2024 Classics thread - Not a spoiler thread
Comments
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Was it the same parcours?
PTP Champion 2019, 2022 & 20230 -
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Are the hills in Liege any more challenging than the hills in Strade Bianchi? He seems to do okay on those.
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10 official climbs for 4300m elevation at LBL compared to 2700m for 33 climbs at Strade so significantly more elevation and longer climbs.
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I suspect that if he's riding it he thinks he can win.
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LBL is about 100km longer than Strade Bianchi though. None of the climbs will take longer than 5 minutes I'd have thought, which must be in his wheelhouse.
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For sure, and we saw on Flanders he was usually gapped a bit by Pog on the climbs. He wouldn't be the out and out favourite, but with how much better he is than the rest a podium should be within reach.
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Ironically, he'd want the race to stay together as long as possible and wouldn't like it if Pog went with 40-60k to go like he did in RVV and PR
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I think he can certainly be close enough that it will make for an interesting race but whether he could stay with a full on Pog effort over the full length of the likes of the Redoubte (or attacks on multiple climbs) I'm not sure. With Flanders the climbs being mainly cobbled maybe negates some of Pog's advantage. It could actually be the most interesting Classic of the year just to see how it plays out. Van Aert has done OK there in the past but he is arguably a stronger climber than MVDP.
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Alaphillipe fractured a fibula head at Strade 😮
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Deciding to keep riding will most likely be bad for both him and the team and to me, this is one of the pitfalls of having a toxic boss/work culture. He had a bad season last year, marred by crashes and injuries. With Lefevere criticising him repeatedly in public it pretty much ensures he will try to ride through the pain to show his boss; to the detriment of everyone.
PTP Champion 2019, 2022 & 20234 -
Just a heads up that I am on my travels again, so I am not going to be starting any threads for AGR or LBL.
"Science is a tool for cheaters". An anonymous French PE teacher.2 -
His boss will probably come out to say he was too drunk to notice.
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PTP Champion 2019, 2022 & 20230
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Great minds think alike 😉
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Just rewatched the MVDP win from 2019 (really can’t believe it was that long ago, in my head it 3 years max!). Hatch on commentary was justified in bigging up the finish although ironically he was far more muted than these days. He said he’d never seen a finish like it in his life but the there was no “one for the ages” that every race seems to get these days despite it arguably being a genuine example.
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Confirmed, no Philipsen in the Alpecin-Decuenick line up.
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There's a bit of mythology that has grown about MVDP's performance that day. It was really due to Alaphilippe and Fuglsang messing about. Kwiatkowski caught them solo, aheadof the MVDP group. Everyone thought that MVDP pulled the chasing group across solo as the only time the TV showed that group he was on the front stringing it out. But Simon Clarke (who came second) said that wasn't the case.
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Who cares, he still did his own sprint train and leadout.
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Alaphillipe and Fuglsang contributed to their downfall but if you go back to the spoiler thread for that race I suspect you’ll find the comments at the time were pretty impressed so I think it’s unreasonable to say it is mythology. MVDP was certainly on the front for a long, long time closing what was still a big gap but managed to hold off anyone coming over him. I may be misremembering but hadn’t VDP also had an issue of some sort earlier in the race?
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The myth is that he rode 6km on the front then won the sprint. There was shots of the group with Garmin on the front. It was hugely over-hyped by the commentators and a lot of people believed it.
"Unfortunately these days a lot of people don’t understand the real quality of a bike" Ernesto Colnago0 -
Who cares now? That win was his road breakthrough, and it was pretty astonishing at the time in terms of how we won, but he's subsequently shown that he's the real deal and is now a six time monument winner, the reigning World Champion and a Tour and Giro stage winner.
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Roglic not riding La Flèche Wallonne or LBL.
Shame, could have done with a little more competition
Warning No formatter is installed for the format0 -
Well that's another one to add to the "celebrating too soon" collection.
BASI Nordic Ski Instructor
Instagramme2 -
Took a wee break between ladies and mens races and have just tuned back in to Kirby doing his name every single rider in the race as potential favourite for the day thing. 😒
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If it was horse racing, they'd be up before the stewards - and getting a lengthy ban.
All Road/ Gravel: tbcWinter: tbcMTB: tbcRoad: tbc"Look at the time...." "he's fallen like an old lady on a cruise ship..."0 -
Matthews right on MvdPs wheel.
Alpecin drive into the bottom and chill on the way up the Kruisberg
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