Shadco 

Assuming he’s not badly injured he is ahead of where he would have been if he had just stayed with the pack.

it certainly made for an exciting 20 minutes or so.

.

MinnMan

At this point, I'm kind of rooting for Jack Haig. He sure wan't on my radar pre-race.

Maelochs

I love it when flat stages suddenly explode into race-deciding hammerfests because of a little headwind.

It's like breakaways .... almost every time the race comes back together, but every now and then, the groups stay apart and the attackers stay away until the end. I love it.

AMGwagon 

ooga booga... are you a fan of Queens of the Stone Age? Seems like a play off that song: "Mind eraser, no chaser"

The Vuelta has been a mind-eraser with that heat! 41C the other day is insane. I hope Roglic can stay on his bike to the last day and he just may be able to 3-pete and add his name to an elite list (with Rominger & Heras)

surak

That was a crazy, unexpected finish today. DQT just knows how to win, it seemed for sure like they made a fatal mistake when their leadout dropped Jakobsen with Trentin in perfect position to take advantage.

Bernal coming in 5th was also WTF, lol.​​​​​

MinnMan

They didn't drop him. He sat up. Supposedly had a mechanical.
Not sure what that Alpecin Fenix rider was doing.

Eric F

The pace the DQS train set was ridiculous. Props to them for adjusting and finding a way to win even though their closer was gone.

surak

It's semantics, they dropped him because they were driving the pace insanely high and didn't know he had an issue (mechanical or otherwise) before they opened up an insurmountable gap on all but 2 other riders -- even ones who didn't have equipment issues. It wasn't clear how soon they knew Jakobsen was gone, in any case they had an extremely short amount of time to still go for the win with Senechal.

The AF rider was supposed to be riding leadout and also lost his man. I guess DQT just wrecked everyone, but had the collective heads to not just ride a phantom train to nowhere.

MinnMan

Not really. If he had a mechanical at 1.5 km out, then their high pace had nothing to do with him being out of contention.

surak

Disagree, as I've said by losing him at that high pace they could've unnecessarily ridden a leadout with no sprinter of their own at the end to finish it off. Because they went off the front, faster than necessary to even ensure a small bunch sprint, they could have easily led out Trentin instead.

Senechal had 2 pro wins before today, do you really think the team expected to gamble on tearing the field apart in the last km with him as the backup plan? Senechal just barely pulled it off, he was for sure still working hard without thinking about saving energy for the sprint until very late. It was meant to be Jakobsen or bust, but luckily no one else reacted properly, with that AF guy possibly winning it for Senechal by letting him have a brief breather.

Edit to add: Velonews quoting Jakobsen does not mention a flat, just that he couldn't close the gap created with him behind Ineos. Yes, Senechal mentioned that he though it was a mechanical, but if Jakobsen didn't say it himself, that could just be Senechal trying not to upstage their sprint leader.

MinnMan

No, They did not "lose him at high pace". They lost him because he sat up.

I don't think the team planned to lose Jakobsen to a mechanical at 1.5 km. Nor do I think that they had much chance to adjust their strategy once it was relayed on the radios that he had sat up.

They played it by ear when his alleged mechanical blew up their plan. It had nothing to do with their pace.

surak

See my edit above, their pace caused a gap with Jakobsen behind Ineos that he couldn't close. It was absolutely a combination of the pace and poor positioning that he couldn't recover from. Anytime a sprinter has to work to close gaps when his full leadout is ahead of him is a mistake.

slcbob

IME "semantic" usually means you're splitting hairs about a term rather than you're talking about two different things, which seems to be the case here. Did he sit up? Hell yes. Why, should he, did they go too hard before the sit up, what if...? All fair game but different.

In the race I watched, the lead 4 got a gap and then Jakobsen sat up. Who knows if/when the mechanical occurred, was communicated, or began to play a role in the gap?

It looked to me like the DQS guy who was up there with 4 riders and pulled off to make 3 was surprised [that there was no Fabio there?] and got right on the radio. It makes me wonder if the 3 or 4 front men knew the score at that time. They sure as heck did right afterward and adjusted magnificently.

Yup, coulda led Trentin or another wheelsucker to the line, but didn't. That was a long pull, too, from the time DQS hit the front for the number of guys they had.

slcbob

P.S. I was slow to post and see the conversation moved along a bit. surak , concur, Jakobsen losing the wheel of his train with the Ineos-involved split was an important event. I don't think it was inherently unrecoverable, but he didn't recover it. He clearly made a few pushes to close the gap and it was stunning he couldn't. MinnMan 's "alleged mechanical" is a good phrase because it's such a convenient excuse for what might really be a mechanical or perhaps just a jour sans. On form, with a functioning bike, he closes that gap quickly when he made the push inside riders in front of him at one of those roundabouts.

MinnMan

Bottom line - I/we don't know if he had a mechanical. If he did, the speed had nothing to do with him being out of contention. If he didn't, then maybe he's making excuses for not being able to close gap he should have been able to close. If the latter, then it's possible to blame the DQS train for going too hard and losing their man. If the former, then the speed was not the chief issue.

Surak is writing as if the mechnical was either fictional or immaterial. If the former, he has a point. If the latter, then we disagree.

surak

CT has a good recap of what happened. When they realized Jakobsen was out of it, the DQT train slowed down. To me that's pretty clear evidence that they went too fast initially, thinking that shaking off the other teams was the key to taking the sprint, not keeping Jakobsen safely tucked in. Yes it's possible that he might not have had the legs to finish it off even if he didn't have to close any gaps, so by the strange set of circumstances they ended up with a good outcome despite the last second scramble.

Maelochs

Seems to me DQT took off hard because that is the normal pace to dominate a sprint finish, and normally their sprinter (Jakobsen) has no trouble keeping up. Today he (apparently) just didn't have it. If he had kept digging because he knew he could finish strong, he likely would not have sat up .... (of course this is all speculation .... ) but I figure his team realized he had nothing, and his lead out train just kept going hard to get a team win.

It is quite possible that he told his team mates ahead of time "I am not feeling it today ... i fi I drop out, keep on." Maybe not. But these guys are pros. They have dealt with all sorts of scenarios.

Sure, maybe the whole team just screwed up and maybe they all had their radios off .... or whatever.

Fun race to watch anyway.

ooga-booga

it's a jazz thing that predates the coachella valley band by approx four decades. and no, not a fan. queen? yes. stones? yes. qotsa? no.

ooga-booga

stage fourteen looks like a little barnburner...horrible prediction temptation is to take sivakov but going with gorka to bring home the win for the astana boys.

AMGwagon 

A simple “no” may have sufficed, but that is for clearing that up. There are no new jokes, just new audiences.

MinnMan

I'm not sure why you are offended. Your question had two parts, really - is he a fan (no) and the origin of the phrase, which as ooga booga indicated, comes from jazz, or more specifically from the great Thelonius Monk- see here

surak

Congrats to Bardet, maybe he can get another climber's jersey at a GT now that he's on a non-French team without the weight of GC expectations.

I tuned in late and seemed like nothing much happened in the real GC race, as the GCN+ Breakaway after-show seemed to confirm. Lots of climbing left so I can understand the more cautious approach.

Just one last bit on yesterday's stage, this audio straight from Jakobsen to Senechal should put to bed definitively the question of whether the leadout went too fast (he certainly thought so): https://mobile.twitter.com/lavuelta/...92721436708867

MinnMan

OK. mea culpa. You got it right and I got it wrong.

So was the mechanical thing fictional?

surak

Watching it live, it looked to me like Jakobsen pulled the plug after not being able to close the gap, but other broadcasts and reporting speculated on a flat because of the way he looked down on his bike. ​​​​​​Jakobsen himself never said he had a mechanical, it was Senechal who said after the stage that he thought Jakobsen might've had one when he found out that the team was going for it with Plan B. It was a chaotic final (albeit one that DQT created themselves), either Senechal and the others in the leadout didn't clearly hear what Jakobsen was telling them from the radio, or they were trying to save face in explaining why they lost their man.

Back to today's stage- Jay Vine continues to impress. I wonder how much of his immediate splash at the World Tour level is due to being an unknown quantity that helps him keep a low-profile and get into situations where he's a real threat. For sure, the rest of the pros will now know that he has immense ability and isn't just a virtual cycling sideshow act. Showing off that level of being right up there at the end of hard stages is bringing him well-deserved attention.

MinnMan

Also, we've all had tons of sympathy for Jakobsen, coming back from his crash in Poland. But he burnt up some good will in that moment after the race.