    To me, it seems like either they got the training all wrong and he peaked way to early in the summer, or, more likely he has some illness, not necessarily Covid... riders seem to get a lot of other viruses like Epstein-Barr.
    Or of course, you can rewind to 2005 and think of Ivan Basso at the Giro...
    left the forum March 2023
  • ddraver
    ddraver Posts: 26,348
    Wiggins stirring every pot he can get his hands on 😁😁😁
    We're in danger of confusing passion with incompetence
    - @ddraver
  • m.r.m.
    m.r.m. Posts: 3,312
    davidof said:

    m.r.m. said:

    Doesn't count without the fully decked out bike. 😉

    They've gone the whole hog getting replica team bikes and all that
    :o good lord! :s
    PTP Champion 2019, 2022 & 2023
  • DeadCalm
    DeadCalm Posts: 4,099
    david37 said:

    On the bonk issue, Bernal himself said he fed properly. He also hasn't claimed injury (other than the back issue, which he said he didn't want to blame) or illness. He just didn't have the legs. But rare to see a rider of his calibre break so badly and not be able to limit losses. I still think he might not be well.

    As for how hard JV made it - the WvA section might have been tough, but the riders left at the end suggests it wasn't an astronomical pace, and though I don't get into the Twitter W/Kg debates, it looks like the last climb was under 6.

    I think a lot of the performance differences we're seeing is down to the weird Covid season. Some riders and teams have clearly come through it a lot better than others. I don't think we're seeing new unbeatable riders emerge (and all the new mystery drug twaddle), I think we're seeing riders who handled lockdown better, for whatever reason.

    It's also clear Ineos didn't get their preparation right. They should have known way, way earlier who their squad were, and been right on top of both their numbers and the psychology of the team. Dropping in Carapaz, who was targeting the Giro which starts a month later, was desperate. He evaporated as leader and I don't think I've seen him do anything much as a domestique. And for all the chat about whether Thomas should have been included, they needed to handle both his form (which is currently looking good) and his ambitions. This is stuff they should have had a handle on months ago. I think they're badly missing both Ellingworth and Portal.

    I think youre right, Portal was a key part of the team.
    Who is in the car for them this race? Looks like they may have missed a great one on their doorstep in Matt Winston.

    Team My Man 2022:

    Antwan Tolhoek, Sam Oomen, Tom Dumoulin, Thymen Arensman, Remco Evenepoel, Benoît Cosnefroy, Tom Pidcock, Mark Cavendish, Romain Bardet
  • gweeds
    gweeds Posts: 2,550
    Assume it's the same as last week with tests results out tomorrow morning?
    Napoleon, don't be jealous that I've been chatting online with babes all day. Besides, we both know that I'm training to be a cage fighter.
  • RichN95.
    RichN95. Posts: 27,137
    DeadCalm said:



    Who is in the car for them this race? Looks like they may have missed a great one on their doorstep in Matt Winston.


    I think Gabba Rasch is actually in the car, but they said they'd DS by committee
    Twitter: @RichN95
  • DeadCalm
    DeadCalm Posts: 4,099
    RichN95. said:

    DeadCalm said:



    Who is in the car for them this race? Looks like they may have missed a great one on their doorstep in Matt Winston.


    I think Gabba Rasch is actually in the car, but they said they'd DS by committee
    You're having me on! :D
    Team My Man 2022:

    Antwan Tolhoek, Sam Oomen, Tom Dumoulin, Thymen Arensman, Remco Evenepoel, Benoît Cosnefroy, Tom Pidcock, Mark Cavendish, Romain Bardet
  • Gabba Rasch. The man so good he's named after a waterproof jacket :tongue:
  • Re. Bernal... "not having the legs" is nonsense. The difference between a super day and a bad day it's not 7 minutes on the finish line... it's more like whether you can be with the top bunch in the last 500m or you have to lose 10 seconds.


    To me, it seems like either they got the training all wrong and he peaked way to early in the summer, or, more likely he has some illness, not necessarily Covid... riders seem to get a lot of other viruses like Epstein-Barr.
    Or of course, you can rewind to 2005 and think of Ivan Basso at the Giro...

    I think you are probably right about Bernal and illness.

    Re it all being about oxygen delivery what about the size of the engine vs the size of the tank analogy ?

    It's not my field (in fact these days I don't think I have a field) but not everything about endurance performance is vo2Max or FTP /kg. The ability of the muscles to contract efficiently over extended periods of time for days on end, muscular endurance, recovery capacity - I know these things aren't necessarily identical or down to a single factor but we've seen riders who gave the engine to win but not over 3 weeks.
    [Castle Donington Ladies FC - going up in '22]
  • m.r.m.
    m.r.m. Posts: 3,312
    Yes but in this specific case Bernal has already proven he has all the requirements in order to win a 3 week GT.
    PTP Champion 2019, 2022 & 2023
  • RichN95.
    RichN95. Posts: 27,137
    Maybe it will for the best if Rigoberto Uran doesn't get on the podium


    Twitter: @RichN95
  • RichN95.
    RichN95. Posts: 27,137
    DeadCalm said:

    RichN95. said:

    DeadCalm said:



    Who is in the car for them this race? Looks like they may have missed a great one on their doorstep in Matt Winston.


    I think Gabba Rasch is actually in the car, but they said they'd DS by committee
    You're having me on! :D

    https://www.cyclingnews.com/news/brailsford-outlines-new-management-structure-at-team-ineos/
    Twitter: @RichN95
  • salsiccia1
    salsiccia1 Posts: 3,725
    ddraver said:

    Wiggins stirring every pot he can get his hands on 😁😁😁

    It's great, isn't it. Until recently Wiggins was the devil incarnate on Cycling News and elsewhere due to his jiffy bag and TUEs, and all of sudden he's become an all-seeing truth-teller now he's knocking Ineos.
    It's only a bit of sport, Mun. Relax and enjoy the racing.