• 4 Posts
  • 58 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 13th, 2023

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  • “disraceful” - I think your typo is strangely appropriate. In the end, this is a race, and riding as fast as you can is exactly the normal way to race.

    The teammate aspect and birthday aspect are pretty overblown. If the team have told them to race and not to wait for each other, then they should do exactly that. And the scheduling fluke of having a big stage on your birthday - is that really relevant?!

    If Kuss manages to win it will be because he was strong enough, not because riders who could have beaten him decided not to try. Surely that is more worthy of respect than the strongest riders deciding to give him a gift.


  • “he will always be just a domestique” - I mean that is true, and has been for a while. He is clearly not as good as Roglic and Vingegaard. If he wants team leadership then he would have to go elsewhere.

    That said, the ‘best’ rider doesn’t always win Grand Tours and he may well still win this race. It would certainly be the best story. If he doesn’t win, it will be because he wasn’t as strong as the winner. That may be a bit harsh, but very hard to argue that it is ‘undeserved’.


  • I don’t get this take.

    “Putting yourself ahead of the team” might be a bad thing. But in this case Primoz and Jonas aren’t putting the team’s win in jeopardy.

    Maybe Jumbo Visma decide that three different winners is fun, maybe they decide that Jonas needs a better palmares, maybe having Kuss win will motivate him in future, maybe they decide to simply see who is strongest on the road, maybe they play rock paper scissors. Ultimately, between the three riders and the team management they’ll make a decision. And frankly any are fine. Internal team politics doesn’t seem like something to get worked up about.




  • Hmm, a decent prediction for the day, but I think I now predict that this overall prediction is wrong.

    Kuss must now be favourite to win overall. Hard to see Roglic or Vingegaard attacking to take it off him, and he looks stronger than anyone else. (As well as having a tidy advantage.)

    Still plenty of racing to go, and it is far from a certainty, bpt it seems the most likely scenario.














  • Good win for Kuss, and lovely to see Lenny Martinez get the Red Jersey. With a 2:30 lead over the big favourites, I could see him keeping it quite late in the race. It certainly sets him up really well for a good overall result.

    Evenepoel held it together well after being dropped and is still marginally ahead of Vingegaard and Roglic. I was surprised by how split up the GC contenders were, basically in ones and twos.

    INEOS look out of contention for now, Thomas and Arensman both shipping time.