Pro-cycling thread

Nice one Tommy D! A well deserved win.

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Having missed yesterday's stage, I was frantically reading updates, and rushed home to try catch the last 5 minutes of today's TT.

Really chuffed for TD. Really great effort and well deserved.

First Dutchman to win the Giro, no? First Dutch GT win since Zoetemelk?

I'm glad Dumoulin won, he was clearly the best rider in the race, although he seemed to be running out of steam a bit this last week. All the talk beforehand about this being a climbers' race was just that, the mountain stages were tough, but the two time trials swung the balance in the favour of Dumoulin.

Correct, 1st ever Giro win for a Dutch rider

[edit] and 3rd ever to win a GT indeed [/edit]

I would argue TD is a pretty all-round rider. The 'real' climbers didn't put nearly enough time into him in the plentiful mountain stages. And he took Oropa like a boss.

We did a retro ride today, finishing at a place without decent tv reception, so we had to watch with plenty static and noise, pretty annoying ;-)

Cracked a couple of bottles of Prosecco as soon as Quintana crossed the line though!

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I wouldn't dispute that for a second, he was easily the best time-triallist in the race, and one of the best climbers.

Please tell us Nairo is a whiner too and obvs couldn't cope with racing.

http://www.velonews.com/2017/05/news/quintana-believes-late-sickness-cost-him-the-giro_439525

Le sigh.

Does anybody have an idea whether the amount of time Dumoulin won on the first ITT was roughly cancelled out by poogate? Thus his time in the mountains was pretty solid since he didn't lose that much time overall?

pretty solid

Well

More than that, he lost about 2 minutes pooping. Pretty fast pooping though.

Insane the way he was pushing the 58x11 after three weekes of racing and the last one on the Alps. Deserved.

What was up with Pinot though, much slower than Quintana?! Unexpected

It is interesting Quintana refers to himself as 'we' in all of the interviews, or is it just a translation issue?

Wonder if he's more "me" when he wins?
Spread the blame.

What was up with Pinot though, much slower than Quintana?! Unexpected

Pinot was 2:42 down in the first ITT (19th) and 1:42 today (28th). Thats massive chunks of time. He ended up in 4th at 1:17 down. If he TT had been even remotely competitive to DM he could have been in with a chance of winning overall.

I think he was paying the price for his efforts in the preceding three stages.

Tom Pidcock taking the piss in a good way

Great third week, but no more rest days after 3 stages pls, it was such a slow start. Shame there wasn't some monster ride from Pinot or Zakarin to shit things up. Fantastic Dumoulin has built so well into a GT rider, nice to have a new contender. Yatesy, can we call him Yatesy?, needs to work on his TT if his is realistic about riding for GC, otherwise great riding from him. Quickstep were ridiculous, obviously Sunweb were immense in support for Tim but for me they were the team of the Giro.

Just going back to Quintana's interview technique, did anyone else notice how after one stage (Oropa?) where Windmills performed much better than expected, Quintana repeatedly referred to him as the leader (el lider) and didn't mention him by name?

Just seemed a bit weird. Like he hadn't bothered to learn his name.

Just out of respect I'd have thought.

Try to say 'Tom Dumoulin' with a Spanish, or even better, Colombian accent and even well practised it would sound more like Thhhommm 'hooomooolin. It's a mouthful.

Ditto the 'we' or 'us' thing-I'd put it down to linguistic convention rather than Nairo being an egotistical cunt but I @croft seems far better placed to be deciding on peloton etiquette and individual motivations (even when the riders thenselves admit it was their fault) so I'll leave it to him to keep you right.

Well I have been watching pro racing for nearly 18 months now...

Mind games/superstition