Lopez Nolasco with a big MTT, crazy stuff from him. IF he could join the breakaway and win some more time/KoM-points in the coming stage(s) that would be ideal. Not sure if Aular can get in the breakaway with his GC top-5, it would be immense if he could keep his fifth place.
Amazing reports Ulrich Ulriksen, much appreciated. Too bad my team isn't in the race at all, still hoping for something during the last three stages; Go Tinkoff!!!
5th is a solid result here by Giannoutsos, which also show that his 11th place (which was only achieved after a breakaway) is a significant underperformance.
I don’t know if it’s realistic to hope for another breakaway attempt. He didn’t try anything in 2 weeks being between 10-15th, and only really woke up after he became 18th.
I guess the best case scenario is him dropping a couple of spots on the next stage, and then a breakaway win on the final mountain stage to climb back up around 10th.
But more realistic he will try to cling on, and end up between 11-13th from defensive riding, given how he decided to ride for the majority of the race.
I suspect Schlegel and Champoussin will fight for the win on the upcoming stage.
Dombrowski again loses exactly 13 seconds to Latour. He should've done a bit better in this MTT. On the other hand; if he keeps losing 13 seconds per remaining mountain stage he stays 2nd in GC, which is mission accomplished.
Some brutal climbing in the coming two days. Hope he has the legs.
First of all, thank you for the report Ulrich. Absolutely insane stage, especially to end up with such a massive group heading into the final km. Felt like everybody would be coming in one by one minutes apart, but I guess the peloton really lost the impetus at several critical moments.
Gregaard once again showed why he loves these kind of stages. There's no chance I'm paying under 100k in wages for him again next year after these performances, but damn if he hasn't given me crazy value here. He just outlasts everyone. It was especially funny to see him and Aranburu in a small group together at the front. Such different riders excelling on the same climb. I really thought the stage win would be possible for a bit, but ultimately Wellens is a stronger climber, and that's okay. He had a great day out.
However, things are really getting precarious now with Carthy. He missed the actual break (which granted, was a blessing to an extent, seeing how some guys bonked), but then kept trying attacks on some of the weirdest points of the stage. He was never going to make the impact on flats and downhills. Losing time to guys like Firdaus, Valter, and Schlegel on this type of stage is a bit underwhelming as I would have expected Carthy to put some time into them if they weren't in the break.
That said, it all comes down to tomorrow now. Carthy in 8th is still in a pretty scary spot for our top 10 goal. He's got 5 minutes on Lopez Nolasco as his closest competitor for the last spot (given Gregaard's placing), but that's really not a safe lead if the peloton sits up. I could easily see Lopez, Tao, or Mas in a break that gets 8-10 minutes tomorrow. And on the other side, there's no one really above Carthy that he will realistically beat. He could leapfrog Godoy on a good day, but that's a toss up.
I think the smart move for us at this point would probably be to keep Carthy in the pack tomorrow and just use our guys later on to make sure the break doesn't completely go crazy time wise. But of course, the game doesn't know the top 10 is so important to us. We could also send Aranburu/Gregaard up in the break and kind of hedge on a breakaway succeeding, which could get us a GC top 10 from one of those two, but that's not without risk either considering how gassed they must be after today.
Very excited for the finale!
RIP Exxon Duke, David Veilleux, Double Feature, and Monster Energy
Strange stage. Giannoutsos rode like a complete moron, and still somehow climbed a spot in the GC. He lost so much time, however, that even with a succesful break tomorrow, he can’t really move up any further. Not an ideal Way to deliver here.
From a neutral point of view that stage was very interesting though!
You really needed a top day to be part of the stage hunting there, and in the end, it was only three riders really up for it, it seemed like. Congratulations both to roturn and bbl. Carlsberg’s Vuelta is absolutely sensational stage wise, and another podium here.
Surprise ride by Valter. Was happy to see him in the breakaway, but then he probably saw that he wasn’t strong enough to fight for the stage. If so, a great move by GC Valter to drop, but then hang on to the red jersey group. Big surprise to see him 9th at the end of the day. Pretty sure it will take a big breakaway effort to stay inside the top 10 after stage 20, but a fun position to be in for him. GC wise so far, this is a much better race by him than expected. Stage wise, not so much, but still another chance left.
Thank you for the massive report, UU! That was a lot of action. Agree it would be cool to see the top GC guys also go all in in the last half of the stage, after the early pacing there to make it a very small group early on.
What happened to Wellens here? He basically showed something he hasn`t done all season and also not before in his other break appearance.
Pure energy and even more freshness and endurance. Nothing you expect from declining riders usually.
He really was on a strong day apparently and even countered attacks.
Perfect stage here where I expected a huge struggle seeing all the big names in the break.
5th in the GC is huge obviously and even 7 min to our top10 goal. Still I hate it for other teams the same way I used to hate the top5-15 rotation in general whenever I was on the wrong end. A bit too much randomness and swapping to my liking. This time at least I am on the better end. 2 stages to go, hopefully he is able to keep going and not lose too much. The team around has saved lots of energy without break appearances, so they can hopefully support him.
Weird ride by Schlegel. He didn't really accumulate many KOM points, but did at least enough to wear the jersey for a day. At the same time he managed to finish 8th on the stage so the legs had to have been decent.
I don't really trust him to bring the KOM home, but at this point I'll give him some credit if he at least gives it a go tomorrow.
