Dirk Van Der Dirk
Active Member
Vinegar needs to quit wheelsucking and grow a pair. Almost as annoying as Rob Hyperbole Hatch....and I can't even turn the latter off this year.
Tour de France 2025 (CONTAINS SPOILERS!)
- Thread starter Col1n
- Start date
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Adam4868
Legendary Member
I have raced against that other midland Irish cyclists dad, one Neil Martin. He didn’t have much of an Irish accent either. He could ride a bike though.
The "respect" between them makes me cringe.
Adam4868
Legendary Member
I know that feeling.....I visited my old man the other day....only has ITV so I had half an hour of Boulting and Millar forced upon me !
We drank heavily and tried to forget.
Pross
Veteran
Both parents used to attend my club’s award night as guests (I think Neil was invited one year and got friendly with our sponsor then came every year). Dan’s mum was certainly Irish and I don’t think I’d want to get on the wrong side of her either! Neil used to join our morning after club run too and also managed to persuade his brother-in-law to come one year. I did a few races around Worcestershire that he was in too (I won’t say I raced against him!).
Lanterne Rogue
Well-Known Member
Yates suggested after the stage he'd been placed up the road as a tactical option if it developed that way but it didn't. He didn't seem to really work until he broke everybody else (a few efforts to follow wheels aside) and if your domestiques are that far ahead of everybody around them why wouldn't you want them to stretch their legs instead of soft pedaling and being sucked into a sprint that requires going even deeper? I appreciate the argument that you want to save energy, but you also need to build a winning culture and Yates' ruthlessness today is exactly the spirit they're going to need.
Around here? I’ve got loads! None of them are in France though. 😉
Why on earth would you need to grovel at anyone's feet? All the talk before the stage was how JV could possibly threaten Pogacar, and the consensus seemed to be they needed to use their team. So, I can't really understand why their best climber was wasting energy being so far up the road he was of no use to Vingegaard at all.
It's an opinion. Being shared on a discussion forum.
Dogtrousers
Kilometre nibbler
I only saw the highlights and listened to various reports, so I could have this wrong but ... I got the impression that Yates said he was originally planned to act as a satellite, but the race didn't work out that way, and he did hardly any work in the break, at least not until the finish was in sight.
T4tomo
Legendary Member
Yes exactly. It was a big break to start with so was similar to riding in the peloton all day and EF were doing most of the work as they had 3 riding for Healy, and then Healy did all the work at the back end as he wanted to ensure he got Yellow.
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Blazing Saddles
Senior Member
To me, the only way that could have worked was if Visma set the tempo in the peloton.
UAE were never going to do the job of keeping the breakaway within bridging range.
Meanwhile, the break seemed content to allow Yates to sit on and get an armchair ride. So, one concerted effort on the final climb, to take a stage win, was a good investment.
Surely by virtue of arriving at the finish a number of minutes ahead of the leaders, he did a bit more work than he would have had he sat in the bunch. It also makes me chuckle that on an up and down day people seem to give drafting magical powers, like Yates barely had to pedal yesterday.
Equally isolating Pog is hardly going to achieve anything as he would just sit on the back of Visma until he does his explosive acceleration. Beyond teams grouping together so they have enough riders to box Pog in / road block him the only thing I can see isolating him is going to achieve is Visma hoping has a mechanical with the UAE team car absent.
