Forum thread
Tour de France 2023
Jul
20
12:57
It had been on the cards for a while. He finally left to be with his wife who is about to give birth to their 2nd child.
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Jul
20
23:00
A well deserved rest and congratulations to the Van Aerts.
Not often you see the breakaway stay clear of the sprinters but the 3 who did were very good.
Not often you see the breakaway stay clear of the sprinters but the 3 who did were very good.
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Jul
20
23:15
The final phase of the stage reminded me of the famous fairytale about the Hare and the Tortoise and their race. I read a review saying that the peloton was arogant enough to underestimate the breakaway. The gap was very small all the way over the last 30-40km, in 99 percent similar cases it would be totally controllable. It's not that it started big and then gradually melted down. Even 1km before the finish line I was sure that the escapees had no chance. Great win. Looked like sprinters didn't care.
A tactical thought for tomorrow then. Will the sprinters teams be disappointed because of what happened today and will like to control the likely breakaway better? Hard to say as there are only 2-3 genuine sprinters left in the peloton so only 2-3 teams will really be interested in chasing the break. May not be a sufficient motivation, esp that the royal Champs Elysee sprinters stage is just around the corner.
Another question mark. Will Philipsen finally give his top leadout man M.van der Poel some freedom and let MVdP shine this one time? I think MVdP really deserves this type of recognition after leading out Philipsen to 4 sprint victories. And he's a perfect candidate from a breakaway/reduced sprint. It's not that likely that they could both finish top-10 so a right guess which of the two will go for it tomorrow (instead of putting both in top-3-5) would free up some space in top-10 entries that could bring extra points spent on another rider.
A tactical thought for tomorrow then. Will the sprinters teams be disappointed because of what happened today and will like to control the likely breakaway better? Hard to say as there are only 2-3 genuine sprinters left in the peloton so only 2-3 teams will really be interested in chasing the break. May not be a sufficient motivation, esp that the royal Champs Elysee sprinters stage is just around the corner.
Another question mark. Will Philipsen finally give his top leadout man M.van der Poel some freedom and let MVdP shine this one time? I think MVdP really deserves this type of recognition after leading out Philipsen to 4 sprint victories. And he's a perfect candidate from a breakaway/reduced sprint. It's not that likely that they could both finish top-10 so a right guess which of the two will go for it tomorrow (instead of putting both in top-3-5) would free up some space in top-10 entries that could bring extra points spent on another rider.
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