Vetplant

Visma LAB throwing one last hail-mary? Jorgenson, Kelderman and Laporte into the breakaway at the start.... 35s lead currently

Bini has 33 point lead on Jasper for the Green Jersey. Stage 19: 20 points on offer today at the Intermediate Sprint. Bini would probably need to stick to Jasper like Glue till the sprint, just to be sure. (Neither one is going to get points at the Stage Finish... right?) Stage 20: 20 points tomorrow at Intermediate. (But, I don't see either one getting the Intermediate or the Finish points) Stage 21: TT, neither is realistically going to compete for the Stage Classification and the points on offer. TLDR; So it seems a foregone conclusion that Bini will take it, as long as he can reach Nice.

Wout: "At the beginning of the Tour my legs hurt going up stairs. Now my legs also hurt going downstairs" 😅

Happy for Campenaerts. Solid effort boys.

Looking at the names of the rest of the breakaway riders, he should have a decent chance here... Unless everyone outmarks him, which is unfortunately very likely.

For sure. Need to know how deep he has gone this year. Only his coach and himself will truly know how deep he has gone in the Spring + Giro + Tour. My point is just, they need to ask the question and look at the data. Any decision should not be done blindly, (not that UAE would do something like that).

Not even just Pog, the whole lot of them have done remarkable things: -Cav taking Number 35 -Grmay being leader of the Green Jersey right now -Bardet wearing Yellow in the TDF -Kuss winning a GT after being Super-Domestique in the other two GT's(2023) -Jonas, Remco and Wout being highly competitive despite their crashes in the Spring Impossible is a very strong word. Unexpected, sure...

As soon as they put on that Yellow jersey on his shoulders on the Final Podium they need to SERIOUSLY think about his objectives for the rest of 2024. When again will he be served up with such a golden opportunity to take three GTs in the same year? Drop the priority of all the other races. Even the Olympics and Worlds IMHO. "If we had to, how could we get Pogi to ride Vuelta?" He doesn't have to be at his peak ability, just 80% Pogi should take it at a canter...

I agree the GC riders will attack each other, but they are not bringing back a 6min lead on these 2 remaining climbs. Tiesj to take it from the 4 man breakaway...

Maybe not... GC group now 5'48 behind front riders.

Fascinating stage. 100km done, 78km remaining and attacks are still flying. Pogacar is taking this one...

Much more interesting start to the stage then yesterday. Seems far from settling down anytime soon

Surely the Breakaway will be given this stage, as long as it doesn't contain any GC top10 threats...

Yawn. Can anyone organize us some crosswinds or something?

😄

Tadej is the only guy that seems to be in with a realistic shot of matching the record set by Cav: Currently on 14 wins, he needs 21 more. Assuming he keeps his hit rate of three wins per tour, he could actually make it by age 32, which seems doable. (PS. Three more Mountain stages left in this edition, so he could be on 6 wins in Nice if he and UAE wants to..)

Man vs Man 8km of climbing. This sets the scene for the rest of the week

Very true take. Tomorrow's stage could prove pivotal.

Kom Meintjies. Hulle weet nie wat ons weet nie. (Sadly I think the current gap isn't big enough to stay away from Pogacar and Jonas once they start swinging apples)

Nevermind

Crosswinds...

Yates and company caught... these 4 are left...1min20s up the road. I'm going with Magnus Cort holding off the chasing peloton by 3s....

Sanity starts to prevail: Drop Yates out of the Break and it has a chance of survival:

And then crosswinds + visma creates a mountain of chaos. This might not be a straightforward day after all

He is in the 22man breakaway currently, really helps his chances. 👍