I don't quite know what to expect anymore, except it starts to look like
Roglic vs
Bernal as first captains of the big ships when sailing into the Tour de France. Both of them are quite robust riders, but one slip in the first week and they may be replaced by one of the other strong riders that can become the new captain.
However, today, there weren't two dominant trains riding. There were two trains riding apparently as hard as they could, but in the process they succeeded to drop many of their own riders. Was that planned, or are some of the riders not as good as they thought they were?
Froome and
Dumoulin,
Kruijswijk are among the ones I am looking at.
Then, win the
Omloop =fail at the
Ronde - are these guys (all quite experienced) holding back their form?`
Either way, today these trains weren't dominant: they failed to rise the pace to a level where captains of the lesser teams started dropping en masse. This is perfect for riders like
Martin
Quintana
Pinot and others that may come to the tour without the mountain-train entourage of the big teams. They can be freeriders (or the parasites if you like) on the big trains, and even give the rest of their team a slightly easier day down at the back keeping them fresh for later. Both
and
must put on more coal before the TdF or they may end up having a hard time fending off the freeriders on the lesser teams.
Roglic rides like a stronger version of the Yates brothers. Seeing how that might explode from the 2018 Giro it will be interesting if it lasts for all 3 weeks in the TdF. The competition for the stage wins will be more fierce and the bonus seconds looks like one of Roglic's big advantages in this unusually late early season. In the Tour de France more of them will go to the breakaways and riders like Julian Alaphilippe and Alejandro Valverde, who looks even less like
GC contenders now, but will be looking for an early stage win, to keep the sponsors' money flowing.
(this message-writing interrupted by the sight of a large goose plough formation of approx 300 birds heading south at sunset
)
This season is highly irregular and there hasn't been any Giro to remove contenders before the TdF. For now it looks like the big teams are in control, but they are skating on thinner ice than usual, and it is possible the Tour may come with a big surprise.
[1]I think the GC riders with notable improved performance over last year at the moment is
Guillaume Martin and
Nairo Quintana. All the others seem to have been sliding backwards, some more than others. The gaps are smaller than what I would expect on hard summit finishes, like the one we saw today on Col de Porte and on the Grand Colombier this Sunday. And the tour is still a few weeks away. Are you certain about the outcome yet?
