Originally Posted by
Marcus_Ti
Yea...he let Landa win. No doubt in my mind about it. He let him go.
Would have looked even more suspicious than it already does if not only he solo'd back from being dropped due to a mechanical, the rest of his team couldn't make a dent in the gap so Contador burned and dropped them, pulled back the entire combined teams working together of Astana and Katusha basically by himself on a mountain and rode past them like they were standing still, dropped his nearest rival by 2 and a half minutes on the 2nd ascent of said mountain, but then also went on to win the stage.
He let Landa go. There's really no other believable explanation, and Landa only kept up because he was wheel sucking everyone else the last 50km and didn't burn himself out.
I've seen a few superhuman efforts televised via cycling in the last decade. And while fun to watch at the time...that one definitely will be featured in the Top 10 of Better Living Through Pharmacology next issue. I'm only wondering when the abnormal blood values test will be made public.
Let's be clear about what Contador actually did. From the foot of the Mortirolo, Landa pretty much took over the pacing at the front of the Aru group. When Contador got to the foot himself, he then closed a 50 second gap on Landa by bridging from backmarker to backmarker all the way up through the first 5-6km of the climb. Worth pointing out he had a few friends in amongst those backmarkers, while Landa was setting the pace on his own, and probably hampered a little by having to ride a pace Aru, who's clearly off form, could handle.
So Bertie, with some help from his friends, can put 50 seconds into Landa on a 11km, 10% climb. Which sounds about right.
I love that for once we saw a stage where the field got demolished before the last 5km of a summit finish.