Most recent activity
-
Jumbo Visma were so strong, controlled it like Sky/Ineos used to, but with stronger overall riders.
But didn’t have the team time trial, which they would have smashed. More flat TTs, or Roglic putting in a tour winning attack like Froome used to.
-
Well he clearly wasn’t weak, he got second at the TDF...
Just wasn’t better than Pogacar.
-
He gets paid over 1 million euros to soft pedal around France, so maybe not..
-
Pogacar beat Roglic on 2 stages, and lost just 15 seconds (+2 seconds) on that stage.
If he hadn’t lost the time in the crosswinds, the racing would have been different, but it was the only really meaningful time loss that Pogacar lost, which may not have been lost if he had a better team/luck.
-
Actually what I find even more amazing than that, as Pogacar was appeared to have the best W/kg in the race, was Wout Van Aert being 3rd fastest up the climb?!
-
Cees Bol, maybe the Sunweb train will work on the wider boulevards.
-
Should be able to get an usable estimate using VAM, his bike and race weight though? Assuming 66kg, 6.8kg bike.
Fewer aero related benefits up the mountain.
-
I think maybe emulating longer climbs for pacing strategy might be useful, but not so valuable for shorter ones, where road surface, traction, and throwing your bike around is more important.
Then again, if you train to push out 450w over 5 minutes on the turbo, you’ll hopefully be smashing out even more on the climbs.
-
What is this towel round the neck marginal gain? Not tried that one yet.
Supposedly Pogacar has been prepping hard for the final TT, clearly with the watts to back it up too.
A summary of an interview with Mikel Bjerg:
They spend days reconing the ITT accompanied by Mikkel Bjerg (3x U23 ITT world champion) with whom Pogacar rode the stage numerous times.
They found at least 25 seconds on the flat part and Pogacar and Bjerg has trained ITT together this season.
They experimented with bike changes in advance during the recon so UAE didn't spend hours today experimenting like Jumbo did.
All season Pogacar's ITT bike has been set up in regs to seat height and BB angle etc to be identical to his roadbike (Something Bjerg always have done) to ensure a smooth transition. Bjerg pointed out that the difference in bikesetup for Roglic was noticeable.He was also Slovenian Cyclocross champion in 2018, which explains everything of course.
I did think that Bennett wasn’t as hot as I expected, but Kuss was always there in the hard mountains.
Van Aert was brilliant every day, as well as Martin just drilling if day in day out.
If you replaced roglic with Pogacar in the Jumbo team, they would have won by 6/7 minutes or something ridiculous.