"He's not a priority..."

SuperTiger18 said:

Gotta love LA's post race comments about Vino. He said that DC couldn't cover every breakaway by guys that are 5 to 6 minutes down. He said "We need to prioritize and he (Vino) is not a priority."

Talk about demoralizing. A few days ago the announcers and Vino himself believed that he had a real shot to challenge Armstrong this year. He has been relegated to the status of being virtual no-threat at all in the period of 48 hours.

yeah but that is just armstrong talking...could mean that he is worried about vino's gain today and is just trying to cover it by saying that he doesn't care. i'd be worried about a guy that gained 1:15 on me in one of tha hardest mountain stages.

spockroyaltea said:

yeah but that is just armstrong talking...could mean that he is worried about vino's gain today and is just trying to cover it by saying that he doesn't care. i'd be worried about a guy that gained 1:15 on me in one of tha hardest mountain stages.

It was a gift from Armstrong.. He did not gain anything from when the last 2 climbs started to the end of the stage. He had the same time gap entering the climb as he did at the end. If the Discovery boys wanted to shut him down , they would have shut him down and put him away...... Here's a fact...... He only put 1:15 into Hincapie...... If his ride was so good , and he could only put 1:15 into Hincapie on one of the toughest rides in the Tour, he would have been in deep trouble if Armstrong & Popo wanted to hammer up the slopes..... He's still sitting 3rd on T-Mobile.
Armstrong is concerned with contenders such as Basso & Ullrich. It was a exciting ride , but let's face reality.... Can he do it again and again????

Well, Vino was indeed more than 5 minutes down. It made sense for Discovery to not go on an all out chase. It might sound demoralizing, but Vino did crack pretty bad yesterday.

And secondly, is anyone else surprised that such a big group made it together to the top of the galibier? I was expecting some action similar to what happened on courchevel.

wolfix said:

It was a gift from Armstrong.. He did not gain anything from when the last 2 climbs started to the end of the stage. He had the same time gap entering the climb as he did at the end. If the Discovery boys wanted to shut him down , they would have shut him down and put him away...... Here's a fact...... He only put 1:15 into Hincapie...... If his ride was so good , and he could only put 1:15 into Hincapie on one of the toughest rides in the Tour, he would have been in deep trouble if Armstrong & Popo wanted to hammer up the slopes..... He's still sitting 3rd on T-Mobile.
Armstrong is concerned with contenders such as Basso & Ullrich. It was a exciting ride , but let's face reality.... Can he do it again and again????

so when LA loses the yellow jersey or loses time to a rival, he is "giving it away". ...but when a rival loses time to LA, LA has crushed them and established dominance? yes, LA is an incredible rider, but i'd like to go on facts and not what i think might have been motivation for riders to act a certain way. and the fact is that LA lost some valuable time to a strong rider today. will it matter by the time they get to paris?? we'll see!

spockroyaltea said:

so when LA loses the yellow jersey or loses time to a rival, he is "giving it away". ...

Not always, of course. Vino rode a fantastic race today, and is to be congratulated. Its within the realm of possibility, however, that Armstrong did not race as hard as he might otherwise have been capable today, on the theory that conserving his energy and staying out of the wind was worth losing less than two minutes to a rider that gave up more than five minutes yesterday. (I'm not forgetting about Botero, who also rode well, but who is also down 3+ minutes to Armstrong.)

One thing about Lance: he is a great tactician and opportunist. C. Carmichael said before the last climb of yesterday's stage that Lance's plan was to try to get to the top without exhausting himself for today's ride. But when he heard that Vino was off the back and Ullrich was fading, we immediately saw him tell Popo to sprint for all he was worth, and he took full advantage of the riders he was trying to distance himself from. After the stage, a camera snippet showed him completely gassed, leaning over on his bike.

With that effort comes a cost, and I suspect he was hoping to avoid any serious counterpunches today. Lucky for him, none came from any rider within immediate striking distance, although Vino/Botero did what they could to get closer.

Again, however, with that effort comes a cost, and I suspect that if you total the cumulative effort of yesterday and today, Armstrong expended less than Vino, yet gained more than 3 minutes on him. Orchestrating that kind of ratio is what makes Armstrong better than anyone else in this event for the last six years, IMO.

sam_m said:

Well, Vino was indeed more than 5 minutes down. It made sense for Discovery to not go on an all out chase. It might sound demoralizing, but Vino did crack pretty bad yesterday.

And secondly, is anyone else surprised that such a big group made it together to the top of the galibier? I was expecting some action similar to what happened on courchevel.

I think you would have seen similiar results to courchevel had LA and Disco decided Vino was a serious threat...the tempo would have been up and the remaining field shredded again...It looked like LA was comfortable giving up minimal time to a guy 5+ minutes down. In the end, he maintains his lead, Vino is still around 4 minutes down, and for the most part, Disco remained together and didn't have to use up a lot today....

sam_m said:

Well, Vino was indeed more than 5 minutes down. It made sense for Discovery to not go on an all out chase. It might sound demoralizing, but Vino did crack pretty bad yesterday.

And secondly, is anyone else surprised that such a big group made it together to the top of the galibier? I was expecting some action similar to what happened on courchevel.

There's a lot more to gain from an attack on a mountain top finish day than when there's a lot of riding after the last peak. 40km from peak to finish, even downhill, is a long way.

Strategy for Discovery is a bit different too. On an uphill finish you set a blistering pace to slowly drop the other team domestiques while Lance conserves enegery, then Lance starts dancing up. The fast pace helps take the teeth out of any other attacks by serious rivals. The only thing that matters is getting Lance himself to the peak as soon as possible.

On an HC that's 40km from the finish the way to get Lance to the end as quickly as possible is to have a group of Disco boys go over the top together, which limits the speed of the climb because they all have to hang. I think the idea is that if an attack goes the Disco boys can set up a mini TTT after the peak to reel the group in. If the Disco boys blow themselves out on the climb and Lance goes ahead and catches Vino and Botero near the top, then what? You don't want Lance having to work hard to push all the air for the last 40km while his rivals are in a big pack a km, drafting others and slowly catching up.

I'd like to find the old newsflashes from previous races to check the situation when Vino made a big breakaway the day Beloki fell. (I hope I'm not mixing up stages in my mind.) There was about 20km after the peak on that stage, and about 13 riders went over the top together chasing Vino. Some of the differences are the shorter distance from peak to finish, and perhaps more importantly that the field was much more closely bunched at the start of the day. Everyone was trying to put time into the rest of the field, and there were more teams worried about Vino. Again my memory might be faulty, but that's how I recall the stage.

Today I'm a little surprised that the Disco train didn't pull back more time on Vino and Botero, but maybe they didn't feel they needed to. Vino will probably lose 2+ minutes to Lance on the remaining ITT, so combine that with the gap at the start of the day and Disco wasn't too concerned.

One thing that impressed me today was the strength shown by CSC and TMO if you look at the number of each team in (or in front of) Lance. TMO:4, CSC:3. I'm looking forward to excitement next saturday and sunday when the race has uphill finishes. With only 28km to go from Port de Pailheres to the finish on Saturday it will be interesting to see if Disco tries to stay together for the final 9km climb or not. I expect we'll see an early breakway for KoM points both days, but most likely the big contenders will stay together until the final climb and then slug it out.

Michael

spockroyaltea said:

so when LA loses the yellow jersey or loses time to a rival, he is "giving it away". ...but when a rival loses time to LA, LA has crushed them and established dominance? yes, LA is an incredible rider, but i'd like to go on facts and not what i think might have been motivation for riders to act a certain way. and the fact is that LA lost some valuable time to a strong rider today. will it matter by the time they get to paris?? we'll see!

First of all his rivals "lose" time to him because they are already behind. Why would Ullrich or any other opponent "allow" Lance to make his lead even bigger without contesting the move? Second Lance is in a position to give away some time to certain individuals based on the overall standings. Until his rivals have a substantial time lead over LA in the GC I don't think the assessment of giving away time is too far off base.

How can you say he lost valuable to time to a strong rider today? Vino made three attacks toward the end of Saturdays stage and other than the little sprint bonus he picked up early in the first week he hasn't shown himself to be able to really take it to Armstrong. I believe the Discovery let him go. They could have easily reeled him back in, but it wasn't worth it. Vino has never come back from a big deficit to Armstrong in the Tour and won. Why would they expect him to do so now after yesterdays performance.

I fully expect that Lance take back that 1:15 and then some in stages 14 and 15. Face reality...unless a major mishap occurs for Discovery or Lance...Vino is not much of a threat at this point.

Yep, good points there about the long descent to the finish line. About the stage on Sunday (lots of short but steep climbs and an uphill finish)... Any thoughts what strategies the main contenders (including Lance) might try to gain time on each other?