Leinster

Early slopes of the day's first mountain (Finestre) and Contador has only Rogers for company again. 6 Astanas on the front.

Leinster

Landa on the attack and Contador won't/can't follow. Hesjedal and Kruijswijk doing all the work to try and move up to the top 5.

Marcus_Ti

Nice to see the peloton having to ride on roads almost as bad as mine

cthenn

In recent memory, is there a rider who won a GT with a worse team than Contador? His team was hot garbage AND a dumpster fire.

Rich Gibson 

Tinkoff needs to get serious about the other 7 members of the Tour de France team if he expects Contador to do well. This team was so bad there must have been a smell when they passed by as a group; they stunk up the Giro. Well done to Ryder!

Rich

Leinster

Tactically, I think Tinxo screwed up by riding the first week as if they were defending the Maglia. Especially once they saw how hard Astana were going to ride every time the road pointed upwards. Controlling the race was Orica's job, as race leaders, and they should've been left to it. I don't know if that would've meant that Rogers or Kreuziger would have survived a bit longer each day in the Alps, but it couldn't have hurt.

It's hard to see what personnel they're going to add to their Tour team to make them stronger. Sagan isn't going to improve them in the Pyrenees (though he couldn't be much less use than some of the Giro team), Majka hasn't been on form this year, Chris Anker Sorensen hasn't done much...


As far as winning a GT with a worse team, well Lemond's ADR team in '89 didn't offer him much in the Tour, fortunately for him he didn't have to defend the yellow much, just stay close enough to Fignon to take it off him on the last day. Oh, and Roche won the Giro with his own team actively working against him, but that's hardly the same thing. And these do play loose with the definition of "recent memory."

badger1

I think that AC's overall performance this Giro is pretty remarkable, considering (as others have said) the relative weakness of his team and the injuries he suffered in that first week. Strikes me that there was a remarkable amount of maturity/intelligence/tactical and strategic savvy involved.

It's worth remembering, perhaps, that he's done this before: the 2009 Tour. There, he had not only every other team working against him but also his own (the Bruyneel/Armstrong iteration of Astana) team for all practical purposes. I followed that Tour pretty closely. As I recall it (could be wrong), he pretty much won the thing off his own bat.

Aru: remarkable turn-around. Good on him, I say.

Hesjedal: remarkable gutsiness this last week, moving himself up to fifth overall.

jyl

Great stage.

When they saw Contador unable to follow Kangert, I think Astana should have had its three riders working together up the remaining Colle de Finestre climb and then in TTT mode. Instead of having Landa towing Zakarin up front, and Aru chasing behind with a group that was sometimes working and sometimes not. With what we know now about Contador's recovery, odds are they couldn't have taken >4 minutes from him. But at the time, Astana didn't know how well Contador would recover, so I think they should have tried for the jersey instead of the stage.

Landa is clearly going elsewhere next year, so it will be interesting to see what he gets to ride for the rest of the season. Reportedly Vino wants Aru to ride the Tour; otherwise I'd have thought he should get leadership at the Vuelta.

Anyone have thoughts about how Contador will/should prepare for the Tour? Will he enter any of the lead-in races, or should he rest and train without racing?

Marcus_Ti

The bigger question is what team Contador is going to bring...because there hasn't been much of one the last 3 weeks at Giro.

Leinster

Kangert wasn't able to bridge to Aru, and Hesjedal and Kruijswijck were working pretty hard as it was. If anything, they should've told Landa to drop back sooner, once Aru's group broke Contador. The fact that they only made the junction when they were already on the way up Sestriere, and not early in the descent, had to make a difference.

jyl

Oleg Tinkov's hairdo is a hoot.

Marcus_Ti

I think there was some swearing in the lampre team car when BMC sniped that sprint

Leinster

All sorts of nudging elbowing and finger pointing going on between Trek and Lampre.

Leinster

It seems everyone except Durbridge and Keisse has punctured today...

PepeM

Very enjoyable Giro. Now to see what Dauphine brings.

Jed19

Contador can't win the 2015 TdF. You heard it here first. Tinkoff Saxo does not have the team to help Contador win the Tour. Not with Quintana, Froome and Nibali fresh from no Giro participation. And I can't wait to see how Astana work for Nibali in the Tour.

And Contador has no team to talk of. He won this Giro strictly on his own, based on his long grand tour experience and the fact that Astana was not very savvy with their tactics on that last climbing stage of this Giro. Contador should have lost the Maglia Rosa on that last climbing stage, if Astana used Landa and Aru appropriately.

Jed19

I agree! That Contador Mortirolo ride all by itself stamps this Giro as one for the ages.

Blue Belly

Alberto won't need too much of a team at the tour, so long as the other 3 hopefuls remain in contention. With 3 teams protecting riders, conti could theoretically stay within striking distance & not blow out too much of his reserves.
I still think it'll be a tougher race to win & highly unlikely that he will. But, I don't underestimate the influence within cycling. I think everyone involved in cycling payouts will want it.

cthenn

I agree. He can surf wheels of the other teams, there will be plenty of help on the road if his team is crappy again. I still don't think he's going to win, but that's based on his ability to recover, and a hard GT already in his legs.

LGHT

I agree ^^^^^^

Considering how hard he had to work to win the only reason he did was his TT performance. I think that determined the winner. Basically if Aru could TT he would have had a serious chance on beating AC. At TDF he won't be as fortunate.

Leinster

If Schleck, Virenque, Chiappucci, Herrera, Van Impe could only... He's far from the first GT winner whose winning margin was bigger on the TT than the GC. Ask some of Anquetil's former opponents if they'd like to do it all over again on a Tour route with less than 20km against the clock.

cthenn

Replace "Aru" with "Landa" and it's a possibility. Aru was forced into second by Astana.

LGHT

Yeah I agree. I think they wanted to support Aru because he's Italian and they wanted an Itialian to win. No one wanted to see 2 Spaniards fighting it out.