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We've always had periods where a team was able to build itself around a tactic that worked.
Lead-out trains for sprint riders is an example of something that is really only a decade or two old phenomenon.
The Sky "neutralise all GC mountain contenders" by setting a punishing pace and delivering their GC contender in a well-supported lead-out train manner, couple with Sky's "win on the TT" is working well.
But it's unlikely to work well forever, other teams will build themselves around that, and Sky will slowly reconfigure as riders naturally get poached or retire.
When one part of the race is dominated, thankfully the other parts are awesome.
I love the sprint battles we saw earlier in this tour. Everyone has a similar tactic now, and Cav has been winning on pure ability, skill, timing, power.
Each discipline seems to evolve at it's own pace, and yeah... Sky still dominate the tactics for GC, but everything else looks fun :)
If only Quintana had a team able to do for him what Sky do for Froome... Sky's tactics would be shown up if they can't dominate the mountains, as their TT advantage would be playing catch-up rather than win.
Velocio-
Arguably Rik Van Looy perfected the lead out train, so it's been around a while.
Sky's tactic is an evolution from Armstrong, which he copied from Indurain, who's team management got the idea from Merckx, who probably got the idea from Anquetil. It's clear that if you want to neutralise the threat of climbers you set a pace that is so hard that it's virtually impossible to attack, and this has been the case for the best part of 50 years. When the Colombians first arrived in Europe in the 80s, the rest of the GC contenders soon worked out that the best way to neutralise them was to take advantage of their inability to cope with echelons on windy days, to leave them so far behind on GC that they were no longer a threat.
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If only Quintana had a team able to do for him what Sky do for Froome...
Quintana does they're called team Sky.
Riding the back wheel till the last 15km. That's a lot of preserved energy.TBF I'd be doing the same.
andyp
Shinscar
Re: doping: Eurosport pointed out the heat-sensor-gun for the mechanical doping, but didn't go into much detail, so I guess there's been nothing too hot.
Sun, bikinis, mankinis, spectators floored and punched, wheelies up the climbs, tubs rolling off, great sprints. It's definitely a great one to watch. But it is kinda boring knowing Sky will control the race. I'd love their team disbanded and watch all those guys battle each other for points.