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All roads lead to Aigle: Pro Cycling 2020

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    Great Tour, but the fact that it happened at all was important and they did really well to get it complete as they did. Before they started I thought there was a genuine chance they'd end up with about fifty finishers and someone like van Avermaet might end up really high on GC purely through managing to stay in the race. ASO (and the French government) have shown the sport can be staged in a pandemic and we haven't had cases spreading through the peloton. The rest of the season will happen, the Worlds are at the end of this week, the Giro will happen (there seems to have been racing in Italy without issues pretty much continually since the restart), most of the Classics look safe. Only the Vuelta and Roubaix look a bit questionable presently, and I think the world will keep turning if the Vuelta got canned.

    Originally posted by Mumpo View Post

    In a sense Ineos lost the Tour twice this year - once when Bernal imploded and again when their wannabe successors slavishly adopted their strategy but without any of their tactical nous.
    One of the takeaways from this race is the use of the train in the mountains. It's not usually the most riveting or subtle of tactics, but both Jumbo and Bahrain have shown there's considerably more to it than just "stick a load of riders on the front and ride at high tempo"

    Pogacar was on debut aged 21, lost time in the crosswinds, saw both his main mountain domestiques go home before halfway .... and still won the race. Just think about that for a moment. He's more of an all round rider than Bernal, who is basically a pure climber. You can Bernal-proof a route by sticking a huge flat time trial in it. I'm not really sure what you could do as an anti-Pogacar measure. There's plenty of things that could go wrong with his career (fills out as he gets older, struggles with the pattern of a more conventional season, wilts under the extra pressure, scrutiny and expectation, gets injured, enjoys the trappings of success too much) but equally he could dominate this race for years to come. Not many riders win multiple Tours these days but he likely will and it's not beyond the boundaries of possibility that he'll win every edition of the race for the next decade.

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      Originally posted by longeared View Post
      There's plenty of things that could go wrong with his career (fills out as he gets older, struggles with the pattern of a more conventional season, wilts under the extra pressure, scrutiny and expectation, gets injured, enjoys the trappings of success too much...
      ... is allowed to order wine with a meal, starts getting a funny feeling in his tummy when a waitress smiles at him ...

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        Merde

        (an Arkea Samsic doctor and physio are under formal investigation for doping, and both Quintana brothers have been questioned by the authorities).

        https://twitter.com/le_Parisien/status/1308106680077615105

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          After a three day break there's cycling on the telly again as the shortened Worlds are underway. Looks a bit drier than Harrogate did last year. Anyway although much has changed in the time since Chloe Dygert is still bossing time trials, she's thirty seconds ahead of the field at half way. Dygert hasn't had a meaningful race in the interim, she was going to train in the States and do the odd bit of racing as preparation for the Olympics.

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            AVV is there and is going to try doing the road race on a broken wrist, which is both insane and very AVV

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              Huge crash for Dygert - wobbled on a downhill corner and flipped over a crash barrier.

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                So...... how do we feel about Pogacar's performance in light of his team management's chequered past? Was the TT just one of those freakish all time great sporting performances? I loved the Tour, but a 21-year-old kid putting in that performance.... I think it's reasonable to ask questions

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                  Geraint Thomas has just blasted round the World Time Trial course in 36m31s, a minute faster than anyone else who's finished. The favourites like Dumoulin, Van Aert and Dennis are still out but the Eurosport commentators think he might have done enough.
                  Last edited by Rogin the Armchair fan; 25-09-2020, 14:10.

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                    DON'T CURSE IT!

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                      Ganna has slaughtered Geraint's time at the 14km mark, taken 30 seconds off him.

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                        INEOS bossing this so far, Ganna 20 seconds ahead of Dennis at halfway and Thomas in third. Ganna's a short distance specialist and Dennis has a career long habit of going off too fast so Thomas might still come back into this.

                        The same team announced some new signings this morning, most of which had been well anticipated - Porte, Pidcock, Dani Martinez, Laurens de Plus. EF are very good at getting young riders like Martinez to a certain point and hopeless at taking them beyond that, so that's a good move for Martinez. Sergio Higuita needs to get the merry hell out of there before his career stalls badly.

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                          I notice Dowsett is riding an unbranded bike and has covered up the manufacturer name on the helmet (along with wearing sunglasses rather than a visor). Guess he's fallen out with Israel Start Up Nation then.

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                            Ah, INEOS not going to sweep the podium, WvA does a massive negative split and beats Thomas by about 10 seconds.

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                              Geraint won't even be on the podium now, not that he would have necessarily expected to be before today.

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                                Ganna the first since Boardman to be World Champion in Individual Pursuit and Time Trial in the same year.

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                                  On Dowsett's bike

                                  https://www.cyclingnews.com/news/uci...-shiv-tt-bike/

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                                    Crumbs, Ganna's a very good looking lad too. I've only ever seen gurning pen pics of him before.

                                    Edit : Wait, I was there when he won the IP in London in 2016, I clearly didn't see him close up on the screens.
                                    Last edited by Ray de Galles; 25-09-2020, 14:52.

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                                      Good race, that. Ganna from WvA and Kung. Dennis faded to fifth in the end. Never change, Rohan.

                                      Thanks for that, ursus.

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                                        I wonder when Ganna is going to try the hour record.

                                        He has made noises about it in the past, but was thwarted by the pandemic.

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                                          One of the commentators said something I found interesting about cycling on a motor racing circuit like Imola, where it finished today. He said that while the surface was obviously perfect, and smooth, the time trial riders actually hate it because the 'road' is very wide, and the absence of any road markings or 'road furniture' like telegraph poles or road signs make it really difficult to judge your pace. He likened it to swimming in the dark. A neat insight.

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                                            Have any fellow cycling fans on here watched this David Millar documentary 'Time Trial'? https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episod...wqq/time-trial
                                            I found it by accident, watched the opening couple of minutes and quite liked the look of it.
                                            Just wondered if it was worth devoting an hour and a quarter of my time tonight watching it.

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                                              Kudos to the Netherlands for both managing to suffocate the women's road race and give the impression that van der Breggen / AVV / Vos were all racing against each other rather than as a collective on the same team.

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                                                Who's the smart money for the men's road race? Van Aert? Alaphillipe? Hirschi? It looks like a puncheur's race, and Sagan's withdrawn.

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                                                  I fancy van Aert, though he'll be heavily marked in the closing stages. Don't think anyone really knows how the race will pan out, we've not had the age group races so there's not much to go on as to how the key moves might be made or what size of group will come in together, don't imagine many have been to see the circuit in advance. There's a lot of climbing but there's also a few fast finishers there such as Mezgec / Stuyven / Matthews / Degenkolb. At least it's not lashing it down this year.

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                                                    Attaque de Julien Alaphilippe

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