They have Van Baarle in the break. I am surprised they allowed him to join the break as they are going to need him having all his strength over the next 2 days when they hit the mountains.
Lantern Rouge?
As a general rule i do not trust people who wear sunglasses when they are indoors unless they are rock stars or professional boxers (preferably heavyweight division).
Very interesting. In his book Geraint Thomas also described Moscon as a person who is generally quiet and shy but who unfortunately sometimes just explode when things go wrong. He seems to be doing very well on the bike lately and hopefully he can stay out of trouble.
The thing is in bike racing it is impossible to "police" every second of a race 100% to the letter of the regulations. Incidents happen all the time and most of the time nothing comes from it except for some shouting and finger pointing unless a rider or team feels so agrieved and lodge a formal complain. The riders and teams obviously know that next time they might be the offending party and then it becomes tit for tat. It is the same in amateur cycling.
We tend to make a lot out of an incident if our favourite rider is on the receiving end but are often dead quiet when the same rider is dishing it out.
The next 2 days will be crucial for him, especially Sunday. Thereafter there is a rest day and hopefully he can recuperate.
The best he can probably do in this tour is to make it to the end.
He will draw a lot of inspiration from the comeback made by Mark Cavendish who showed that the odds can be defied even at the highest levels.
The riders were all over the road during the end. Cavendish went to the right to get pass Merlier and Philipson went to the left. After passing him BOTH slightly moved towards the centre of the road with Cavendish slightly ahead ( as 'Dale pointed out earlier). Therefore it was always unlikely for Alpecin Fenix to appeal imo.
Alaphilipe yet again nearly rode himself into the ground to help set Cavendish up. Besides being on hell of a bikeracer he is is also a team- man second to none. Pat Levefere might be a bit of a loose cannon but he certainly knows how to gel a team together.
It depends how they will use him.
The difference between him and the other cyclocross riders is that he is probably the best climber of the lot (being a small light rider who has already won the Baby Giro) so he might ride as a protected rider targetting the overall win. I think I have read somewhere that he wants to target GC's at some stage.
I doubt very much whether they will use him as a domestique.
Today should tell us whether Geraint and Roglic have recovered enough to be still seen as serious competitors for yellow and also whether Carapaz has improved his time trialing skills sufficiently not to lose too much time to Pogacar.
For stage honours I would put my money on Stefan Kung but will not discount the chances of Van Aert or even the world champion.
I was also surprised. He could not have done much from a medical point of view but showing at least a bit more concern towards a fallen and badly hurt colleague would not have done himself nor his brand any harm.
For sure... you also get different types of shoulder dislocations.
My comment was just a bit cheeky.. i have no doubt that Alun Wyn Jones is one hell of a tough bloke.
He is Welsh after all, just like Geraint
I do not think you will get much more than the usual " just as long as the winner comes from within the team" or "the road will decide" from any of them.
The course probably suits Geraint the best because of the time trials.
But yes, the tour should be a cracker..... I am certainly not going to predict the winner.
Whoever it is should however be from either Slovenia, Wales or Equador
INEOS Grenadiers lineup for the 2021 Tour de France:
Richard Carapaz, Jonathan Castroviejo, Tao Geoghegan Hart, Michal Kwiatkowski, Richie Porte, Luke Rowe, Geraint Thomas, Dylan van Baarle.
No surprises or weaknesses here.
Lets hope so..
As they do not really have a GC contender ( or a sprinter to ride for) they will probably try their utmost to get as many as possible riders in breaks and I guess anything is possible then.
They do have classy riders such as Campenaers and Aru (on his day) so a stage victory is not impossible.
It is a real pity that Nizzolo is not doing the TdF...imo he would have been the best (only) rider in the Qhubeka-Assos team to realistically challenge for a stage win. Maybe someone else can get lucky and win from a breakaway but in terms of quality Nizzolo stands out in that team.
I have no doubt that Bora will go flat out for Green.
None of their GC contenders has a realistic chance to win overall while by leaving Ackermann out they have basically conceded that they do not really have a sprinter to compete for wins on the flat stages.
So imo they will spend a lot of resources to assist Sagan to pick up points along the route.
Carapaz is very crafty and just did enough to win. It often looked as if he had another gear but never even used it. His fan club is not bad either even they seem to share resources with Mick's.
