[Closed] Tour de France 2020 - The second rest day

The end of INEOS, mostly for this race, for longer term though they need 'more' now. They're not at the same level as a team as JV. Whether that's fitness, riders, team-work, or something else... they're very much lacking in firepower.

GC... Mmmm, i'd like to think someone will battle Roglic, but not certain they can.

Sagan faded ? He's RIGHT there, all the time. Don't forget, he never beat your top sprinters, he wasn't that kind of racer, he was the finisher on the stages that didn't suit them. So i think to be finishing just behind bennet and ewan is pretty impressive

WVA, yeah, he can't win tours.... but i like that 🙂

I think the loss of Nico Portal is hitting Ineos hard. They don't have one person giving the strategy etc. They also seem to have something wrong with the training that they have done as the whole team seems of the pace.

WVA, yeah, he can’t win tours…. but i like that

I'd not bet my mortgage on him not winning one...

I asked the Sagan question as to me, hes lost some of his aura, you're right that he never won that many true bunch sprints, but he won other stages, and was also unflappable. Feel that's slipped a little.

They also seem to have something wrong with the training that they have done

This year was always going to be a bit of a strange one in terms of preparation. But yes, what are ineos going to get out of the tour now? They look like team sky did circa 2010.

Wednesday is key, if Roglic gets through that, which it looks like he will, then it's surely his

Hopefully we will get through the covid tests

I wonder if Bernal is ill - he seemed to be saying post-race yesterday that he had fuelled as normal but just felt weak and without energy. I'm not suggesting he has covid, I doubt you'd get up 2 cat 1 climbs and an HC climb with it; but it sounded like sometihng was slightly amiss.

Sagan, love him or hate him, he has been the best all-round rider for the last 8 years.
Fast enough to be in spitting distance of the best sprinters on a bike. Able to keep up in an 8 man breakaway, climb up a mountain and still pop a wheelie over the line.

I flit between thinking the man is a wizard on two wheel, or he is the biggest **** to have ever ridden a bike.

I think he is on the descent of his career, but you can't write him off.
Plus 2020 is hardly the year to judge anyone's performance. Rog&Pog seem to have benefited from the long lay-off, where as Sagan and all the French riders have been eating cheese and expecting the season to be written off, and its a chore to have to work now.

I think the GC race is impressive if not exciting. At the start I was optimistic that despite there being 2 strong mountain train teams, there were enough attacking riders in the mix that there might be some fireworks. Pogačar is still quite an attack-y rider, but he's the only one with a realistic shot at the top step and I don't think he can animate the race on his own against JV.

Most of the individual stages have been great though. The green jersey race and the awesome tactics of Sunweb have made it great watching.

I think the loss of Nico Portal is hitting Ineos hard. They don’t have one person giving the strategy etc.

And they have lost Ellingworth

I thought I'd posted this already, but hey.
I wondered if INEOS will post 2 or 3 positive Covid tests and bow out gracefully tomorrow, "we would have won, but we got Covid" type approach.
Re. the other GC contenders, I'd love to see Uran keep his form and get close, same with Richie Porte though he is due his annual bad day or heavy crash.

Edit, and yes, Ellingworth for the structure and training, and Portal for the tactical nous will have been huge losses

Dos anyone know where Roglic and Pogacar are based.? There seems to be a general concensus that the varying levels of lockdown across countries has had a pretty dramatic effect on riders ability to train. While some were able to train outside as normal for as far and as long as they wanted, if I remember rightly those based in Monaco (for example) were under strict lockdown for months and couldn't ride anything other than the turbo in that time.

I do think that this year is Porte's best chance at a podium, don't think he can win it but 3rd place is definately in reach assuming he avoids his traditional 3rd week collapse. He's the best Time Trialist out of everyone above him except possibly Roglic and Pogacar and is close enough at this point to leapfrog everyone else but those 2.

Roglic is going to have to fall off, or JV get booted for Covid +ive's, that's the only way he's going to lose this. I think Pogacar has the beating of him in the mountains but UAE are far too weak to support him, 200m into the first climb of the day and he's on his own. He could have done with still having an in form Aru (is there such a thing?) with him.

I agree that Ellingworth and Portal have meant far more to Ineos than Brailsford would like anyone to believe.  I can see some team upheaval in the next year or 2 with backroom staff changes before they get back to where they were.. if they do.

I agree that Ellingworth and Portal have meant far more to Ineos than Brailsford would like anyone to believe. I can see some team upheaval in the next year or 2 with backroom staff changes before they get back to where they were.. if they do.

This exactly, the loss of Portal and Ellingworth has hit them hard.

Sagan is close to his normal form, just came into the tour slightly undercooked. He keeps on getting pipped by Trentin in the intermediate sprints and that seems to be messing with his mind. Arguably he could have won stage 11 if he didn't have to create a gap and he also suffered a dropped chain on another stage. At least the green jersey is a proper competition this year.

Agree that INEOS are really missing Nico Portal on the tactics/motivation side and Ellingworth on the broader strategy and team selection. I suspect Bernal went to deep in the first week to stay with the leaders and just doesn't have the form this year. The rest of the team, especially Carapaz, don't look good either.

Looks like a tight race between the Slovenians. Pogacar will need to chip away at the lead before the time trial. It would be interesting if Landa, Porte, Yates or Lopez tried something ambitious to secure a podium place, but they will probably sit tight and ride conservatively.

Ineos' troubles were clear last month though. They aren't running the team they were expecting to due to the expected teams poor condition so there are riders in the squad that probably shouldn't be, in terms of their plans and development schedules. Bernal was the best of a bad lot for team leader.

They've lost some key staff members but it seems like their succession planning has been found wanting, both in terms of riders and support staff. They look a lightweight team for experience because of this (despite having 2 GT winners) and no-one seems to be taking the team firmly in hand and organising the later stages of the race.

I’m not sure if this is the place for it or if it needs a separate thread but:
What do we think the state of play is with doping?
My alarms bells go off whenever the commentators and pundits say ‘unbelievable’ or ‘extraordinary’ when referring to rider.
I guess there are still some riders microdosing stuff and lockdown and the lack of testing might have helped there.
Are bags still a thing?
I suppose no one rider is head and shoulders above the others but there do seem to be some strong riders who have very bad days as though they’re missing something.

I don’t read the in depth blogs and gossip stuff so I’m not really sure what to think.

Looks like a tight race between the Slovenians. Pogacar will need to chip away at the lead before the time trial.

Pogacar is a brilliant TT rider - 2019 and 2020 National TT Champion. I know Roglic is good too but it's still far from over.

Lister, read up on Aderlass.

Slovenian connections aplenty.

If there is doping going on then it's not like the old days - the crazy repeated attacks don't happen, as we've seen from this Tour, you attack you have one go to make it work. I'd like to think it's relatively clean but that's just my 2p.

Yeah Ineos have been found wanting this year but I wouldn't imagine they are going to collapse as they have good riders like Sivakov, Bernal, Carapaz, Kwiato, Tao G-H as well as the rouleurs; Dr hutch on twitter indicated that they were planning on the Tour being in July but it moved and that scuppered their plans which had all eggs in the basket. Good to see another team take up the bossing of the races.

I think unless Roglic pops spectacularly (and nothing we've seen indicates he is susceptible to this...) he's got it pretty much in the bag, there aren't enough bonus seconds for Tadej to make up the 40s (because he can cover the 2nd places)

Agree about Ellingworth and Portal. Ineos have also massively missed Kiryienka (or someone of his ilk) this year. Look at how much work Tony Martin or Tim Declerk get through.

The Carapaz experiment has failed badly and Kwiato has just had too much to do as a result. Their mountain domestiques (Amador, Siviakov and Carapaz) just haven't performed for various reasons. I just can't see anyone getting close to JV/Roglic. Pogacar will eventually weaken as he just doesn't have the team around him. Although he's 5 mins back JV still have the Dumoulin card to play. What does Pogacar do if Dumoulin goes for a long one? Chase and be counter attacked? It'll break him eventually.

My alarms bells go off whenever the commentators and pundits say ‘unbelievable’ or ‘extraordinary’ when referring to rider.

Yeah... it's sad that you can never 100% enjoy amazing performances for what they are, especially when the riding generating the most superlatives is a rider you've really enjoyed watching over the past few years.

JV really bossed it yesterday, much more than we have seen before. With that on his side surely it's Rog all the way. The only thing that might be different is the high climbs this week, don't think there have been any much >1500m so far, and col de la loze looks horrible thinking about it let alone riding it. 40s is nothing on a climb like that, and surely not even JV can sky-train it all the way to the top of that.

Roglic looks undefeatable from here with the form Dumoulin showed on grand colombier, I don't think there's any point attacking unless Dumoulin has already peeled off, it's impossible. And he went to less than a km of the top yesterday.

There was talk during lockdown about there being a competition between the physiologists on the different teams, starting to look like the ineos guys have got something wrong. even if bernal turns out to be sick the whole team just seems a bit off it

40s is nothing on a climb like that, and surely not even JV can sky-train it all the way to the top of that.

WVA- "Hold my ketones/H7379 beer"

Cheers Flash; Anderlass doesn’t make for good reading especially with this ‘new’ version of EPO around.
I hope we’re not in for a whole bunch of positive tests when they go back and and look at the last few years of samples.

I think I’m at the stage where I enjoy the racing and the sub plots but am fully prepared to accept it might all go off in a flurry of positive results at any time.

I hope they’re clean but don’t expect that they are.

just caught up with the rest day highlights, and listening to Lance's podcast, 2 things i seem to have missed

are Porte (reported by ITV4) and Landa (The Move) going back to Ineos?

Roglic looks undefeatable from here

no chance, its going to go ballistic in the 3rd week, someones going to crack going to Meribel, and the HC on stage 18 before the final climb could mix it up,

The surprise of the rest day for me was reading of G getting second at the tirreno adriatico behind Simon Yates. He was dismal along with froome at the dauphine, was he bluffing it or has he just had a massive turnaround in a very short time?

The surprise of the rest day for me was reading of G getting second at the tirreno adriatico behind Simon Yates. He was dismal along with froome at the dauphine, was he bluffing it or has he just had a massive turnaround in a very short time?

They just need racing miles. Amazing how form/talent bubbles up quickly when you take out the turbo training, the relentless push for "numbers", the boredom of training miles.

Cav was very similar - he'd be shit in the lab but put him in a sprint and he'd usually win it.

Fantastic result from Simon Yates, that's brilliant especially given that neither of the Yates twins are known for their TTing. Maybe it'll inspire Adam at the TdF. 🙂

JV running Sky tactics. Pogacar looks like the class rider - I think it is not over yet and he's basically using the JV team. Sagan looks to be his usual self and is as enjoyable as ever. WvA is just a pleasure to watch. I bet Bernal is incubating a bug. Ineos haven't had the team form and JV have stolen their clothes. I don't think they are missing Portal and Ellingworth, they are missing firepower. Adam Yates is riding well and must be thinking about what Ineos will be able to do next season to support him. I always enjoy any comments from Richie Porte. A great team rider (like G), but unlikely to get his winning chance. He's going well this year though (summer training downunder?).

As for doping, the whereabouts system has been running throughout, testing frequency has been down, however. Blood biological passports are unchanged, and riders will have been tested prior to the race. Blood bags are not a thing - too easy now to spot the residual chemical plasticisers. Micro EPO dosing is not detectable - hence the biological passports for historic Hb values for individual normal range and variation.