Tour de Suisse 8-16 June 2013 [spoilers]

[Strathlubnaig]

Spartacus might be putting the hammer down on this one seeing as he is bailing out of the TdF, so could afford to extend himself a bit. Good prep for Poland and going up against Wiggins.

 

[rich p]

There's a few names of interest to see where they're at, re the Tour.
Teejay, Kreuziger, Mollema, Pinot, Peraud etc It's not a stellar field though.
It'll be interesting to see Dan Martin back in action now expectations have been raised by his win in Catalonia.
Has JTL's season started yet?

 

[Herzog]

...
It'll be interesting to see Dan Martin back in action now expectations have been raised by his win in Catalonia...

I'd totally forgotten about Dan Martin. The wins in Catalunya and LBL were outstanding, and hopefully he'll come to the TdS in fine form. After Hesjedal's poor performance in the Giro, it'll be interesting to see how the dynamic within the team plays out. It's not a particularly mountainous edition this year, so Martin could be in with a shout.

 

[rich p]

JTL dropped badly on the first hill. He's not enjoying the Sky experience.

 

[rich p]

..and Dan Martin going on the attack early

 

[rich p]

Dombrowski and Edmondson doing well though

 

[rich p]

...and Andy Schleck is shelled out the back!

 

[smutchin]

Mollema wins. You don't hear that every day.

Ryder was a bit unlucky.

Pinot third. Yay!

 

[rich p]

Good effort by Heyjsdal but that's the best of Mollema since the Vuelta 2011 innit?

 

[smutchin]

He was pipped on stage 8 of the 2011 Vuelta by Dan Martin. As far as I can tell, his last actual win was stage 6 of the Tour of Poland in 2010.

In fact, that seems to have been his only previous win as a pro. He won the overall in the Tour de l'Avenir in 2007 but didn't win any stages - came 2nd three times though (behind Dario Cataldo twice!).

 

[rich p]

He was pipped on stage 8 of the 2011 Vuelta by Dan Martin. As far as I can tell, his last actual win was stage 6 of the Tour of Poland in 2010.

In fact, that seems to have been his only previous win as a pro. He won the overall in the Tour de l'Avenir in 2007 but didn't win any stages - came 2nd three times though (behind Dario Cataldo twice!).

Just checked on Wiki. He came 4th in the 2011 Vuelta won by that cheating git Cobo, behind Froome and Wiggo and won the points jersey too.

 

[smutchin]

Oh yeah, so he did. For some reason that Vuelta points jersey isn't listed on procyclingstats.com, which is where I was looking.

Is he the new Purito? Consistently high placings in the mountains but always falling just short when it really matters... He could certainly do with improving his time trialling too.

Still, very positive signs from him so far this year, great win today and he's young enough that he could yet come good.

 

[montage]

Promising from Edmondson, more so from Dombrowski

 

[rich p]

Blimey, JTL ended up 11 minutes down. He shudda stayed at Endura!
Andy S lost 3+ minutes.

 

[VamP]

Roman K up there