With another sprint stage on tap and the sprint being only about 24K into the race I figured nothing would happen till after the sprint. Well MVDP is in the race so should have expect the unexpected. He went off with Jonas Rickaert and by the sprint that had a 3:40 lead and from what was said had averaged 30mph. The question was - what was up as MVD had said he was not going for the green jersey but this seemed to say differently. That said hard to see him being out there all day but in watching live wondered if the goal was get ahead then let the break usually goes after the sprint catch them and give them a group that could work together.
Even with the break up the road the sprint for the points was still going to be interesting as there were still lots of points available. Add to this Milan lost 10 points due to an infraction, not sure what it was as I saw nothing unusual yesterday, in the final sprint the day before. So who leads out the sprint - it is Quinn Simmons at the front again to help lead out Milan who got the best of the rest in this sprint. Now coms the long road to finish with 146K still to go. Was surprised no one went right away so would have to wait to see how this all works out. One thought I had at the time was that the least this helps Alpecin not need to do anything in the peloton so that Kaden Groves could rest up. This would leave the chasing up to Lidl-Trek and Inter-Marche for Milan and Girmay. May not have been the thought at the time but could work that way - in the end Gove only got 10th in the sprint so not much help, likely would have been better for MVD to lead him out. So, maybe was just a long hard workout for MVDP.
Along with speeds the winds did split the peloton up some but it looked clear they were going to get MVDP as with 29K to go the gap was down to less than 1:00 - but it ended up not really being that clear. Also interesting seeing UAE and Visma at the front since they had no sprinter but you did see Milan with no teammates up there making sure he was at the front if any splits happened. MVDP and his teammate were not giving up to make it easy on the peloton since with 10K to go the gap was still at 50 seconds. But then we saw Lidl-Trek back to the front as MVDP was off on his own with 6K to go and a 27 second lead.
It was exciting to see MVDP work to stay away with 7 seconds on the peloton with 1.5k to go. Pretty much sure he was going to get caught but with MVDP you never know. The gap was closed with just under 1K to go and it was down to the bunch to sprint it out. The sprint was won by Tim Merlier free lancing to get the better of Milan at the line. Might have been a flat and supposedly unexciting stage but MVDP kept it interesting from the gun all the way to 1K for the sprinters to do what was expected of them. MVDP ended up 68th on the stage and lost 17 seconds in the last 1k.
MVDP is going to feel that tomorrow but I think he knew that with it being a climbing day and him not gong to try for it so he likely figured he might and see what would happen if he went for it today. Will be interesting what he has to say about why he did what he did but then again it is MVDP and he will do stuff like that because he wants to and he can - the old nothing ventured nothing gained sure applies to him - and today a lot was ventured with some gain as he did get some sprint points but not enough being he was not in it for the final sprint. As a side note Joao Almeida had to abandon as with is broken rib from a couple days before it was just not happening - that he made the one extra day shows how tough these guys are.
Tomorrow is the ride mountain stage before the first rest day. While not as tough as some mountains to come but the first run at Cat 2's - 7 of them - with 4450M (14,600Ft) of climbing. As the race has a Cat 2 starting around 5.7K in and is a 4.1k climb it will be fun to watch the sprinters as the intermediate sprint points are at about 44.4K with some lumps between the Cat 2 and the sprint. Most of those aiming for the sprint will work to do all they can to get there and once by setting for the gruppetto to work together to beat the time cut off for the day.
Race Highlights:
- Winner - Tim Merlier
- Yellow Jersey - Tadej Pogacar
- Green Jersey - Jonathan Milan
- Polkadot Jersey - Tim Wellens
- While Jersey - Remco Evenepoel
GC Time Gaps
1) Tadej Pogacar - +00:01
2) Remco Evenepoel - +00:54
3) Kevin Vauquelin - +01:11
4) Jonas Vingegaard - +01:17
5) Mateo Jorgensen - +01:34
6) Mathieu Van Der Poel - +01:46
7) Oscar Onley - +02:49
8) Florian Lipowitz - +03:02
9) Primoz Roglic - +03:06
10) Mattias Skjelmose - +03:43
Click on images for more information and if you want more info on OFM check out this post:
To order Vespa you can go here and use coupon code - tkonvalin15 - for 15% off.
No comments:
Post a Comment