Pro-cycling thread

Fair play.

Pog was Rogged.

Also has arms the size of brake cables, which probably help his aero.

Da fuq did I just watch?

What have we got now - 2 more stages for Pog to have a go? I hope there is still a twist left in the race.

Pogacar came second, and beat Van Aert by 1:13...
I doubt even Van Aert expected Vingegaard to beat him by 2:51.

I'm looking forward to angry and desperate Pogacar.

That's an insane time gap, insane.

If anyone can, Pog can, especially the very next day. He’ll probably sleep well tonight knowing there’s not much to lose. Will soon see tomorrow - genuinely didn’t look good today. Tired and ghostly. Maybe the wrist issue and training interruption is making the difference.

I think Jumbo were aiming for this - Vingo holding back a bit ..
Can’t see Pog getting that much time back - he was struggling to get a handful of seconds back ….
Take the next week easy , get training / altitude and give Remco a kicking at the Vuelta !

Oh , and that Colnago TT bike is gopping ….

Going to be interesting to see how UAE play the rest of the tour. Yates in third but only just, Pog a ways off Vinnie. Hoping for carnage but think JV have got this pretty wrapped up

Surely that cannot be, err, shall we say, quite right … Vingegaard beats Pogacar by 108 seconds in 22.4km, that’s 4.8 secs per kilometre! And Pogacar in turn beats van Aert by 73 seconds (another 3.25 secs per km) … meaning Vingegaard was more than 8 seconds per km faster than WVA!

Put it another way Pog’s time was 105.5% of Vingegaard’s. Compare with 2022 - WVA’s winning margin last year (on a longer TT) was 19 secs, less than 0.7%.

Has anyone done an analysis of what the watts/aero diff must have been to produce that gap?

Jonas gifted WVA the TT last year

Hmm, but even if we ignore Jonas’s result (in second place) last year the margin from first to third place was 27 seconds - less than 1%. Still in no way comparable to this year.

This was a hilly TT with some (pog!) even deciding to change bikes. Not really comparable at all to last years.

I'm slightly surprised that people are surprised; the two strongest riders in the race, who've been head and shoulders above everyone else, are head and shoulders above everyone in the time trial.

Vingegaard is going to win the Tour

Help me with the maths here. Are you saying the winning margin was 5.5% ?

Head and shoulders isn't the surprise, it was head, shoulders and a better part of the thorax.

There have been some pretty big swings in all 3 recent mountain/ climb TTs the two best climbers come out way ahead is hardly a surprise.

This.. but the general consternation seems to be more about the difference between Pog and Vin given how closely matched they've been.

I'd argue that we saw the separation earlier in the race when Vin is on a good day and Pog on a bad one. It seems like their median performance is probably similar (V edging it) but there is more variance in Pog's?

Yes (well nearly, made an error trying to do the sums on my phone):

Jonas Vingegaard: 32 mins 36 secs = 1,956 secs

Tadej Pogacar: + 1 min 36 secs = + 96 secs = 2,052 secs

2052/1956 = 1.049 = 104.9%

So Pogacar’s time in second place was 104.9% of Vingegaard’s.

Edited to say I even made another error on this one: according to the BBC results JV was 1 min 38 secs ahead of Pog so the advantage was 2054/1956=105.01 so a fraction over 5%.

The perils of trying to remember numbers from one tab to another …

I agree with this.
Also Jonas has -6kg on Pogacar, and a [probably] better TT bike, and didn't swap bikes.

To go 5% faster at TT speeds on the flat you would need to be chucking out 15% more power.