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I would think that Sunweb will lose Jai Hindley from the podium for the sake of Kelderman's challenge on pink.
Placings 3-8 are only seperated by a minute, with Nibali almost guaranteed to try and smash things up. Some of those are going to be watching each other for the minor GC placings rather than the win.Agreed that Almeida needs to be broken first, then some collaboration with the inevitable Italian attacks to break Kelderman. Nibali to get a mountain stage win, Tao to beat him in the time trial.
Acliff-
I think the pecking order was made very clear on Sunday; Kelderman, TGH and Hindley are the three strongest riders in the race, followed by Almeida. The rest will do well to gain time on those four in the next five stages.
You can’t rule them out but it would take a major reversal of fortunes to see a final podium that didn’t include three of those four.
andyp
Can't believe none of us resident armchair DS' didn't answer this.
Ineos are short of mountain support, so can't do what Sunweb did on Sunday. The first priority must be to get Almeida out of pink so you've got to hope that Sunweb attempt to do that today or, more likely, tomorrow. If Kelderman shows any sign of weakness as they do this, then attack on the final climb but don't stress if he's still there at the finish.
That just leaves Saturday's stage, and I'd use the team to isolate Kelderman as much as possible on the penultimate climb, then try and break him on that and repeat on the finish climb. It's a long shot but Kelderman hasn't been in this situation before so we don't know how he'll handle it. Neither has Tao though, so we don't know if he'll be as strong in these last few stages as he's looked in the past few.