Giro d'Italia 2025 spoilers

[mididoctors]

Not seeing much of carapaz

 

[mididoctors]

Weird seeing Adam and Simon together talking

 

[stage hunter]

Ok so if Wout is there .... What is the biggest gap del Toro could afford at the top to s Yates ?

20-30 seconds- on the assumption that Wout would be as good as a Carapaz/Del Toro combo. They would have been spent on the false flat bit, and Yates would have pulled out more on the final climb. The more I think about it the more I think Del Toro lost it before the gravel. I wonder how good the comms to the riders were at that point

 

[Dogtrousers]

Froome had gone solo from 70km's out though.

Point being WVA didn't beat Froome's time. The way in which they did it isn't really interesting.

 

[fossyant]

Wasn't overly impressed with yesterday's highlights - missed the point Simon went, then next minute he was 1 1/2 minutes up the road.

Quite liking Adam Blythe's interviews with the riders on the road.

 

[No Ta Doctor]

Wasn't overly impressed with yesterday's highlights - missed the point Simon went, then next minute he was 1 1/2 minutes up the road.

Quite liking Adam Blythe's interviews with the riders on the road.

That's strictly verboten for safety reasons, but Blythe is an absolute dick.

 

[No Ta Doctor]

Bit of classic Mads, gets the four Danes together for an "attack" rides ahead with them drawing the cameras, and waves them to the side of the road to pretend p pee in a bush

 

[orraloon]

Quite liking Adam Blythe's interviews with the riders on the road.

Riders or DS's in their cars? I see latter often.

 

[fossyant]

Riders or DS's in their cars? I see latter often.

Riders whilst pedalling (well until they put the hammer down).

 

[M.R.M]

Have only gotten to page 171. Will catch up on the rest later (Apologies for chiming in again without reading to the end).

Pinot waiting for Reicenbach, only for Reicenbach to descend like a Grandma, also contributed to Froome 2018

The Reichenbach Fail 😉

Not sure I agree with this bit. They are usually omnipresent. In the same 'breath' you mentioned UAE's problems. UAE did not field their strongest squad (for obvious reasons). Also, 2 heads in a team rarely works. It leaves domestiques in a state of constant flux.
My take is that in these Tik Tok tours, the depth of endurance of an individual is rarely tested. Yes it can be a fast stage - we've had stages of less than 4 hours and so recovery time is greater. What's 4 hours on a bike to a pro ffs?
Yesterdays stage was what, 6000m of elevation(?) and over 200 kms. This stage literally sorted boys from men.
IMHO, these short stages suit explosive riders. Over this Giro, how many times did Del Torro or Carapaz attack and how many times was Yates left behind? Until of course, endurance won over explosive attacks because it's hard to be explosive multiple times and still make it over that course and distance.
Yates played it cool.
Yes, you're right about EF but Carapaz rode naively - attacking far too far out at times. He only just kept up with a 21 year old.

But they had McNulty riding for 9th on GC instead of losing time at the beginning of the third week (when his GC was long dead) in order to step in when Vine and Ayuso were no longer there and the depth of the squad was suffering.
Both del Toro and Carapaz had the legs to follow Yates. It was UAE's tactical errors that caused the loss, not the inability to withstand the parcours.
Carapaz isn't to blame at all actually. My criticism was more towards, he should have lent on del Toro earlier on Finestre and made him chose even sooner. He did way too much work for the pink jersey at the middle part of Finestre. This as a tactical approach is based on the leader actually trying to defend the jersey as would usually be the case.

I don't think you'll get a better picture of the power of the draft than the video of Wout pulling Yates along. You could see and almost feel the effort WVA was putting in and Yates was clearly relaxed and chilling.

To be honest, for all the riding I've done, I don't think I've ever experienced any benefit from drafting - at least not that I could notice and feel. I don't ride fast enough, I nearly always ride alone, and if not alone I don't ride close enough. So although I'm well aware that it's a thing, and know it intellectually, it's not something I know physically.

The most insane aspect of drafting is the amount of recovery you get at a very high fitness level in just 15-30 seconds in the draft. It's so much, that it doesn't even matter if the person you're riding with is slightly weaker and speed drops by 1 km/h. You can prolong your effort or up the power subsequently by such a huge amount that it easily makes up for it.

I think we can both agree that Del Toro faced a genuine dilemma - he didn't have any good options, just bad and worse... Which of those is which we'll disagree on, but worth noting he came away with 2nd rather than 3rd, which for a 21 yr old in his second GT is pretty good.

In reality, UAE screwed this up, as @mididoctors has emphasised, by a) letting WVA get in the break, b) not getting a UAE in and then c) not controlling it, so Wout was available for the descent. If they'd kept the break at 3-4 minutes or so then Wout would have pulled a bit up Finestre and then popped. Presumably they wanted the break gone to get bonus seconds out of the picture (sprint halfway up Finestre and on the stage).

The next mistake, possibly, was Del Toro closing Carapaz himself at the first attack, instead of using his team, though EF had been smashing it so I'm not sure what he had to work with at that point, will have to rewatch that.

I think it's pretty clear that with such a long hard climb Del Toro and his DS were worried about his ability to cope with it and were genuinely concerned he might pop. He was very conservative in how he closed (progressive rather than snap closing). He genuinely believed that if he worked on the climb he'd be mugged by Carapaz and the elastic would snap. Given Carapaz was throwing in attacks all over the place (e.g. when Gee caught up and was leading them, why Gee? Why Carapaz?) he was definitely not wrong about this. Carapaz would have gone over the top, snapped the elastic, and given his descending would likely have opened the gap further on the descent. The moment Del Toro went over his limit he'd be mincemeat.

Simon was incredibly strong and underestimated by everyone, inc. notable posters here

When they come over the top everything is still marginal, Yates had what, 1:40? They played a bit of call-my-bluff and neither were bluffing, Yates met Wout and the time gap explodes in a very short space of time. Game over.

I agree. To your second point, all they needed to do was get McNulty to go with WVA. If McNulty had shipped time at the beginning of the third week and gone with WVA, del Toro would have been able to retain pink. He'd have had to ride tempo after Yates on Finestre, ignore Carapaz and let McNulty save the Giro for him.

Also agree regarding del Toro closing Carapaz himself being a mistake. He did this throughout the Giro though. Closed gaps himself despite having teammates like Majka there to do it for him. That is an easy fix he definitely should be able to learn quickly. Who knows how often he has ever been a leader. It's rather likely he's always had to close gaps himself in the past and never had the luxury of having world class teammates who are not only willing, but actually able to close gaps.

 

[fossyant]

Adam's sandwich sounds nice.

 

[fossyant]

Interesting to see the "guest seating" quite empty as the riders hit the first circuit. All gone for corporate hospitality ?

 

[Milzy]

Steve Cummings just talked a glass eye to sleep.

 

[mididoctors]

Interesting to see the "guest seating" quite empty as the riders hit the first circuit. All gone for corporate hospitality ?

It's actually not for the giro ...it's a cultural event

 

[fossyant]

It's actually not for the giro ...it's a cultural event

Ah....