2019 Road Racing Season Omnibus (Spoilers Guaranteed)

[j44ke]

Put Alaphillipe on Jumbo-Visma with their rouleurs & climbers for protection and I think there is a pretty good chance he’d still be in first.

Was Quick Step aiming for the GC or was this just a lucky break that they ran with as far as they could go? I think the latter. If so, would they have been better off with someone like Gilbert on the team with Alaphillipe in yellow?

[Saab2000]

QS is a team built for the classics, and they dominate them. It's such a risk to build a TdF team around talented guys because normally there can only be one. Ineos/Sky is the exception but it's rare to have more than one rider who can win without trouble within the team. QS has multiple riders in each one-day race who has a shot to win and often does. This includes Alaphillipe. He's clearly a gem who can succeed on almost any day of the year.

[DOOFUS]

For Alaphillipe to turn himself into a Tour podium guy, he would have to train like one -- lots of what Ineos call GA2 (70-80% of FTP) and GA3 (80-85%). No change in volume but a shift in intensity distribution - cutting out most of his 1-5 min explosive work and increasing the amount of tempo and subthreshold. The Jumbo and Ineos guys do a lot of that work to build the stamina for that third week.

That would be a mistake for Alaphillipe. He'd go from a guy who could win classics to a guy who would finish on the podium in classics and stage races but not have that last bit of edge to win either.

This was his Kelly 1984 or Jalabert 1995. Take it, but keep the focus on where you can win.

[skouri1]

Ya, I say, already an unplanned 5th in the tour is incredible. Look at someone like steven kruijswijk. You can be in the top ....% but is a podium going to make your career? Maybe. If i were alaphilippe I would just keep trying to win the ardennes and the odd surprise milan san remo :)

[Moke]

Be interesting to see what the committee decides to do in the next five or so years with the course. It seems like the last 8 years or so we have moved to way more mountain top finishes and minimal individual TT stages. Bernel lost a buck and a half in a relatively short rolling TT. What if they put in a couple of powerhouse 30-60 k TTs and only had one mountain top finish? I remember the days where guys like Big Mig (remember when he blew by pre cancer Lance in a tt) had a winning formula to take several minutes out of the climbers in the TTs and hang on in the mountains. Always interesting to see what the cooks come up with for a course every year. I do tip the hat to the young Colombian, that guy can climb.

[BSUdude]

Alaphillipe will never again be given the leash by the "real" GC teams like Ineos that led to him getting into the situation he was in the first place. This is like what Tommy V did in 2011...snuck into yellow early because no one thought he was a threat, then stuck his tongue out to hold onto the jersey for way longer than anyone expected.

[BBB]

Be interesting to see what the committee decides to do in the next five or so years with the course. It seems like the last 8 years or so we have moved to way more mountain top finishes and minimal individual TT stages. Bernel lost a buck and a half in a relatively short rolling TT. What if they put in a couple of powerhouse 30-60 k TTs and only had one mountain top finish? I remember the days where guys like Big Mig (remember when he blew by pre cancer Lance in a tt) had a winning formula to take several minutes out of the climbers in the TTs and hang on in the mountains. Always interesting to see what the cooks come up with for a course every year. I do tip the hat to the young Colombian, that guy can climb.

Indurain probably used that tactic in two of his wins (92 and 93). The others he attacked to make the difference (91 he attacked on the way down the Tourmalet, in 94 he rode down Pantani on Hautacam and 95 he rode away from everyone on La Plagne, not to mention attacking in the Ardennes).

If they put a long TT back in the race then riders like Dumoulin or Thomas or Roglic would put minutes into everyone else.

The first week to 10 days needs to have some spice in addition to the traditional sprint stages. The stage in the Champagne region that Aalaphilippe won for example or the stage that he took back the yellow jersey. And whatever you do, do not have the first mountain stage as a procession followed by a single big climb. This just allows a strong team (US Postal/Discovery/Sky) with a dominant rider to go into over drive and ruin the race as a spectacle on the very first big climb.

[rabo]

Put Alaphillipe on Jumbo-Visma with their rouleurs & climbers for protection and I think there is a pretty good chance he’d still be in first.

Was Quick Step aiming for the GC or was this just a lucky break that they ran with as far as they could go? I think the latter. If so, would they have been better off with someone like Gilbert on the team with Alaphillipe in yellow?

Laurens de Plus was a Belgian rider from QS that Levere said he did not need.
Jumbo picks him up injured, and de Plus is the one that tempo rides Alaphilippe off the back ,and ride stellar all Tour.. I wonder if de Plus has any thoughts about that .
Alaphillipe will not turn into a stage racer. No chance.

[BBB]

I guess, but you never know how things will pan out.

Caleb Ewan was left off the Michelton-Scott TdF squad in 2018 and switched across to Lotto. Come 2019 he won three stages and Lotto won four stages in total.

Over at Michelton-Scott, their GC focus crumbled, but they still won four stages.

Both parties ended up doing more than okay.

I doubt de Plus would have made much difference to Alaphilippe's race had he stayed put. And Quickstep still won three stages and had the lead for the majority of the race. It was a major success for them, irrespective of how de Plus' pacemaking help work over Alaphilippe.

[joosttx]

If Tony Martin wasn’t illegally thrown out of the race he would of clearly won it. Love to hear a plausible counter argument. Like there is one....

[72gmc]

Don't do it, Julian! Be a classics hero and try for shorter stage races.

The Tour is only occasionally the best GT of the year, and the sport is distorted by the Tour.

[j44ke]

Sounds like Wout Van Aert dodged a bullet there. Reading elsewhere, it was something about reattaching or repairing a muscle?

http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/reli...ed-in-belgium/

Any inside info from the Belgian press Rabo?

[DOOFUS]

I actually like the first mountain stage being a long flat run to an HC climb -- like Hautacam '94. That long run in isn't boring -- it's slow building tension; the first week is pretty much all big ring, and the high watt, low-ratio climb is a drastic change in rhythm that is disastrous for some riders, who just can't adjust to the difference in cadence and tension and they lose tons of time. They all know this -- and the GC guys can be seen during the first week doing some low-cadence grinding when they can, just to keep that feel while still conserving their efforts -- but inevitably someone doesn't get it right and that first big change in rhythm is their undoing.

I get why some would call such stages boring, and yes, the sort out they create very quickly kills the drama of some marginal GC hopeful hanging on -- but that's the beauty of it. One brutish sort-out first off, then the rest of the mountain stages are for the top 5 to go at it. All contenders, no pretenders.

The key is to get the balance of TT'ing right -- too much before the first mountain, then you get tours where the knockout blow comes too early, unless you have an HC mountain TT to even things out (like in '87 when there was the long Futuroscope TT, but then the Ventoux, so a climber like Delgado could give the tester-climber Roche a run right up to the end).

[DOOFUS]

19 years old and you finish clear of a group with both the reigning world champion and reigning bronze medalist to win a World Tour race.

I've been paying attention since '81, and I've never seen the likes of this. Holy smokes.

[rabo]

19 years old and you finish clear of a group with both the reigning world champion and reigning bronze medalist to win a World Tour race.

I've been paying attention since '81, and I've never seen the likes of this. Holy smokes.

You forgot in 2nd place the current Olympic champion.
The Belgian commentators did not want to talk about the "M word".
Getting dropped on the penultimate climb , and then this?
Getting close to M...

[BBB]

Pretty amazing. Based on his junior results he can clearly climb and time trial.

And we just had a 22 year old win the TdF.

Just when the French thought they had got rid of the pesky Brits and finally have a shot at the title, along comes a Columbian and potentially a Belgian.

[rabo]

Sounds like Wout Van Aert dodged a bullet there. Reading elsewhere, it was something about reattaching or repairing a muscle?

http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/reli...ed-in-belgium/

Any inside info from the Belgian press Rabo?

I read that (I think the famous Dr Claes) said the surgery was done wrong, and had to be redone.
Very unusual for surgeons making such a strong statement about a colleague, or even touching another surgeons job. At least in he US.
Cross will be different this year.

[rabo]

The womens sprint in the London classic was ugly. Hope nobody was hurt bad.
But would a man have been DQ'd for this?:

edit 1.55 the sky view.

[72gmc]

Can't answer the gender difference question (French sprinter? TDF?) but I agree with the DQ. What a bad moment for the rider she clipped, trying to keep it upright and failing.

[sk_tle]

It's really hard to judge. On one hand she swerved quite a lot but on the other hand she did it only once to launch her sprint. You can't expect every sprinter in contention to ride alongside each other while waiting for the sprint to start or decide to bail out because you don't have a perfectly straight path available.