Simon Yates attacks Richard Carapaz and Isaac Del Toro for the fourth time on the Colle delle Finestre and this time they can’t follow. He climbs into the virtual lead before the top of the pass. This was the moment the race was won.
The chart below shows the GC standings of the top four riders overall. It only shows those who reached Rome rather than the halted lines of Primož Roglic and Juan Ayuso; and cuts out the other GC bids that fell apart because of crashes and illness.
You can see Del Toro rises above his rivals starting with the time trial in Tirana and he gets closer to the maglia rosa at the Tagliacozzo mini summit finish on Stage 7.
Stage 9 sees Del Toro take the race lead after he and Wout van Aert got away, Del Toro riding hard to take time which allowed Van Aert to aim for the stage win.
The Stage 10 time trial saw Simon Yates do well among the GC contenders, taking back almost 40 seconds and crucially he’d stay in range. Derek Gee recovered much of what he lost on on the gravel stage to Siena. The Canadian had a poor start in Albania, without this he would have been more of a factor but La Gazzetta Dello Sport took to branding him il sottomarino, “the submarine”, as he was hard to spot but always among the fleet of contenders.
Richard Carapaz won Stage 11 but the chart barely shows it, ten seconds on the line and that again in a time bonus. Look closely at the chart for stages 12 to 15 and you can see Yates is close to a minute behind Del Toro, the lines falling away gently as the Mexican scraps for time bonuses. All this was eye-catching but Carapaz and Del Toro were tussling for seconds when things would be decided by minutes.
Stage 16 to Bretonico sees the race head into the Alps and Carapaz put in a strong attack while up ahead Christian Scaroni wins the stage. This makes Carapaz look like the dangerman in the race but with hindsight it only gets him on terms with Yates who managed to distance Del Toro. The momentum is with Carapaz, Del Toro looks vulnerable but Yates was quietly consolidating too.
Stage 19 builds on this theme, for all the mountain passes in the Aosta valley it’s the small climb to Antagnod that sees Carapaz away and Del Toro following as they take 24 seconds. Simon Yates had got his team to ride but there was nothing to show for it and was left muttering about team plans going awry.
The final mountain stage looms. The Colle delle Finestre, a giant in the Alps, 18.5km long and because of the slope and unpaved upper section, an hour or more for the very best which is rare (although the Galibier is close to 90 minutes). All eyes were on Richard Carapaz and Isaac del Toro, could the Mexican maglia rosa be cracked on this long climb?
The Del Toro-Carapaz duel narrative was only enhanced at the start of the climb when EF sprinted up the early slopes to launch Carapaz. Only Del Toro could follow. It was spectacular to watch, a boxing match with Carapaz making a flurry of uppercuts but Del Toro soaking up the blows. This reduced it to two riders only for Simon Yates to jump, he’d avoided the searing accelerations earlier and picked his moment to ride across.
Yates then attacked the pair several times and on the fourth go darted away, railing up the inside line of a bend while the two went wider and slower. Carapaz still wanted to shake Del Toro and his accelerations almost got him back to Yates but this was ruinous. It was like trying to light a match in the wind, his each acceleration saw the tip burst into flame but the wood refused to ignite. Soon Carapaz found the matchbox was empty and Yates was clear.
Wout van Aert was waiting up ahead. He’d been sent into the breakaway and the move had been allowed to take over nine minutes, a big mistake by EF and UAE. If they’d kept the gap at five minutes minutes Van Aert would have been reduced to the role of a waiter delivering a drink to Simon Yates as he rode past. But close to ten minutes meant the Belgian was a waiting taxi for Yates to jump in the back seat on the road to Sestriere.
In the moment Yates’ triumph seemed like a shock, a huge upset. La Gazzetta Dello Sport even likened him to the Count of Monte Cristo. But that much of a surprise? Yates was third overall in the morning only at 1m21s, hardly Dantès in the dungeon.
He’d ridden steadily to get here and the foundations of his win were built in the time trials and consistent riding throughout. Come Stage 20 and he just needed a good day to rustle the prize. And had an exceptional one, even climbing the Finestre in record time. All while Carapaz had pink fever and was too focused on trying to distance his Mexican rival.
The Verdict
A thrilling finish, Richard Carapaz launching attack after attack on the lower slopes of the Finestre was great sport. Then it just got better when Simon Yates joined in, attacking more until he as able to ride away and give the action a new dimension as we counted the time gaps.
A delight to end the race on a high note but this GC fight lacked melody across the three weeks. Isaac del Toro’s long spell in the lead was a credit to him but there was always the question of whether he could keep his slender on the Alpine passes. He didn’t come under attack until the final days, in part because the course didn’t encourage anyone to try. He’s a bone fide grand tour contender but looks even more certain to win one week stage races in the World Tour first.
The route design with big climbs often far from the finish did not blow the race apart or allow long range team tactics, in part because several teams had lost riders. It was like a restaurant with appetising courses but little continuity, a lot of small dishes rather than a feast. The thinned field played a part, for example Jai Hindley couldn’t launch a raid on the Mortirolo for Red Bull because he’d crashed out long ago; nor could Primož Roglič who’d gone home too.
The stage battles as morsels were lively, the purple reign of Mads Pedersen across multiple terrain was a highlight even if the points competition was a monopoly but doing all this after the classics campaign he’d had only heightens the achievement; Lorenzo Fortunato also ran away with the mountains competition. Luke Plapp, Kasper Asgreen, Christian Scaroni, Nico Denz and Chris Harper all took clever wins. The sprinters had few chances but Olav Kooij came out on top with two wins.
Wout van Aert was often beaten in the first week but this just added more to Pedersen’s triumphs and Van Aert in the end got a stage win and in Siena too. He delivered assists for Olav Kooij’s sprint wins and surely wins the most valuable player award for the Finestre taxi role.
For Yates a lesson in patience, whether over the years or the duration of a grand tour. Sacked on the Finestre in 2018 by illness and rivals, he returned several times to win the Giro since but got nothing back beyond a podium in 2021. This time at the age of 32 he wins his second grand tour after biding his time, hiding in plain sight.
Next comes a change of tone at the Critérium du Dauphiné with Tadej Pogačar, Jonas Vingegaard and Remco Evenepoel all in action, and even more names too. It all feels more predictable… but then a month ago who could see past Roglič and Ayuso?
I dont think that breaking the Froome era record really means much. Yates had been outclimbed by Carapaz and Del Toro all tour. If not for their stalemate tactics, I’m sure they both had the capacity to have outdone his climbing effort.
Del Toro and Carapaz were marking each other, freed of this they might well have been able go faster but not sure if Del Toro could have lasted at that pace, see how he struggled on the Bretonico climb? We’ll never know.
Note Froome’s time wasn’t the record, he won the stage but others had climbed faster in 2011 and 2015, plus the record was set at the Tour de l’Avenir last summer by Pablo Torres… now a UAE signing.
“Yates had been outclimbed by Carapaz and Del Toro all tour.”
Nah, Yates knew better than anyone else what that final mountain stage was like. Why blow yourself chasing bonuses when proper preparation and a bit of patience can give you several minutes in one day?
PS these ‘climbing records’ are silly. (2018 had another mountain stage the following day etc) No two races can be seriously compared.
In the absolute the climbing record don’t tell us much and context helps, but being the first to do the Finestre in under an hour probably still tells us Yates was on a very good day and hard to catch, rather than Carapaz and Del Toro going too slow as they were clear of the others too.
It did not happen but it’s not a stretch to imagine Adam Yates having a better day and being tasked with towing Del Toro in order to catch his brother.
Adam was tasked to tow Simon when he won the Vuelta.
Although Yates had lost time to Del Toro and Carapaz on a couple of stages, I’m not sure he had been outclimbed. Yates himself lamented that he didn’t have the explosive power to respond to attacks, but hinted that things might be different on a longer climb.
I’d also look at where the riders are in their seasons. I don’t have any detailed knowledge, but would suggest that Yates has had a slow(ish) start to the year due to illness and minor injury. Also Visma will have signed him to help Vingegaard in the Tour. Although they’ll be delighted to win the Giro, they would not have wanted Yates to have a single peak now and be cooked in July It seems reasonable that Yates was slightly lacking in short punchy efforts but very good on a longer sustained climb.
It was gripping to watch but I thought the EF blitzkrieg at the bottom of Finestriere was a blunder. This tactic automatically put Carapaz on the front which he was bitter about later on.
There was also a km or so where Del Toro was responding first to a Carapaz attack and then a Yates attack.
This might be the reason that he couldn’t go with Yates.
It wasn’t a blunder. It was their only option. They didn’t have climbers good enough to go further.
I think so too, they couldn’t set a tempo to asphyxiate Del Toro, they were going to vanish after a few kilometres anyway; you can see it again where Cepeda seems unable even to take a pull.
But it did mean Carapaz started burning match after match very early, great to watch but he must have been shattered from it, physically but also mentally seeing Del Toro still there. In an alternate world perhaps he could have tried to ride at his highest tempo after being launched and then saved the attacks for a bit later, say, the hairpin section which rewards moves more than the straight parts?
With real hindsight he’d have marked Yates better too, that was the wheel to follow of course.
Plus it did the job, for a while at least – left Del Toro mano a mano with Carapaz.
I think I agree with Inner Ring. For me, the Carapaz launch at the bottom of the climb was fine. But Carapaz should have ridden tempo until he was much further up the climb before making further attacks once he knew he had Del Torro on his wheel. He should also have closed the very small gap to Yates when he could; he and Del Torro rode for several kms when only something like 10 seconds behind.
I agree. Without the attack at the bottom, Del Toro would have had 3 or 4 domestiques towing the group up a large portion of the climb, and Carapaz would’ve likely found it even harder to break free from Del Toro…
The domestiques were getting dropped whenever Carapaz attacked.
But they could have stayed close – remember, Carapaz needed to put time into Del Toro at the finish line, not just the top of the Finestre. If the UAE dons were within say 2mins of Carapaz over the finestre, they could’ve ridden him down in the last 20km. He needed to make sure they were out of the picture entirely.
Not sure it was a blunder. The EF sprint relay at the bottom did what I presume it was meant to do – isolate del Toro. The trouble was Carapaz didn’t have the legs to take advantage, and Yates did.
Wasn’t Del Toro’s lead for quite a while almost entirely down to time bonuses? Kind of crazy.
I love too that the Italian press called Yates the sottomarino.
Typos: tustling should be tussling.
This is one of your finest “moment the X was won” summaries. Really fun to read, especially for someone unable to watch little of the Giro while travelling in time zones far too west in the western hemisphere.
The sottomarino was Derek Gee.
oops. sleep deprivation!
although, on the topic of being sottomarino, when was the last time a grand tour winner finished so low in the KOM competition?
Simon Yates´ 36th must be a record!
I got curious enough to look up the Giro stats back to 1991 and it is just Nibali 13th in 2016 and Contador 22nd in 2008 who were not in the Top 10.
(These low rankings in the KOM competition are, to a large extent, just curiosities. That is to say, they tell us more about how the race went tactically than how strong the winner was on the mountain stages.)
The route will have had a big influence on this, I think…with so few mountain top finishes, and a lot of the bigger, high-scoring mountains far from the finish line, it allowed the breaks to take a lot more points than would usually happen
Del Toro built up 52 seconds of time bonuses, way more than the others, sometimes taking the intermediate points, a stage win for himself, but often being able to win the sprint from the group of contenders too.
“surely wins the most valuable player award for the Finestre taxi role.”
IMHO It was also the moment the race was won
Firstly, many thanks Inrng for yet another great Grand Tour of forecasts and analysis. Each would be lessened without this to read each day.
As for Van Aert’s contribution, it was incredible but I’m not so sure Yates’ win was dependent upon it.
Had he not been there the tactics would of course be different, but Yates rode into the virtual maglia rosa by the top of the Finestre, and before WvA stepped up again.
If Carapaz and Del Toro let Yates ride into the virtual lead even with Van Aert ahead, who’s to say they’d have kept him closer without a priceless satellite? The flip side of course is that Yates could ride harder knowing he’d get to rest and recover, relatively speaking, as soon as he got to WvA.
We’ll of course never know, but I suspect Yates would have won regardless of WvA’s amazing armchair ride.
Yep. That or the fact that UAE didn’t use their team in the same way and seemed to want lots of high finishers insteaad.
I would also tend to the view that the “moment the race was won” was when EF & UAE let WvA into the break and the lead ballooned to 10 minutes. Without that difficult to see how Simon Yates could have won as Tom Dumoulin found out in 2018.
The ending perhaps gives a false impression of the race. In many ways I thought it was good, I liked the Albanian curtain raiser, some interesting stages in southern Italy and Tuscany always delivers. Not sure it was a great race though not up to the versions between 2016 and 2019.
Despite the “main protagonists” not being in the race it does leave various questions hanging for the next two months, doubts over UAE’s race strategy, perhaps having Tadej Pogacer papers over the cracks, Visma seem to be the best organised team around (is WvA due to go to the Tour?). Also notable that unheralded young riders are appearing to challenge the establishment, noticeable in other sports too see PSG in Champions League.
As ever thanks must go to Inrng for producing the best cycling site around, its a shame no GT this week, roll on the Dauphine.
I do not understand how Del Toro raced. No clue. Only baseless speculations. All I know is that he did not look like he gave everything he had to win.
Which point should he have started to chase? Once Yates was away with a few seconds? Risky as Carapaz looked to be getting the better of him? Further up the Finestre and the distance might tell. On the descent? It was surely game over by then with Van Aert?
He would not have been in this situation had UAE kept the breakaway with Van Aert closer. By which point he was firmly second overall and he risked being flicked by Carapaz and floundering alone. An expensive poker lesson but I can’t see what more he could have done?
When Yates was in the lead on GC. He was 15 seconds up for a while, eeked it out to 30. It only got unassailable towards the top of the climb, when Del Toro started behaving like Yates didn’t exist and he only had to cover Carapaz to win. I’m not entirely convinced he still doesn’t think that. As soon as Yates was in the lead on GC he had to keep riding tempo to the line. What significant damage was Carapaz going to do on the Sestriere climb? It’s barely a gradient and Del Toro had proven about 15 times he had him in his back pocket anyway.
By the gravel sector he was looking tired, hard to tell much from this but an impression his pedal strokes weren’t as round, he and Carapaz were cooked while Yates was emptying half his bidon to save weight. I just don’t think he could have brought back Yates by then.
Being a UAE team director isn’t as easy as it looks when Pogačar isn’t there.
Maybe he couldn’t, but you still have to try. Or at least look like you are aware that you have to try. William Fotheringham has summed it up pretty well in the Guardian today.
As Richard S says, what was striking is that Del Toro didn’t seem to even try…by the second half the Finestre it was clear to viewers (and he must have felt himself) that he was stronger than Derek Gee, so it’s not like his podium position was in any real danger. Surely he could’ve tried for a few moments to set a higher tempo to pull back Yates?
“Being a UAE team director isn’t as easy as it looks when Pogačar isn’t there.”
By all accounts, Pogi decides his tactics on the road and doesn’t pay much attention to the DS or the pre-race plan. Pogi has fantastic feel for race tactics on the road and is able to improvise; something I think he gets too little credit for.
He should have started to race when Yates moved into virtual pink and continued taking time – then Carapaz was no longer the main danger to the Maglia Rosa. Yes, that risked losing to either of them but he didn’t seem to be riding for the win.
You are correct, once Simon Yates got a lead and WvA got to the col before him the others were fighting for second. The odd thing was why UAE let WvA get in the break and let the lead grow so much. EF only had one shot which they were saving to launch at the bottom of the Finestre (not unreasonably given the fairly weak team). UAE on the other hand had a strong team and could have easily kept the break within reach but chose not to. In 2018 Orica pulled back the break before the Finestre (think Sky & Jumbo had riders in it) despite having a good idea that Simon Yates was done (had been visible on the road to Prato Nevoso) but they knew they had to knock out any relay riders if he was to have any chance. In the process they inadvertently helped Chris Froome. This seems a pretty basic error on UAE’s part.
It wouldnt be a Giro without a bit of Polemica!
Letting Van Aert in the break and letting the break get 10 minutes.
My impression is that UAE wanted to soft-pedal to limit how tired they arrived at the climb. They didn’t know if Del Torro would be able to climb with Carapaz, so wanted a softer tempo. This would give Del Torro more chance to arrive at the top of the climb with Carapaz (and Yates). The satellite would not have mattered if neither Carapaz nor Yates were in front.
“Which point should he have started to chase? Once Yates was away with a few seconds? Risky as Carapaz looked to be getting the better of him?” Riskier that what he did and proved to be a loosing bet ? A risk is less heavy than a certainty…
At one point, if you respect your jersey, you have to defend it. Even when he knew he already lost the Giro, he could pull the five last kilometers or so. Just to show that it was important. Who cares he’s 2nd and not third ? Instead we had a non-battle for the pink, in what could have been a legendary stage. Think the last stage of the women’s TdF last year…
It’s not often that I criticise the riders, and especially young ones, but the stage infuriated me. I felt stolen from something that is normally due to the cycling fans : a proper fight for victory. Everything that can be said to defend Del Toro and his team are less important.
Agree with comments here about tactic and EF and UAE blunders. But overall surprised that INRNG isn’t more critical of Del Toro (barely mentioning the strategic mistakes). He didn’t have legs? Yes he did — he even sprinted at the end, and seemingly not realizing that he lost the tour is taking happy selfies 30 seconds after riding. That doesn’t seem to be someone riding right at the line. Carapaz, for all his follies, knew the gravity of the situation and seemingly couldn’t understand why, for the life of him, Del Toro was hell bent on marking him while for sure giving up the tour. Mind blowing.
+1
+1
Del Toro’s total unwillingness to try and save a race he’d led for a week, and had fought tooth and nail to secure bonus seconds for. And his insistence that Carapaz was the man to focus on even as someone else was riding away from both of them, and his relative freshness when he sprinted away at the end of the stage, is definitely one of the weirdest things I have seen in a bike race. He wasn’t all pale and hollowed out needning shepherding to the line like Ullrich after Les Deux Alpes in 1998.
I feel like there is some classic Inrng polemic avoidance going on here!
A very enjoyable Giro in the end. It feels a bit like Yates won through professionalism, reliability and having good legs on the day it really mattered. You’d be hard pressed to say he was the strongest rider in the race, but he had all the bases covered.
Is that not the beauty of our sport? You don’t always need super legs to win. Just good legs and a super head.
absolutely
I found Del Toro’s behaviour inexplicable in the moment and even more so on rewatching.
There was an extended period where Carapaz closed to within 5 seconds of Yates with Del Toro on the wheel in the saddle. It’s completely implausible Del Toro couldn’t have jumped and closed the gap at that point, especially when 500m later he closed down another explosive Carapaz attack. The whole stage would have played out differently if he had and very likely he’d be holding the trophy right now.
I also wasn’t at all convinced by his cheery-seeming demeanour at the end. It looked like a weird form of cope to me.
Del Toro may well become a great champion, but if he doesn’t seriously and honestly reflect on what was going on in his head during critical moments and his true motivations, I won’t be surpised if he drops out of the sport.
+1
Yes, you could see Yates in the same TV show when the Del Toro/Carapaz battle was ongoing. Every Carapaz surge got suffiently close to Yates for the gap to be easily closed by Del Toro. I too thought it was wierd they rode behind Yates like that. And then they rode behind Gee, letting the gap go out. When the gap got to 90 seconds it was probably over.
Not riding when Yates was a minute ahead with Van Aert up the road was weird.
Not riding when Yates was a few seconds ahead and Carapaz was leading made perfect sense, to me at least.
The failure was in not recognising the difference.
I’d say that with WVA up the road Del Toro should have tried everything to prevent Yates from cresting with more than 50″, which means keeping him at 1’10” ahead at the very very most, which seems what Carapaz had in mind, more or less, until Del Toro repeatedly refused to work. Del Toro appears to have had in mind that the margin was rather his own advantage in GC, i.e., 1’20”-1’25”, but then he wasn’t really able or fully willing to cut that gap down – IMHO the race was already gone for good.
I read “what was going on in his head” as: what was being said by the team car, and I tend to agree with you. Not just on this stage, either.
And reliability/consistency are Grand tour winning qualities for GC riders.
+1
Think you’ve been kind to Del Toro about Stage 20. Painful to watch for me – perhaps UAE has won so much in the past few years they don’t care as much as other teams? The petulant refusal to work was compelling but Gary from admirable.
Leave Gary out of this!
Yep, as if he wasn’t having enough of an issue with his not-neutral positions!
Credit should go to Yates for lulling everyone into thinking he was finished after stage 19. At the start of stage 20 who honestly thought Yates was still in the running for Pink? I think one reason Del Toro did not chase Yates because was he was still thinking he could catch Yates once Carapaz tired, based on Yates’ performance in the the previous mountain stages. And Carapaz was thinking the same, if he could dump Del Toro he would easily chase Yates up the Finestre.
Carapaz also had to attack early on the Finestre to get rid of Majka and Adam Yates. EF did not have the cavalry to drive a high pace up the Finestre and burn off the UAE team, so Carapaz had to isolate Del Toro ASAP.
As for WVA, it was roughly when Yates reached him that both Del Toro and Carapaz basically gave up. They realised even working together they could not pull back enough to make up for the way WVA would work, Yates may have won without him, but his sheer presence took the fight out of the others. Don’t forget WVA did much the same for Vingegaard in the 2022 Tour on the climb to Hautacam to distance Pogacar
1++++
PS. May I thanks IR for other great coverage of this amazing giro. Merci IR
I don’t think Del Toro or Carapaz knew WVA was about to pull Yates. You think their DS told them that WVA is ahead, so you might as well give up.
WVA did a super job, but Yates would have won without him
Having looked to figures in detail, Yates *might* have won with no WVA ahead (or he’d have changed tactics maybe, who knows), but if you just take away Wout from the situation we had on the road (like, let’s say, he crashes or has a serious mechanical just before Simon gets to him), in that case the most probable result would have been, IMHO opinion, Del Toro winning the Giro. Far from 100% sure, but quite much probable. All the rest being equal, of course.
As always BIG thanks to Inrng for the unrivalled coverage. I’ve said it before but this blog adds so much to my enjoyment of the sport it’s hard to quantify. Also appreciate reading all of the below the line comments.
For me this was a thoroughly enjoyable and unpredictable race, favourites dropping out, the rise of a new young pretender, the redemption of Yates, brilliant team tactics, some great individual stage winning performances (Plapp, Harper etc), WvA across the whole race, with everything played out against the stunning canvas of the Italian landscapes. Great stuff.
Another Grand Tour comes to a close and once again I must congratulate our host for their unmissable daily updates on the race. It’s certainly my Grand Tour routine to start the day with a coffee and this magnificent blog – consistently full of insight, detail, and concise summary.
A tip of the hat too to those who contribute so much extra thoughtful dialogue in the comments section.
As for this Giro, I was won over by the intrigue – INRNG is right, it lacked some ‘flow’, but no rider managing to take a stranglehold on the race until the wonderful coda kept me guessing and my eyes glued to the TV daily.
This is one of your best write-ups, thanks Mr Ring.
Good writing.
Watching it, and still somewhat now, it feels like Del Torro handed the pink jersey to Yates without a fight. He was in a terrible spot but I think he also played a bad hand badly – passively accepted events rather than trying, no matter how flutily, to shape them.
Really though the answer to what he should have done in the position he found himself in on the Finestre was not be isolated on the Finestre while one of his closest rivals had a rider like WVA waiting for him up ahead, which is about how UAE managed their strategy, not Del Torro’s choices.
Absolute textbook case of the satellite rider tactic. Can’t believe UAE let it happen, they needed a guy up the road.
regardless of what he and UAE might or might not of done, I agreed with Robbie McEwen that it was very odd at the finish that DelT seemed so happy about affairs… even if you could have done nothing about it, you’d be gutted surely?
I wonder if Del Toro realised he didn’t have the legs to pull Yates back. For sure he didn’t need to attack Carapaz, just mark him, but to set off on the hunt for Yates risked blowing up and losing time to Derek Gee, therefore dropping off the podium completely.
Except he didn’t have to pull Yates back, just limit the losses, and he was perfectly capable of nullifying Carapaz’s accelerations, which, while not as fierce as earlier in the race, were still hard.
+1
Agree, but which simply means that he was racing for second.
Should we overlook this as mere youthful GT inexperience?
And was it all his call, or did he ignore a radio suggestion?
Asked because he surely wasn’t on the limit.
Yates rode for several kms only about 10 seconds ahead. He was in shot when they showed Carapaz and Del Toro. I think this gap could easily have been closed. When they got to the gravel, I agree, it was too late and the gap could not be closed.
A couple of random thoughts at the end of a surprising Giro:
1. I agree that it was a weird sight to see Del Toro sprinting from the group at the end of Stage 20 when the maglia rosa had already been decided. If he had that much energy, why didn’t he chase harder?
2. I had been engrossed in the Yates and Dumolin duel in the 2018 Giro, wondering if Yates’ strategy of getting bonus seconds to pad his lead against Dumolin in the time trials would let him hang on in the end. Watching all that fall apart on the Finestre stage then almost made me quit watching cycling. Seeing Yates get a measure of redemption on Saturday was hugely satisfying.
3. Two years ago Visma won all 3 GTs – leading to Tadej going to the Giro in 2024. I know it’s hard to look past recent history, but could this be the start of Visma’s return to GT dominance – or just a lucky opportunity for them against UAE’s freight train?
If Vingegaard wins the Tour, then it is likely he will also win the Vuelta.
Let’s hope WvA goes to Le Tour!
Thanks for three weeks of coverage, insight and postcards! Excellent as always.
There’s a book to be written about the 2018 Giro and the fallout from Froome’s nuclear attack that day.
If I’m honest, I’d completely forgotten that Dumoulin was the big threat to Yates in that race, the bogeyman. Of course he was the defending champion! Then we saw Froome and Dumoulin go toe to toe again at the Tour, both attempting an audacious double and finishing on the podium within a minute of each other. Froome was the rider that had held all Grand Tours simultaneously, TD rising to his peak as a GC rider and the holder of the TT rainbow stripes. It looked like domination, only at that Tour they were rather more than a minute behind Thomas and as it turned out, that was that for their careers. For differing reasons, of course
A sudden end to the ‘Froome era’, the beginning of the end of the GC Train era spanning USPS to Ineos. Could probably tell the story a few different ways, but the 2018 Giro feels like a significant time point in our sport.
But not for Simon Yates, who really did learn to play the long game. What a reward.
Been on a far (further) little precious island all the weekend, so I won’t get back anyway to the front of the “commenting race” here.
That said, FWIW I think (as most if not everybody I’ve been talking about the issue) that Del Toro (or better said UAE directing him) essentially suicided not helping in getting back to Yates before the finale. Some figures at hand (which I don’t rely much on, frankly), most consider it was well within possible.
But whatever!
Sad for Carapaz who we should also be hugely grateful for the Giro he made happen (same for Bernal as long as he and the team had the energy to do so), very happy for Simon, I liked how Visma raced nearly all the time (blunders and lack of top top top stellar form included ^___^), Del Toro’s got a long career ahead, or at least I hope so. Not at UAE, dare I wish.
Ah, for those not familiar with Spanish, Del Toro said in a couple of interviews that “he had very clear that Carapaz had been too arrogant thinking stage after stage that he was the strongest uphill, so Isaac decided to prove Richard that the latter wasn’t going to drop him under any circumstances, then when Yates went he himself could follow but opted for having Carapaz struggle if he wanted to keep his second place, then he was convinced that after Finestre Carapaz and him would have brought back Yates easily, just working together, but – surprisingly -Richard refused to work”. Looks like utter nonsense to me, but that’s what he decided to tell the world, whether he really thought it while racing (ouch) or he believes it sounds well (ouch ouch ouch). Terrible work from the team car, as I said.
Being 21 and hugely talented on a bike isn’t that great from each and every POV apparently… (just joking).
Been wondering where you were, guess we showed up at the same time!
Check granguanche, the gravel finale option. Not that I was riding (I’d have loved to), just having a look at the terrain.
Wow, very cool!
I might suggest that a better way to prove that he was stronger than Carapaz would have been to drop him and go on to win the race…?!
Nah, the clever way to prove you’re the strongest is by letting one of your biggest rivals ride away from you and throwing away the chance to win a Grand Tour. Apparently this is the latest TikTok craze… 🤷🏼♂️🤦
That comes across to me as pretty immature from Del Torro. He clearly has some growing up to do but then he is only 21, he’ll be fine as long as he doesn’t still have that attitude when he is 31.
For me the moment the race was won was when Carapaz pulled del Toro within 5 seconds of Yates and del Toro refused to take a pull. I can’t believe that no one else has mentioned that Carapaz and del Toro were basically parcheggioed on the Finestre multiple times. Gee must’ve been wondering what was going on when he passed them – again, multiple times. The fact that the duo was still able to ride away from Gee later on tells me that they were not on their limit, at least not until much later. I do believe that Yates had the best legs on the day, but in real time I was wondering if he would get enough time by the top of the Finestre to keep a big enough lead, Wout or no Wout. Turns out it was not an issue as the squabbling behind him ended the contest. Finally, I agree with others that EF did the right thing. They weren’t going to hurt UAE in a long slog; Carapaz just didn’t have what he needed to break the elastic. For me this is 100% on UAE, from the crazy tactics to the surprising weakness of their domestiques when it really mattered.
+1
I agree with what you say. But I think it was already too late to catch Yates when the crested the top of Finestre.
If extended climbs are one del toro’s weaknesses, then asking him to close a gap on a guy that was putting in a KOM effort on the finestre is probably not realistic. However, it would have been nice to see him try. He would have ultimately got more respect even if he gave up a podium spot.
I think this sums up the split on opinions, people wanted to see Del Toro try. But he was probably too worried about failing.
Plus there are things we don’t see, if he was on a million Euro bonus for a podium spot (just made this up) then who would want to try and give this up?
Excellent point. There’s so much we don’t know.
Reading the stage previews and then watching the stages made for a fantastic month of May for me! What an incredible site, thanks for everything! My heart rate was sky high watching the climb up the Colle delle Finestre. I have thought about it a lot, and I don’t think any single rider did anything wrong. It was a perfect prisoner’s dilemma scenario.
I basically agree with the consensus concerning UAE’s flaws – not sending someone up the road with WVA, and not making it clear enough to del Toro that he was going to lose the Giro if he didn’t do more on the Finestre, as Yates gradually widened the gap.
On Yates himself, I remember watching him in 2013 riding away from peak Quintana to win that mountaintop finish in the Tour of Britain, and also winning the points race in the World Champs. Anyone who could do both those things was clearly a force to be reckoned with, so his assault on the 2018 Giro seemed like a natural progression. Until Saturday, to be honest he’d probably under-delivered, but crikey o’riley what a way to put that right. One thing that struck me was how good he looked on the gravel, despite expressing reservations about it beforehand. I think that we can all agree that he’s now a shoe-in for next year’s Strade – maybe RVV too.
We’ll let you give him the news…not sure he’ll be thrilled with that schedule!
I am wondering whether the Siena race result did sour the standing of Del Torro within the team. Ayuso was the designed leader, and Del Torro opted to go hard ahead. In the past this was unheard of. This may explain why the team (director and riders) were reluctant to support him, despite being in the lead. And Del Torro not really relying on the team (at the bottom of the Finestre).
Of course all speculation in hindsight, but his relation with the team seemed reluctant. Allowing ‘bad’ behaviour from Ayuso in last year’s Tour de France was already setting a bad example.
Just my two cents.
It looked to me that his team were happier riding for Del Toro than for Ayuso. I could, of course, be wrong (?)
I think that teammates were with Del Toro, DSs with Ayuso.
Many thanks for the excellent coverage, I always thought it was wrestle not rustle
Re: the role of WVA.
Some figures.
On the top of Finestre Yates’ got 1’40” over the maglia rosa (virtual pink for some meagre 19″).
When he meets Wout after some 3-4 kms of descent, at about 24 kms to go, the difference is similar (1’34” = +13″).
Wout stops pulling at 5.4 kms to go for Harper (some 7 kms for Yates) with an advantage for Yates of 4’50” over Carapaz and Del Toro, virtual leader by 3’29”.
Not sure if the further 23″ Yates gets over a stalling maglia rosa group behind from then on do mean he’d get an advantage all the same, I tend to strongly doubt it, but what’s sure is that the impact of WVA’s presence and work was huge under any POV.
Re: the pace on Finestre and the relative effort.
Last phase with Gee pacing, let’s check from 31.1 kms to go (Harper) and the following 2 kms. When Yates goes through the Red Bull arch he’s 1’30” ahead and 5’33” from Harper. The chase is 7’03 from Harper. In those 2 kms, Yates gains 16″ over Harper while the maglia rosa group loses 13″ from the lone leader! They were already soft pedalling when Gee gets there and starts pulling, but the trend is the above one.
When Harper is 1.5 kms from the top, Carapaz starts pulling again and claws back 20″ in little more than a single km, while Yates is gaining again on Harper but a bit less – finally, the last 2.5 kms of the climb are done at the same speed by Carapaz and Yates.
I’d say that all in all their level on the climb was close or even identical, Yates could hardly be defined to be much stronger. Alone on the front, he surely didn’t benefit from Gee’s occasional “help”, but behind after much pulling (every time the speed was raised) and, even more important, a lot of attacks / “stop & go”, well, Carapaz ended up being able to keep the same pace. Not a higher one, either.
The key was probably gifting all those seconds marking each other.
I’ve been nerding out too, albeit without the numbers. I just rewatched stage 20 from the start of the Finestre to the end. First of all, I completely agree with your last statement about gifting seconds. Yates was really strong, but he got a lot of help from his rivals on the paved part of the climb. Del Toro was clearly just marking Carapaz for a long time, not doing anything to get any closer to Yates. This was a fatal mistake.
That said, the rewatch showed me how strong Yates actually was, and made me think that it may have been over long before I previously thought. On the gravel section del Toro looked pretty cooked, although he always had enough energy to stick with Carapaz and ride away from Gee (and almost everyone else). He never, ever went all in on the climb, unless he possibly did after it was too late. But by the time they reached the top, it was over; Carapaz knew it all too well.
On second viewing I am so impressed by Yates and Visma. It’s easy to question tactics, but I believe Yates was the best on the day regardless of tactics. Once he met up with Wout it was well and truly over, but I think he might have won anyway. UAE was awful, but if Del Toro was Pog it wouldn’t have mattered anyway. I understand better now why there was less disappointment than you would expect; Yates really was much better than Del Toro for most of the stage, even if UAE hadn’t had such a shocker. Truly a worthy winner in the end.
I’m a bit confused by this Gabriele?
I agree Wout was key and the difference but the numbers are slightly misleading – as far as I could see Del Toro and Carapaz had almost stopped riding by the time Wout Van Aert joined Yates? The gap ballooned yes but it was as much down to those behind seemingly sitting up as Wout’s pull? I don’t think even the great WVA is capable of taking a gap to nearly five minutes in the space of ten kilometres! His presence in the break was huge and a psychological weapon for Yates and against the others, plus his pull was mighty but given the ways things played out, it was almost as much his name that did the work as his legs – I suspect Yates would’ve won with or without his pull but those behind may have been less deterred to chase with only a single twin up the road?
Van Aert is a good, even great, rider. But his presence doesn’t prevent punctures or any other type of mechanical from occurring. Del Toro’s failure to chase, his seeming preference to sink Carapaz over winning the Giro, is inexplicable.
I think it was probably youthful arrogance/ petulance – based on the quotes attributed to him, he seems to have taken Carapaz’s attempts to beat him far too personally. Rather than riding to try to win the Giro, he rode to beat Carapaz.
As you might notice by the numbers above, by the time Yates joined WVA, Del Toro hadn’t stopped going hard, in fact he had got back 30% of the difference he needed to.
The issue as noted by many above is that now was the moment when he had to go all in, but he got fixated with Carapaz probably because he soon felt that his efforts chasing were futile. As in TDF 2022 where WVA had even less of a «real» impact on the Galibier stage, the tactical effect is huge and IMHO it was actually the last chessmate move which won the Giro. Of course there was other previous moves (Yates climbing hard enough) and unforced mistakes by rivals, but I suspect that if, say, Wout crashed out before Simon arrived, that (fictional) scenario would have meant for me some 50% Del Toro, 35% Yates, 15% Carapaz chances of finally winning the Giro. (Probably overestimating Carapaz’ options). The final 27 kms were hugely favourable to Del Toro over Yates and I totally see him getting back those 13-19 secs then even coming even closer,i.e., further ahead. He’d need to work alone of course, accepting that Carapaz would then attack him hard and leave him behind in the very finale, but hard to imagine a >40” difference, unless Del Toro should crack.
However we shouldn’t forget that WVA *was* there and Contador spent the whole Finestre insisting on that.
With WVA in, to me it was game over as soon as Yates had over a minute and Del Toro still didn’t help. Should check at what minute did it happen.
I have no doubt that during the last 4 kms aprox of Finestre which I examined above, that was already set. The analysis just shows 1) how the stops had a huge, impressive impact on times, as even with Gee, who raised the pace, the chasers still were losing heaps of time to…Harper 2) that on the day, as in the rest of the race including Champoluc or Bormio, Carapaz was still probably *abstractly* stronger in pure watts/performance than Yates, though slightly so, as they looked at least performing on par at the top of Finestre, despite Carapaz having had much worse climbing conditions (by choice).
Yet, and luckily so, the athletically strongest doesn’t always win in cycling. And anyway Yates threw in a monster top performance, surely his best at this Giro, which was unavoidably required in order to make that thin tactical potential a fully effective reality. Huge applause to him, giving your best when needed, knowing that nothing less than the best will work, and your best might be not enough,even; and in the place where.you once cracked big time. Well… a feat well worth a.Giro for me.
Pre-determined opinions about riders seem to have a great impact on how a race is analysed.
I feel more credit should be given to Simon Yates (and Wout) rather than concentrating on how Del Toro and Carapaz lost the Giro.
Yes, they might have been able to reel in Yates on the Finestre if they had worked together (although Yates was clearly on a good day and may have been able to attack again). But surely this is true of most attacks. In 2018 all the coverage was about Chris Froome’s brilliant long range attack and Sky’s logistical preparation along with Yates’ collapse. I can’t remember much being said about the talented riders behind. Surely working together over 80k would have given them a good chance of catching Froome, but competition for 2nd and 3rd, as well as the white jersey, prevented them from working together effectively.
Carapaz didn’t lose the Giro. He tried and failed to win it.
True
Only 1 of the 3 didn’t ride to win the Giro.
Plus Carapaz and Del Toro didn’t need to reel in Yates, just limit the loss.
Thanks as always to INRNG for the excellent coverage.
Just for fun I tried putting £1 a day on our esteemed host’s top pick, with either Paddy Power or William Hill, depending who had the best odds.
I didn’t start until stage 2, so sadly missed Pedersen on stage 1. Results therefore were a £20 outlay with £15 back and so a net loss of £5.
Even after missing stage 1, Pedersen was still by some way the best performer, winning three out of four of his remaining picks. Poels and Carapaz each with two picks and no win on those days, were the worst. To note I didn’t distinguish between three ring or two ring picks, maybe for the Tour I will adjust with a lower wager when there’s not a three ring pick.
Either way, added a further level of interest to what was already a great Giro
More figures.
When Simon Yates began the sterrato, he was 40″ ahead of the maglia rosa.
Considering that Carapaz by himself was able to claw back at least some 20″ of that difference on any given moment on the sterrato (as seen much later on) ***without having to subsequently lose speed as a consequence***, i.e., *not* the sort of jump after which you’re blown up (as also seen on the top of Finestre), my guess is that the Giro was still open right then, and quite possibly still advantage Carapaz.
On the contrary, when Carapaz starts his last surge leaving Gee behind for good, the chase had been *losing* some 4 seconds *to Harper* compared with the above-mentioned moment in which Yates starts the sterrato, whereas Yates during that same interval has gained 1’16” over the lone leader.
I’d tend to believe that going at the same speed of a breakaway lone man equals to *not* being really riding seriously for the two top GC men. This is where the Giro was definitively lost, considering WVA’s presence ahead.
Of course, wasn’t it for WVA (but that’s not this universe), the Giro would have been still open on the top of Finestre and, IMHO, even advantage Del Toro.
So, yes, in a sense riding this way Del Toro turned what still was (real) advantage Carapaz as Yates entered the sterrato into (imaginary) advantage Del Toro on the top of the climb… if only WVA hadn’t existed!
Although Del Toro later looked to be struggling on the top of Finestre (quite logical if you think that it happened after that section where Carapaz had gained 20″ on Yates with a single forcing, then keeping Yates’ same exact speed), I’m totally sure that 1) Del Toro could have ridden a bit faster until that moment without suffering any major loss of energies 2) the pair could have kept way closer to Yates, hadn’t them be marking each other due to Del Toro “catenaccio” attitude.
More and more figures.
As a mere curiosity, I think that we can backdate the decisive moment, not in terms of material options but in terms of psychology and strategy.
1) Harper and Verre just entered the sterrato. Carapaz is pulling steadily on the front without asking anything, just keeping the difference to Yates stable around some 40″, so they’re generally draw on virtual GC. He’s not riding too hard as you see Gee coming slowly back on the maglia rosa. But they’re not strolling up either, as the difference from Harper goes progressively down. The situation isn’t bad as such for Carapaz, he’s clearly in control, but it’s not leading him anywhere as the defense of Del Toro is unaissalable this way.
2) Carapaz drops speed, he pretty much stops (Pedersen whom they had passed 1’30” before comes back!!!) and explicitly asks Del Toro to help chasing, the latter refuses to. Gee arrives and passes them without stopping. The difference from maglia rosa to Yates goes up and will touch a maximum of 1’05”. Nothing is lost yet for anyone.
3) Carapaz attacks hard, in a moment he’s passing Gee at double speed. Del Toro responds well, he’s losing just some ten metres but he’s soon on Carapaz’ wheel pedalling sat at high speed. It’s a one-minute hard attack with which Carapaz takes back 25″ from Yates. Gee goes hard and still loses 20″ from the pair. Carapaz then sits, sips, but really keeps a high pace on the front for a little more, half a minute or so – the difference to Yates is still dropping, some further 5″, to total 35″.
4) Carapaz turns his head and stares Del Toro a couple of times, swinging from side to side and dropping his speed, but Del Toro watches behind and decides to glue to Carapaz’ back wheel. From this moment on, we can’t see them on video for a while because Yates is entering the sterrato so the camera is on him but the GPS is telling. Gee is coming back, Yates is gaining again and, even more relevant, they’re losing to Harper.
During the next 90″ (!) – before entering the sterrato (when Gee catches them and starts leading) – they lose 27″ to Yates, 20″ to Gee and 18″ to Harper.
The Giro isn’t still lost for them in terms of mere minutes or seconds, but the dynamics is clearly set.
Carapaz feels that he won’t be able to drop Del Toro nor by violent attacks nor by pacing, either, if the latter is just defending and *never* comes to the front (we should also remember that they’re still climbing at 18-19 km/h even on the sterrato and so sitting on wheels or not counts in watts not just in mental terms).
Del Toro shows that he just won’t care about Yates until he himself is sitting above in virtual GC be it only for a single second.
But, of course, this is of no interest to Carapaz.
Gee is doing the work… but we now know he’s clearly way slower than the GC podium guys.
A change happens indeed when they get 1’25” behind… Del Toro gets to the front and launches a short progression which briefly drops Gee, who’s soon also aided by Clarke (I think) from the break.
But the Mexican can’t drop Carapaz and so doesn’t look able or willing to go on, once Richard is on his wheel. Is he maybe struggling? One might think so as Gee again gets to the front and Del Toro leaves his wheel, yet as Carapaz jumps on it, Del Toro does, too. From time to time the latter appears to be genuinely suffering, but right before the Red Bull line he looks good again. What’s sure is that just sitting on Gee’s wheel they’re losing heaps of time and the whole Giro.
My opinion is that the time difference became serious and factually impossible to turn around *considering that WVA was ahead to help* precisely entering the sterrato and during its first half. At the Red Bull km Yates had already won the Giro, unless WVA crashed out somewhere there ahead.
Yet, the *authentic* moment when the Giro was gone in a psychological-tactical perspective was when Del Toro refused twice to get to the front and chase Yates, just before the sterrato.
The first occasion (point 2 above) was when Carapaz explicitly asked him to do so in a “friendly” context, i.e., after having been pulling he himself at good pace for a decent time, and he didn’t try any attack, he just dropped pace and asked. Perhaps Del Toro thought it was a trick.
The second opportunity (point 4 above) was when Carapaz asked through body language after having attacked hard, followed by a first turn of pulling – which perhaps Del Toro didn’t like, but was actually the best moment, as Carapaz wouldn’t be really counter-attacking again after such a jump, plus they both knew that, things as they were then, Carapaz wasn’t actually able to drop a defensive Del Toro.
What happened on the higher half of the sterrato has a meaning only as a pure curiosity… in a parallel universe with no Wout at all, Carapaz showed he was the strongest uphill yet not enough to drop a solid Del Toro. Without Wout on the front, we’d have had 27.5 km of descent, false flat and finally some short easy climbing for Del Toro to take back 19″ from Yates (they’d be already 13″ before in our universe Yates got to WVA). I think he’d have made it. Carapaz’ only hope would have been of course to sit passively on Del Toro’s wheel waiting for an improbable sudden crack, also hoping that such a crack happened when Yates had been brought near enough for him, Carapaz, to then jump and get even closer.
The above is why in this imaginary no-Wout scenario I’d drop some randomish figures as the ones I wrote above (50% Del Toro, 35% Yates, 15% Carapaz), just to have a general idea.
But in the real life race with Wout in, the percentage was probably some 90% Yates as soon as Del Toro refused to chase those two times, still on the very last kms of asphalt…
During the 2015 Giro Contador was often asked about the supposed weakness of his team especially in the second part of the race when he looked often isolated in the very finales. He replied that he had decided and explicitly demanded that the team put every effort on managing the breaks, i.e., choosing as carefully as possible who was going to be on the front, or trying to make sure the athletes from rival teams had to be dead tired to get there or at least cover the moves. He just told the team that if he was left fighting directly the rivals in the finale, with no support ahead for them, either, he felt confident he could take care of it all. But he wanted to be 100% sure that nobody could outplay him tactically.
The problem with counterfactuals is that we can’t control for all the variables that go along with a given scenario. Thus, for example, if UAE had acted differently vis-a-vis the break formation or gap to the break, there would have been knock-on effects that are difficult to predict. But the reality was that they knew Wout was in the break, then acted as if he wasn’t. It was like they realized it for the first time AFTER the summit of the Finestre. That is the thing that boggles the mind.
Exactly so. I’ve also insisted quite much on that above.
Your re-telling of the climb has made me remember a couple of bizarre moments – what was going on with the pulls that Mosca did for Yates and (if I remember correctly) De Bont did for Carapaz & Del Toro?
I heard somewhere that De Bondt might have been looking for payback for WVA sprinting him for some intermediate points. Not sure what Mosca was doing. What a crazy stage, there are about a thousand story lines.
It feels a bit like, by trying to mess with WVA and Pedersen, De Bondt’s ego spent the Giro writing cheques his body was never going to be able to cash.
De Bondt is out of contract and was trying to get in the good books of EF. His problem is he’s now said this out loud so risks a mini UCI investigation as you’re not supposed to interfere in the racing like this.
Elsewhere he was going for the Intergiro competition and so treading on Pedersen’s toes at times but as he’s facing unemployment he wanted to win one of the smaller prizes; Pedersen didn’t need to stop him from doing this either.
Are those time gaps to features on the road or the ones on the TV? The latter are notoriously funky, and I certainly wouldn’t trust them for some of the wilder swings in (apparent) gaps.
A mix of the two, the former whenever possible as you might notice by the references. Not always easy as I tried to have references to up to four groups/riders sometimes (Harper-Yates-maglia rosa duo-Gee). A proper work should use the multicamera feature on Eurosport, but I won’t go that far. FWIW, this time even the latter kind of measures looked generally very consistent both with what was happening on the road and with the former set of time gaps. It’s worse when groups are larger or in some ITTs. GPS coverage can be an issue but looked to be working.
The main difference to be noticed in this case was about the exact moment of attacking and then stopping because there’s a little delay, plus you don’t always have the roadside object and the camera on them when needed, but the final effect of the attacks or the stops themselves on the time gaps was precise enough.
Another thing about time gaps is context. If the time gap is the result of a massive pull behind while the guy at the front is riding a consistent pace, the gap at the moment of the end of the pull is an ephemeral thing.
That’s why it’s so relevant that Carapaz kept the pace high after some of those strong attacks, e.g., near the end of the asphalt, then much later on yhe sterrato with 3-4 kms to crest. The first time he went on sitting at a robust pace, still clawing secs back from Yates, although briefly so, just as a declaration of bona fide attitude and an invitation to Del Toro – when the latter said ‘no’ there was again one of those long lulling stops. The second example is meaningful because Yates was probably going reasonably full throttle, as he had the descent then Wout coming for him. However, after Carapaz’ attack taking 20 seconds back, the pace kept was as steady as Yates’, not losing anything despite the strong acceleration for the remaining couple of kms. Del Toro suffered but didn’t lose the wheel. Of course, they had been “resting” following Gee, but a consistent pace will always be more effective than sudden burst of peak power preceded or followed by a low effort or even extremely low effort (“stopping”).
Would like to add my thanks to Mr Ring for an always welcome blog post.
My 2 cents worth on stage 20, UAE had lost Vine and Ayuso so I assume they believed the break would be so far ahead that they could be ignored. (a tactic I remember Sky used)
Everything considered, personally I just can’t get the mind process of Del Toro or Carapaz…
Ok, so there’s WVA in front, it happens. There’s Yates making a break, pulling ahead, it happens.
But at a certain point you would have to think…
… in case of Del Toro: that if you do not start pushing harder, you will lose the 1st position, only defending the 2nd. While if you did push harder you might have closed in on Yates only to be beaten by Carapaz at the end. And you would still be 2nd… But with very good chances for 1st as you have some advantage over Carapaz. And so there’s no good reason to be that passive unless you are already dead, which he during look like. And the stage doesn’t even finish on the climb. So, there are chances of making up time after the summit and before the finish of you really do struggle up the top. But if you have Yates (and Carapaz) at the summit, it’s hardly likely you will lose in the last section.
… and similarly in case of Carapaz: so, Del Toro doesn’t want to pull, boo-hoo. At some point it’s clear that if you don’t put in your max, you will be beaten by Yates and will, therefore, not be 1st… and with that attitude not even 2nd. But if you do put in your max, you would close in on Yates, probably beating him overall due to the time advantage. So you would be at least 2nd. And you still have chances to beat Del Toro, because you don’t know what shape he is in. So, by making an effort, you would have probably advanced to 2nd and at least had chances for 1st… By being passive, 3rd is quite guaranteed.
But no. Noone will pull the other one to “a favourable position” even if it would in any case also improve his chances of improving and even winning. WTF?
Carapaz didn’t care about the difference between 2nd and 3rd, and obviously so.
He tried again and again to drop Del Toro, including on the top slopes of Finestre when he dropped Gee, but just wasn’t able to, not while Del Toro was keeping a purely defensive attitude.
Once over the top the only (meagre) chance for Carapaz was Del Toro cracking despite the favourable terrain because of the supposed need to go 110% in order to save the maglia.
So, yeah, Carapaz raced for “1st or don’t care”, Del Toro raced for “2nd is ok” (and, as he said “I’ll show Carapaz he won’t drop me”).
Del Toro raced “well”… but only in case they could take Wout away from the race somehow, dunno, an heli abduction from the Emirates.
Exactly. Two raced to win. One didn’t.
Very odd, as Robbie said on coverage.
Decisive moment in the Giro was in the team selection: the fact that UAE had 6 riders good enough for the top 15, hence never would they be allowed in a breakaway to satelite on any occaision.
Good point. I’ve been saying they had too many riders aiming for a high GC placing and not enough super domestiques ready – and able – to put in a huge shift for their leader.
I’d love to retrieve my old posts here in a previous debate with somebody afraid that the race would be killed by UAE super-powers whom I answered to that I was very confident we’d have fun thanks to UAE’s ability to make a mess whenever Pogi is not in charge of the proceedings
^____^
Post-race thread still going strong! Wonder how this Giro is faring on the Ring-o-meter for post-race debate. Gotta be pretty high.