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Tour de France 23 Thread

Looks like Kuss, Vingegaard, Pogacar and Yates at the front. Should be epic.
 
Kuss dropped. Yates at the front with Jonas and Tadej.
 
These fans and the motorbikes are ridiculous. This is pretty unfortunate. Fundamentally affected the race.

I know it’s been a thing for a while and it always sketches me out. Just chill a tiny bit, that’s all.
 
Dang great battle today. Both guys were up to the challenge. Incredible effort from Rodriguez to hang in after that grueling climb and claim the win.
 
That was awesome. Can’t help but wonder what would have happened on that second attack by Pogacar had those bikes not been right there.
 
WRS said:
Dang great battle today. Both guys were up to the challenge. Incredible effort from Rodriguez to hang in after that grueling climb and claim the win.
Click to expand...
Ineos having a pretty great tour
 
What is up with Roglic skipping? Sort of reading a little, but I don’t follow closely so a little bit adrift; feel like someone here might have the goods.

Is it as straightforward as he says; he just wants to chill?
 
My only real problem with the world feed is they don’t tell how many riders are in each group.
 
Watching Wimpleton this morning, but apparently more crowd drama on the stage today. Some idiot taking a selfie and taking down a few riders, or something.
 
Looks like Tuesday’s time trial could decide the winner of the Tour. Neither rider has been able to completely drop the other in the mountains, so a TT seems like a good way to settle things.

Here is some analysis from Velo.com:

…It’s hard to argue which rider is currently in better form: Vingegaard or Pogačar. Both riders have had an off-day but have resisted completely blowing up. They have both put their teams on the front, asking for more, and then going all-in with a violent acceleration. But more often than not, in this year’s Tour de France, Vingegaard and Pogačar have been glued to each other’s wheels.

Power and aerodynamics will determine the result of this individual time trial, but that’s impossible to predict since we don’t know Vingegaard or Pogačar’s exact numbers. But we do know of many other factors that could influence the outcome of this TT.

First and foremost, the Stage 16 time trial comes after a rest day, which is notorious for messing with a rider’s form. After a week or more of consecutive racing, a 90-minute spin on a rest day can make or break a rider’s legs, especially before a time trial. Neither Vingegaard nor Pogačar has a history of poor performances after rest days, but it’s certainly worth mentioning.

Second, Pogačar crashed and broke his wrist at Liège-Bastogne-Liège in April, which meant that the Slovenian probably spent a lot of time on his time trial bike on the indoor trainer during his recovery. With a wrist in a cast or brace, it is common for professional cyclists to return to indoor training on their TT bike because it takes the pressure off of the wrists and instead places it on the forearms. In a Tour de France being decided by a handful of seconds, Pogačar’s extra time on the TT bike could make a huge difference.


Third, history may suggest that Pogačar has the advantage. Excluding team time trials, Pogačar has beaten Vingegaard six times to three in individual time trials. However, a closer look at the data and we can see that two of Vingegaard’s three head-to-head TT wins came in the third week of the Tour de France.

Vingegaard beat Pogačar by 35 seconds in Stage 20 of the 2021 Tour de France, a pan-flat 30.8km TT. At the end of the 2022 Tour, Vingegaard beat Pogačar by eight seconds in Stage 20, a lumpy 40.7km TT in which Vingegaard notably took it easy on the descents to preserve his three-and-a-half minute lead over Pogačar.

When you take everything into consideration, I think Jonas Vingegaard comes out on top, narrowly beating Pogačar by less than 10 seconds in this year’s Stage 16 time trial. While logic may suggest that Pogačar will be better fresh, that he will be faster on the downhills and flats, and that the shorter climbs suit him, I believe that the data suggests otherwise.

Vingegaard has made massive improvements to his flat time trial speed over the past few seasons, and his descending is clearly better than Pogačar’s despite their weight difference. History suggests that Vingeaard is stronger than Pogačar in the third week of a Grand Tour and that Vingegaard’s short climbing efforts are stronger than ever.

At the beginning of the 2023 Tour de France, it was said that the Col de Marie Blanque was the perfect climb for Pogačar and that Vingegaard needed longer and harder climbs to attack. But then the Dane dropped Pogačar with a ridiculous 23-minute effort not too dissimilar from the climb coming up to Combloux.

That’s what I think will happen. But then again, I never would’ve predicted that Victor Lafay would be the only rider to stay with Pogačar and Vingegaard on the Côte de Pike, that Jasper Philipsen would clean up four sprint stages in the first 11 days of the Tour, and that Carlos Rodríguez would win Stage 14 ahead of Pogačar and Vingegaard.


This Tour is full of surprises.
 
As I noted on July 5 after Pogacar lost time to Vingegaard for the first time:

Vingegaard is still in good shape but Pogacar showed that his preparation has been negatively affected by the broken wrist that he suffered in the spring. Working out on a trainer is not the same as riding in a top pre-Tour race or spending a month training at altitude.

I think Pogacar’s broken wrist that he suffered at the end of April and its negative effect on his training finally caught up with him yesterday and today. It’s amazing that he has still done so well in this Tour. But he just ran out of gas in the third week. He may bounce back for the world championship race in a few weeks, though I haven’t seen a roster for the Slovenian team. He has already had a long season having ridden some spring classics so he might enjoy an early end to the season. In order to win next year’s Tour he might need to focus his season more on the buildup to the Tour. Though I do like to see a rider like him not focus just on the Tour.

Pogacar is still the number 1 ranked rider in the world.

ProCyclingStats Best Rider Ranking

Ranking of the best riders of this moment, currently led by Tadej Pogačar with 3522 points before Remco Evenepoel (2996) and Jonas Vingegaard (2466).
www.procyclingstats.com www.procyclingstats.com
 
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