Tour de France 2021

You could say the same of Carapaz tbf.

Did Carapaz use his team at all to set up his attack? I didn’t see it if he did.

Not sure that matters.

Carapaz attacked.

If you attack you can’t really expect those you’ve attacked (from equal footing) to let you go.

Carapaz used his team to assist in ways. Not a problem. #billydidnothingwrong

I suspect Ineos are a little salty because they didn’t achieve anything today.

Movistar are pros at achieving nothing so they should STFU and take notes :D

I don’t really follow.

My point was more: Can you actually say the same thing (that he’s wasting his team for no potential benefit) about Carapaz.

Ahh you edited and added more info, I get you.

I see your point. Perhaps Ineos held more back as a team. Carapaz certainly wasted energy.

But if you don’t attack, you don’t win.
According to the timing, he had a 40s gap at one point. If he managed to maintain it, or the chasers couldn’t close him down, would have been a significant amount of time to get back on an unexpected day.

I think the thing that’s so weird about Movistar is that it’s not at all clear why they were doing it.
I see why Carapaz attacked (Pog isolated, chance get some time back) it was a gamble that didn’t pay off. I just don’t know what prompted Movistar to start pulling. Apart from it being a very Movistar thing to do obv.

Didn’t they also chase down Carapaz in the final stage of the Vuelta last year too?

Because they didn't want Mas to lose time to Carapaz, who they are in battle with for minor GC places.

If Ineos wanted to launch Carapaz, they should have hammered the climbs in the finale and made it more selective.

Sure, I wasn’t arguing it was a poor tactic - given they’re short of options.

Just that it’s unsurprising it was chased.

But then they've signalled their intent, and they would have dropped Thomas who lost contact in the final kilometre of the climb.

Mas was in the Podge group.

But then they've signalled their intent

This is a thing.

It’s wasn’t obvious that Carapaz was going to attack, that’s a small advantage.

INEOS have morphed into Movistar with their four leaders outside the top ten etc.

If they want to beat Pogacar, they shouldn't be worrying about protecting Thomas.

They shouldn’t worry about beating Pogacar.

That sums it up I think

Lozzles

Surely MVDP will honour the jersey and ride today?

Pretty crummy if he doesn’t.

I think he plans to see how he feels on the first rest day and then decide if he’ll continue or not.

I think the team wouldn’t want to upset ASO so as long as he’s in the jersey, he’ll race.

Seems Leferve and Cavendish agreed a bonus scheme ahead of the Tour, for stages completed and wins, but not for the green jersey.

Laurens Ten Dam spoke to Adri Van Der Poel, who said that if Mathieu wants to win the Tour he needs to do it this year, when he’s underestimated. Spicy.

Are you in some secret WhatsApp group?

Why is everyone so sure that perma-surprising WVDP is definitely not a GC contender?

Ahem

We’ll see if MVDP can climb with the GC guys today.

I can see it being as chaotic and exciting as yesterday.

what happened between kwiatkowski and valverde, soler?