this post was submitted on 19 May 2025
10 points (91.7% liked)
procycling
560 readers
2 users here now
for news and discussion of professional cycling
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
There was a stop at km 0, for advertisement of the Pinarello factory.
Then a breakaway of a dozen of riders developed. First there was a FDJ, then De Bondt (Decathlon) joined him, then a group of 8 including Van Aert, Asgreen, Cerny and I guess 1 or 2 riders managed to join them a bit later.
Yet this breakaway disbanded / was caught up; and a new breakaway of 2 + 3 riders was formed after 20-25 km, including Asgreen again and another FDJ. That's the 'good' one, apparently.
Why is polti pulling the ayuso/roglic group??
They have their GC guy in the group, Piganzoli (only 17^th^ but that's relatively important for a small team like this). I thought they had their sprinter too, but I am not sure.
Yeah but you still have to leave it to bora/uae to do the chase. Wasting energy that could be used later
Used when?
Dunno. Breakaway in later stages... get your TV time later in the race, not pulling 2 teams with more to lose and motivation to pull... Either way, seems like a waste of energy for no gain
Maybe i play too much pro cycling manager trying to conserve the green energy bar
Yeah... well, it is going to become harder to get in breakaways, from now on, so I am not sure they can join anyway. However, the first quarter/third of these mountain stages will still often be relatively flat and host 1 or 2 intermediate sprints that can interest Polti, so they should indeed try to break away. Yesterday, a couple of their riders just worked a few miles (altogether, the crash was about 22 km from the finish) and Monday is a rest day, it shouldn't have serious consequences on the future of the team.
During the Tour of Abruzzi, I had noticed that the Polti team liked to pull in the last 10 miles of the race when they had a numerous presence ahead, instead of letting UAE work. Yet in the final walls, none of their riders were in top-10... So it was a bit weird already, especially as it happened the same way (pulling when UAE could have done it + failing in the last km).
Definitely the good one! Big surprise today, as Asgreen (๐ฉ๐ฐ EF) was never caught up by the peloton and wins the stage!
Another of the 4 members of the breakaway (the 5^th^ one Meintjes (๐ฟ๐ฆ Intermarchรฉ) chose to drop early from the breakaway โ or his director chose for him โ: if they had known...), Mirco Maestri (๐ฎ๐น Polti) was caught near the finish, managed to stay in the first group and sprint to finish 6^th^!
The breakaway never benefited of a decent gap. 2 minutes top, generally around 1'30''.
Nobody in the peloton did anything in the main climb, but Ineos accelerated 50 m from the top and did the descent full speed, reducing the gap by 30 seconds. Until it started getting wet. Also, until the first Ineos finally noticed he hadn't been pulling anyone for a while, as his teammate couldn't follow and burned himself trying to catch up instead of being sheltered...
In the breakaway, the FDJ rider dropped in an uphill sector.
Then the main event happened: a fall upon the cobbles in a small street. I think, but I am not sure at all, that Pedersen (๐ฉ๐ฐ Lidl-Trek) and another rider fell first, then behind them Ciccone๐ฎ๐น (Lidl-Trek) and another teammate. As it was narrow, most of the peloton was blocked, while Visma started (or kept on?) pulling at the front. Pedersen didn't seem badly hit, but didn't really attempt to chase; Ciccone was more seriously hurt.
This small front group (which included the isolated pink jersey Del Toro (๐ฒ๐ฝ UAE) and Carapaz (๐ช๐จ EF) was pulled by Visma and Alpecin. They spent all their strength pulling for 20 km, and for a long time were only 15-25 seconds from the breakaway, but they never managed to catch up.
S. Yates (๐ฌ๐ง Visma) becomes 2^nd^ of the GC, as Ayuso (๐ช๐ธ UAE) was delayed by the crash. Second biggest winner is Carapaz who arrived in the same group and passes 4^th^ before Roglitch (๐ธ๐ฎ Bora).
Beside Ciconne, Tiberi (๐ฎ๐น Bahrain ) is the biggest loser, as he finished 1'44' behind the Del Toro/Yates group.
Biggest winner in my heart is derek gee!! Jumps 4 places into 6th!!! ๐จ๐ฆ๐จ๐ฆ๐จ๐ฆ
And one more this day. ๐