jyl

Cool to see Viviani take the sprint ahead of Hofland and Griepel, the latter went from 300m in a confused sprint finish.

I wish the race tech would include speed readings on the winner of a bunch sprint. Wouldn't it be cool to know that Viviani was hitting, say, 40 mph and compare that to Cavendish's finishing speeds in Turkey? And maybe even see max acceleration in the last 500 m?

Pozzovivo's race is off to a bad start, crashed and lost a minute. The other GC guys finished on the same time so the gaps from the TTT hold, I think. Gang Xu finished 103rd.

Porte is sleeping in a camping trailer during the race. Interesting.

Leinster

No team wants to be throwing around data like that. And there are so many variables from one sprint finish to the next that a 50km/h finish one day can be completely different to a 65km/h the next.

I hadn't heard that about Porte, but it's a sensible call. To wake up in the same bed every morning might be preferable to having to find your hotel room every night of the race, having to work out where the dining room is, having to have your bags packed every morning before each stage, etc etc. Nearly makes you wonder why more teams don't do that.

jyl

Yes, the trailer thing makes sense, if they can find a not noisy place to park it each night.

On the speed, I was thinking radar guns?.

txags92

Easier to keep hotel staff from finding your doping stash that way too.

68venable

haha 1st thing I thought of too.

Leinster

Nobody to knock on your door at 2am and complain about the noise from your home trainer.

WCroadie

His race just got a lot worse today, hopefully he makes a full recovery.

PepeM

Great stage today.

68venable

That's an exciting ride for that youngster!

PepeM

Yes, that was an impressive victory. I also enjoyed Clarke thinking he had won the stage.

jyl

Wow, the Giro is dropping GC hopefuls pretty quick here. Just Stage 4 and I count only 3, maybe 4, of the pre-race contenders still squarely in the hunt. And a couple of the big-name teams started crumbing once the climbs started coming.

Giacomo 1 

Hey guys, the word "spoiler" is in the thread title, so please, for those of us not watching, please give us spoilers!

Andy_K 

It was something seeing the peleton get whittled down like that on Cat 3 climbs. Actual racing -- who knew? It will be interesting to see how these guys hold up for the rest of the tour. Astana put in a lot of hard effort today.

jyl

Well, here is a spoiler. Carlos Bentancur, the new GC leader of Ag2R after Pozzivivo crashed, who arrived at the Giro thinner than he's been in a year, lost 13 minutes today.

Jakedatc

gotta love breakaways that stick.. kid crushed it today... he'll be hurting tomorrow. forgot to zip up his jersey for the line though.. he'll remember next time

I've always thought they should shorten up the stages and get to the point.. they don't need 2hrs of tempo boredom in the middle. 150k tomorrow 2 good hills.. sweet. 260k friday. boooo

Leinster

You need some long stages in there too. It's a test of endurance, after all. It's not like they switch the tv cameras on until they're in the final 120kms anyway.

jyl

Some articles are asking why Tinkov helped chase down the break yesterday considering it contained Roman Krueziger and had a 10 min lead. The obvious answer, I think, is that Tinkov wants Contador and no one else to win, since he can't do the double otherwise. The other answer, I think, is that Tinkov know Kreuziger is likely to be banned in June and his results stripped, so a win by him is useless.

Leinster

The fuse was lit today. It looks like we know who the top 3 are (Contador, Aru and Porte) we just don't know what order they'll finish in yet.

Leinster

And the real reason is that Kreuziger isn't winning the Giro no matter what, and the only reason Tinkoff sent him up the road is so he could be there for Contador when the peloton caught up.

Andy_K 

If the peleton had let him take 5 minutes or so on that stage he would be looking like he had it in the bag. It seemed to me like somewhere in the middle of the day the Tinkoff-Saxo guys suddenly kicked into to applying a strategy where Contador and his teammates could just sit in, knowing the other teams with GC hopefuls couldn't let Kreuziger go. Meanwhile, Kreuziger was just cruising along in the break knowing that the peleton was coming for him. End result, after a hard day of work for most of the GC hopeful teams, particularly Astana, Tinkoff-Saxo was relatively well rested.

As to why it took them half the day to start applying that kind of strategy, who knows? Maybe it took them that long to get Contador to buy in.

What's really impressive is how Sky managed to do next to nothing too even though they were holding no such cards.

jyl

That was a fun MTF to watch. Aru has brought a heck of a team, hasn't he?

Caretaker

Spoiler Alert!



AC a faller in today's sprint finish. Injured his left shoulder and unable to pull on the pink jersey during podium ceremony.

Greipel wins stage.

Jakedatc

unlucky for him that tomorrow is the longest stage and finishes fairly uphill. Aru and Porte will probably test him out up there.

better off than the sprinter who crashed though.. owww

cthenn

AC dislocated shoulder according to reports. Even if he continues, there is almost a zero percent chance he wins now. You don't suffer a hard crash like that and still be able to perform at a peak level. He would just be wasting his time and energy if he tried to continue hurt, he may as well go for the Tour - Vuelta double instead now. It would be sad to watch lil Ritchie all pumped up on that high octane Sky juice drop AC in the mountains...he may as well reset his training program and get ready for July...

On a side note, what the hell is up with all these main GC riders crashing in all the big races now? Before this era, it was almost unheard of for the big guns to crash out of races...from Hinault to LeMond to Armstrong to all the myriad winners of the past few decades...hardly any of them crashed out. Nowadays, it seems commonplace for at least one big name to crash out of a GT. So strange.

Leinster

Never heard of Luis Ocana? Joseba Beloki? Sean Kelly lost the '87 Vuelta because of a saddle sore, and then crashed out of the Tour later that year. Hinault abandoned with knee problems while in yellow in 1980. And that's before you get to the likes of Michel Pollentier, Michael Rasmussen and Tom Simpson. There've always been GC contenders eliminated by crashes, injuries and <ahem> other factors, it's not a new thing at all.

I hope Contador's just being overly cautious and he can at least try to start tomorrow. The last 10km looks pretty tough, but at 4.4% not steep enough that anyone should be able to put time into him if he's anyway close to fit.

https://www.steephill.tv/2015/giro-d-.../finish-07.jpg

The likes of Matthews and Gilbert will be looking for the stage win, so I can't see Aru or Porte getting away with trying to take time out of anyone there.

Further update;
https://www.steephill.tv/2015/giro-d-...ador-colli.pdf
Cat scan and x-rays of Contador's shoulder. A dislocation isn't "slight pain," but maybe he's just toughing it out. He did ride 20kms, including a cat3 climb IIRC, with a broken leg at the Tour last year, so the guy has a high pain threshold.


Ouch.


Another edit;
Looks like it was a dislocation. https://www.cyclingnews.com/news/cont...-ditalia-crash