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Tour de France Discussion
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| Heine |
Posted on 15-02-2018 08:20
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Grand Tour Specialist
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A hilly stage where Rein does what he is supposed to do, not loose to much time. Though I had hoped for more considering his earlier hilly exploits... Loosing time to Phinney is not good though.
I really hope Taaramae can take some time in the mountains, but I believe his recovery is a bit effected by the crashes, so I doubt it.
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| Gustavovskiy |
Posted on 15-02-2018 08:43
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Team Leader
Posts: 6177
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Our appearances on breakaways continue to prove fruitless and irrelevant, what a shame. Phiney back to winning ways, the plot continues to thicken.
Thanks for all the reports, Aquarius!
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| tsmoha |
Posted on 15-02-2018 09:03
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Directeur Sportif
Posts: 11786
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Gustavovskiy wrote:
Our appearances on breakaways continue to prove fruitless and irrelevant, what a shame.
This!
Thanks for the quality reports though. Can't find too many reasons to post positive stuff here. But ofc I appreciate the efforts to write the reports anyway!
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| alexkr00 |
Posted on 15-02-2018 09:06
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World Champion
Posts: 13561
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At least Gesink won some time on Taaramae.
But the hilly stages have been really disappointing.
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| roturn |
Posted on 15-02-2018 09:38
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Team Manager
Posts: 22043
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I am done with this race...
Just when I
a) write that please no more crashes and
b) write about the possibility of crash prone teams
Dekker crashes again....
This in addition to the 2nd shit AI stage with a 10+ min gap that mixes up the top10.
Not sure if Dekker injured or not but instead of gaining he lost another couple minutes...almost at 20min now in total that weren`t needed, which would have seen him fight for the top5 instead of being 10min behind the 10th even.
Surely not the luckiest team here in the Tour, which is funny to say with 2 or 3 stage wins. 
But this is too much random for my opinion in this Tour. |
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| alexkr00 |
Posted on 15-02-2018 09:38
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World Champion
Posts: 13561
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Team full of climbers and no one bothers to go in the breakaway and it's bye bye team rankings. Oh, I forgot, we stayed in the peloton to gift Spilak the overall win.
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| tsmoha |
Posted on 15-02-2018 09:41
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Directeur Sportif
Posts: 11786
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And here we crash again  Not sure how often Haig did fall here. At least we keep joining breakaways - with no success though.
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| Ad Bot |
Posted on 07-12-2025 16:12
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| ember |
Posted on 15-02-2018 09:45
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Team Leader
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Climbing past Keinath is good by Guldhammer, but Yates is just sensational, again! Looks like it will be a big challenge to get that wanted 6th place overall, as Yates on a good day has shown he's able to put minutes into Guldhammer.
Spilak doing well there gapping Phinney with a lot, when it for a long time looked to be advantage Phinney after his attack.
Also congratulations to Haute Route, honouring the wildcard in the best way possible. Must say again I would have loved to see Nesset in such a move, but it seems like I'll have to do without it this Tour, as there's nothing pointing to us becoming more active on the final two mountain stages.
A pity to see several riders with GC intentions go down in that huge crash, feel especially sorry for roturn, Roman and tsmoha, seeing their GC ambitions take quite a hit. Hopefully they're all ok for the next stage, but Sagan definitely looks to be injured.
Also thank you for the report, Aquarius97, another high quality effort  |
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| SportingNonsense |
Posted on 15-02-2018 09:47
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Damn those crashes, crazy Grmay gaps, and Yates overperformances Real pity for Sagan, as I was enjoying his unlikely Top 10 battle - and it was a needed result for Moser to stay ahead of Festina here.
Keinath back to his usual level, unfortunately now behind Yates, but still looking good for a Top 10.
I guess we're seeing the AI suffer for the leaders not having good enough team support. Certainly nothing comparable to the Hugo Boss and Vesuvio race lead supports we saw in the other GTs. eBuddy do have good strength, but that isn't being used with him sitting in 3rd place. Festina might have put a better show of it, were it not for crashes.
Spilak getting the gap he needs for the ITT. Now a bigger lead than the amount he lost to Phinney in last year's ITT, still with more mountains to come first. We still don't quite seem to be seeing the Taaramae from the mountains of Switzerland, as a result of his earlier crash.
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| knockout |
Posted on 15-02-2018 09:47
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Grand Tour Champion
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Koch with another fine ride. Sadly he seemed quite tired from previous efforts but taking some more KoM points, 5th on the stage and climbing into the top 20 in GC is great. 
A Big Thank You To All MG Reporters! |
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| roturn |
Posted on 15-02-2018 09:47
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Team Manager
Posts: 22043
Joined: 24-11-2007
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Luckily I was going easy this year with GT goals.
Only had a TdF stage win goal. And hence succeeded as expected when sending Swift to a GT.
Goal wise looking a lot better than ever before, i.e. in comparison to last year when I was crappy in this department. |
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| viking90 |
Posted on 15-02-2018 09:56
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Classics Specialist
Posts: 3836
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So Cort Nielsen crashing again, 5t time or so?
Wellens dropping down to 10th, a few days ago he looked good for a 5th.
Still a chance he can pass Grmay and Keinath, and maybe Yates will blow up for once?
Lövkvist going in the break on this stage is nice, tought he could take the win but Grmay winning is fair but he should have keep track with Kung, but anyway gaining back time and climbing up to 24th again. |
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| jt1109 |
Posted on 15-02-2018 09:58
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Fantastic effort by Phinney why not try and win the tour instead of setting in the bunch and he gave it a great go until Gesink decided to hand Spilak the GC  joking aside Spilak showing great strength here as expected his to lose now |
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| Croatia14 |
Posted on 15-02-2018 10:09
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Directeur Sportif
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Great action. Nice to see Grmay on the move, and also an awesome attempt by Phinney. It turned out to be the wrong decision, but he could've very well won the GC here. Now Brambilla may have won it for Spilak!
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| Gustavovskiy |
Posted on 15-02-2018 10:16
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Team Leader
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Great ride from Grmay what an entertainer in this race!
Spilak saving all the drama to the end. It's a nice gap, but I wouldn't bank my money on him just yet.
Nice to see Figueiredo on the break and take another low top10. We've had a handful of those which is something
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| Shonak |
Posted on 15-02-2018 10:31
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Tour de France Champion
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Whoosh Grmay, amazing stuff. Wildcard for Haute more than justified by now and hope that Grmay stays inside Top 10. Yates is such a freak of nature, how this is possible with these stats I don't know. Spilak finally on the edge of controlling things, when you get your rivals to work for you it's all good. However up until Paris there's no time for rest with a lead of under 2 mins. Gesink eyeing perhaps 2nd place, who knows what's next.
Happy that Didier finished inside Top 10, good breakaway appearnace. Perhaps he can make it again in one of the coming stages, would be appreciated.
"It’s a little bit scary when Contador attacks." - Tommy V
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| SotD |
Posted on 15-02-2018 10:32
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World Champion
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Well... In terms of the GC win, I guess this was good - for now.
But losing Vasyliv costed us somewhere in the region of 150 points, so that is obviously so so crappy. And the injuries and crashes just continues to ruin the fun for everyone. How anyone can actually consider this the proper setting for an online manager game is beyond me.
Yates keeps on impressing. Aswell as Amador taking some nice results.
Like Gustavovskiy said, putting money on Spilak for the overall is still very much a gamble. Having basically no backup left, leaves us with a slightly injured Novak and Kastrantas as the only riders worthy of a mention in these final stages. The rest might even be outside the time limit on the short mountainstage.
Like said before, Spilak really needs to stay alert and make sure to take time on Phinney. Could be done by countering Taaramäe on the next 2 stages, would be my guess. And without any domestiques capable of doing a good piece of reeling in he must not be passive for just one moment - to be honest, I expect him to blunder (like always) at some point and thus losing the win.
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| SotD |
Posted on 15-02-2018 10:38
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World Champion
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SportingNonsense wrote:
Damn those crashes, crazy Grmay gaps, and Yates overperformances Real pity for Sagan, as I was enjoying his unlikely Top 10 battle - and it was a needed result for Moser to stay ahead of Festina here.
The loss of 10th for Sagan equals out the loss of Vasyliv in 19th, 2nd in Team GC and 4th U25, so I don't see why that should be problematic.
If I'm not mistaken I need to find something like 300 points in the final 3 stages on Moser to level out the deficit in the PT rankings - And obviously that is not going to happen as I would need Spilak to win atleast 2 stages to hit that number.
The GC is going much better for Moser (even with Sagan injured), as they have a ton of riders scoring 20-45 points with my riders scoring 10. Now also better in the Team GC and my guess is, that Moser will be leading the rankings by 150-250 points after the TdF. Then we might level out after Praha, but then lose big again.
To have a shot at the PT we need atleast 500+ deficit by the end of the month - and we won't have that.
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| the_hoyle |
Posted on 15-02-2018 12:12
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Grand Tour Champion
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Holy shit what a stage! Perfect ride from Grmay to take the win, KoM jersey and back up to inside the Top 10 on GC.
So happy with it and i just hope his GC position doesn't prevent him going on the attack again and securing the KoM jersey.
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| cio93 |
Posted on 15-02-2018 12:20
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World Champion
Posts: 10616
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Joining an obviously winning breakaway is great. Only getting 6th out of it isn't really anymore. Still wondering why we don't use Arndt or Nerz for that, but then again looking at them losing time again, they're not in form either.
I gotta say that it's really disappointing that after losing ALL GC hopes on stage 2 already, our best rider in the KoM classification is 44th. 44th, man, with a team full of climbers that got nothing to lose.
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