Jed19

Evans is gonna crack when it matters most. He always does.

Richard Cranium

Riis looked like he lost his dog after the stage. he said he was satisfied with the finish -but his body language said WTF - AC couldn't pull any time back from those guys.........

dstrong 

It seems like a lot of people count AS out before it's time. For the past two years, during the TOC, Phil and Paul have seemed shocked when he's not up amongst the leaders during climbs. Same with the other stage races. My view is he's truly riding the other events to prep for the TdF. As a matter of fact, I wouldn't be surprised if for each climb in the other races, they don't make a comparison to a TdF climb and use that to measure him for the TdF...sticking with a plan to the exclusion of everything else. Even today, I think he let AC go knowing he has some time in him and that AC is going to have to put in huge efforts day after day after day. There were a lot of riders able to stay on AC's wheel today AND he dug deeper to try to win the stage. Meanwhile, AS sits back and watches his rivals battle it out in the non-mountain stages.

gear

1.) He also let Evans go and he does not have time on Evans.
2.) Evans and AC will gain time in a TT.

If today was AS sticking to a planned strategy he either has a faulty strategy or he is an even better climber than he has ever shown. Either way, he is not leaving much room for error and who rides the TDF without any errors?

InReverse

I remember when sports coverage didn't include graphs. And you had to STRAP your feet in.

https://twitpic.com/5low97

InReverse

Oh, and I thought this was a cool excerpt from Chris Horner's blog:
https://www.cascadegranfondo.com/blog...tting-it-close

I decided it might be the extra clothes I still had on, so with 25 miles to go, I dropped back to the team car to take off everything I was wearing including my undershirt. This was not the ideal time or place to be changing clothes, with the speeds going near maximum on roads so small that it was going to make getting back to the front of the field almost impossible. But, with the way I was feeling, it wouldn't matter anyways unless I could quickly diagnosis whatever problems I was having with the legs and fix them. I was just hoping it was the extra clothes…

Johan was driving the team car, looking at me like I was crazy to be back there this late in the race just to get rid of some clothes! I handed him my helmet, glasses and jersey, so I could slip off my undershirt. I was flying thru the curves with no hands on the bars at one point trying to pull my undershirt over my head. Johan handed me my jersey back and I slipped it on quickly followed by my helmet. Just as I snapped my helmet strap, I noticed the real problem - I had been riding on a flat tire!

Kind of Blued

How does one of the oldest veterans in the peloton not know what a flat feels like?

rouleour

+1

Kind of Blued

The bad news for Andy Schleck is that the Tour de France has already started and he looks just as bad as the rest of the year when he was "building his form to peak at the Tour".

If he's still "riding into form", it's too late, and if his strategy involves letting people like Contador and Evans freely gain time on him, he's just stupid.

rouleour

hahaha...it reminds me, the time when someone else(LA) called Johan to let him know his brakes had been rubbing for half of the stage!... stupid!

SouthFLpix

Some of the GC contenders let a little bit of a gap form on that little Cat 3 climb today. You have to wonder how they will do when the real mountains come calling. I have to admit that Evans is looking better then he has looked in years. He might end up being thee real challenge to Contador, not Andy Schleck, and he (Evans) can time trial.

InReverse

Specifically, how many cool points do you lose for an inadvertent victory salute at the line?

DLBroox

At least he didn't sit up and do the "El Pistolero" thing.

ralph1234

About as many cool points as using tainted beef as an excuse for doping.

Contador looked like he was all over his bike today. Obviously it wasn't a climb that was tailor-made for him, but I haven't seen him wrench his bars that much in a climb for quite some time. Maybe the giro and scandal has taken more energy out of him than was originally thought.

dahut

Hell of a climb to the finish - I was grinding my teeth at each pedal stroke. So who was there?

Evans
Contador
Hushovd
Gilbert
F. Schleck
A few names I cant pronounce

I liked it

USAZorro

Seriously? It looked to me he was exasperated that he came up so tantalizingly short.

InReverse

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_1YxURthD0 at 1:19

Even NBC sports agrees (with a still shot of it.)
https://nbcsports.msnbc.com/id/436394...ports-cycling/

I just reviewed it as objectively as I could. He looks like he's cheering to me. In fact, he looks to his left with a sorta "I think I won. Did I wi... nevermind" look.

Seriously.

Kind of Blued

That really suprised me too. At the Giro he was using really low gearing and just prancing up 12% grades seemingly faster than the 9% hill today. I'm wondering if he was actually in his lowest gear, or if he'll consider using low gearing on non-mountain stages that only have a few Cat 2s or 3s in them.

teokiatuan

Shouldn't Evans have got bonus seconds for the win? or is it different on an uphill finish

ultraman6970

There are no time bonus in the tour.

Howzit

That's just an embellished story for arm-chair cyclists to talk about at the water-cooler.
Lame

dahut

There's a water cooler?