A time trial to reset the overall classification.
The Route: a 42km time trial. There’s not much to describe beyond the map and profile you can already see above. The distance is notable, longer than the Worlds this year.
There is 16km to out on one road and then back on the same road towards the start, this is a substantial part of the course. A lot of this portion is narrow and so riders will get blasts of air from team cars going in the other direction. This happens again near the finish in Massa but this time on much wider roads.
The Contenders: Filippo Ganna (Netcompany-Ineos) is the specialist. His win rate in time trials had dipped in recent years but he’s picked up again. Plus there’s nobody at the Giro this time who looks likely to beat him, no Evenepoel, Pogačar or Ayuso if there were they’d want a hillier course; there’s no Tarling either. Magnus Sheffield and Thymen Arensman (Netcompany-Ineos) could be close.
If there was to be an upset then it could be Alec Segaert (Bahrain) who is due a breakthrough TT win and still a work-in-progress in this domain.
Derek Gee-West (Lidl-Trek), Niklas Larsen (Unibet), Rémi Cavagna (Groupama-FDJ) and maybe Lorenzo Milesi and Ivan Romeo (Movistar) could surprise too if they have a great day but the combination of the flat course and the distance suits Ganna so well.
Jonas Vingegaard (Visma-LAB) is another contender but he too would like hillier course if he wanted to win the stage. Instead today’s flat course is perfect for him in a different way as he has a relative advantage against his GC rivals. The likes of Gall, Hindley et al should flounder compared to the Dane. This is an interesting test for him as he’s been 9th in the Vuelta TT last year and 13th in the Tour’s Caen TT, below par each time. Now he seems sharper in terms of form so it’ll be interesting to see how much time he gains on rivals. Victor Campenaerts has been a TT specialist and could be tempted to try but again it’s hard to see him topping Ganna, plus in his role as a helper he may well take today as a rest day and cruise around to better help Vingegaard.
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Ganna |
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Weather: rain early in the morning but there should be dry roads for all, helped in part by a 15-20km/h onshore breeze. 18°C.
TV: the first rider is of at 1.15pm and the last should finish around 5.15pm CEST. Ganna starts at 2.20pm, Segaert 20 minute later.
Postcard from Forte dei Marmi
One of the locals today is Oleg Tinkov. The Russian billionaire started out as a cyclist. When travelling to race in another Soviet state he came across someone selling denim jeans in a market stall, then a rarity and a rebellious symbol of western consumer freedom. Tinkov wanted to buy all the four pairs and the seller noted his desperation and hiked the price from 35 to 50 roubles each. Tinkov handed over 200 roubles, took them home to Saint Petersburg… and sold them for 200 each.
This taste of arbitrage saw him do the same with consumer electronics and soon he had a chain of stores called Technoshock selling CD players and Walkmans, then he sold the whole business. He then went into dumpling production, buying foreign machinery to produce industrial pelemeni for middle-class Russians who’d become too busy to cook, and sold this business to Roman Abramovitch.
Next was a brewery called Tinkoff, a play on his name but also a nostalgic pre-Soviet royalist past and he soon sold this for €200m to Belgian brewery giant Inbev. He founded an online bank and credit card company next. His trick was to spot businesses that worked well in the US and Europe, import the concept and launch it with big publicity, then later sell it to a ready buyer.
He was sometimes portrayed as an oligarch because he was a Russian billionaire, but despite the overlap these are not the same things. Instead Tinkov became famous as the outsider, the consumer champion even. He’d often appear in adverts for his own businesses.
His fame had some wondering if he’d go into politics. “Political ambitions? What is this? It is terrible. You do not need this. I shit on politics” he wisely replied. Instead he stayed in business but also went into cycling, starting with the Continental level Tinkoff Restaurants team which became Tinkoff Credit Systems and when he sold this to genuine oligarch Igor Makarov it became the Katusha team.
Tinkov ploughed his money to the Saxo team and in turn took it over, making the Tinkoff team the superteam of the 2010s with Peter Sagan and Alberto Contador. He was a mega fan, running his own team like you might do with a Velogames fantasy account. But also going to events, often riding the route ahead of the race, including pulling over in time to have a soigneur douse him with water from the team car while he took a shower beside the road.
He left the sport after having his fun, also dogged by a big tax case in the US and a leukaemia diagnosis. He’d wanted to shake up the sport and, egged on by others, was a big advocate of revenue sharing only to discover there were few revenues to share.
He’s been against President Putin. He branded the full invasion of Ukraine as “crazy” in an Instagram post. The Russian authorities responded within days with an offer to take over his Russian credit business. “I couldn’t discuss the price,” Tinkov told the New York Times. “It was like a hostage – you take what you are offered. I couldn’t negotiate.”
Probably still a billionaire, he lives and rides in Forte dei Marmi – at the second time check – and might appear today. He’ll certainly know the course well.
Does Arensman pick up two minutes on Gall? Can’t wait to find out. The real gc standings start tomorrow night.
I’ve been enjoying watching Arsenal and Vingo get beaten up on social media but still get it done. Hope to relish everyone else’s frustration for once.
Trumpist victimism 1-0-1. Vingo got no beating AFAIK for winning on Blockhaus, as he didn’t on La Molina, Queralt or Pa-Ni, not even when tracking the Red Bull (obviously!). It was all deserved applause. But going mean on way weaker rivals adding up mockery (intentional or not) with the post-race interview can hardly be appreciated. Besides, at least here, the general tone soon went to comic, no drama llama!
All lighthearted for me until you use that name, not cool at all. We can disagree without that kind of stuff. I’m sure that we all have things about our regions that don’t reflect well on us.
Fair (handshake here, and not the sort of Xi with T***)
Thanks. Now back to the polemica!
‘Trumpist’ is now a global term of dissent, likely the poster didn’t you were from the states.
Don’t take it personally : )
I can’t think of a worse insult either way! But yeah, it does burn especially bad being from here. I swear it’s not my fault!!!
I seem to remember that Tinkoff liked Contador less than Sagan … who was more into “après cycling”.
He probably hired Contador past his peak but paid big for this. There are all sorts of accounts – or exaggerated legends perhaps – of him roasting riders for performances and tactics one day, then sitting down in the team hotel the next day with them to joke and wash their no-sauce pasta down with a bottle of Romanée-Conti.
Rather than Contador’s peak it was probably Sky’s which mattered the most.
Besides, I think (but I could be wrong) that it wasn’t Tinkov who hired Contador, he was already in the team. The Giro 2011 actually showed that he wasn’t at all past his peak as some had conjectured during the 2010 TDF – quite the contrary.
The clenbuterol supension had an impact, for sure, especially in 2013. Back then, athletes still needed to race in order to hone form.
However, it’s not like Tinkov could complain… 2014 was probably the best season ever for Contador in quantitative/performative terms, on occasions he was impressive at literally Pogačar level during Tirreno or Itzulia; even more important, few teams can boast having beat Froome head to head in a GT but Tinkoff did with Contador at the 2014 Vuelta.
The 2015 Giro also went straight into history books as 2012 had before that.
Tinkov’s megalomany probably needed the Tour but being as smart as he’s always been he probably knew that his real option were comparable to negotiating with the Kremlin. And three GTs all of them highly epic, matter for the history books, is no petty booty.
And, yes, 2015 Spring was the last absolute top level Contador to be seen, although he offered great pieces of racing also later on, showing he was able to have an impact among the best until he retired. But Astana that Giro really put him to the sword, and he answered accordingly – yet, that sort of extremely long range high-intensity efforts in an era before the “feeding miracles” probably brought his body, being nearl 33, to that point which many champion touch when they experience a sudden drop. It’s not like he stayed at Tinkoff much longer, just that unfortunate 2016 season, then he moved on for his flashy goodbye.
I tend to agree quite much with Cadence 66 above. It was essentially two very different characters more than anything else, although both were very aware that the other could provide something few others could have in that historical moment.
Just two days ago there was an interesting conversation on Spanish ES with ex pro Eduardo Chozas remembering how he made friends with some Nordic TTer who used to drink from a “little green bottle” later discovered to be beer which the Spaniard also loved. In Spain beer is not a cult as elsewhere but it’s probably the most powerful social ritual. Contador was extremely cold on the subject saying he never took any alcohol at all during the season, he was very strict on that (“why those void calories…!”). When a pro he stood firm thinking that “a time will come when I’ll enjoy a wine or share a caña with my friends”… “once or twice” in the off-season, “or when I would retire”. The rest of commenters were sort of shocked.
I remember from a different occasion that Valverde, in contrast, used to tell how he’d never never never give up taking his daily beer. Many DSs and coaches had insisted on him to try and avoid it for a time, just to see how it worked, but he always refused. “I hit the weight they want me to hit, I hit the numbers they want me to do, I’m happy with my shape, there’s no way I’ll give up on my beer”.
In more recent times, Pogi was reported to be drinking beer during his first TDF, less so in following years… although there’s that famous clip from Amstel’s podium which says quantity ^___^
Are you sure that Pogacar was drinking beer regularly during his first TDF? I think the comment by Novak about him winning on “beer and pizza” wasn’t a comment that should be taken literally: Novak was exaggerating (a rhetorical device) to make the point that Pogacar, unlike Seixas, was not really training in an ultra professional way from a young age.
Not as regularly (or, better said, religiously) as Valverde, but I believe that, as he likes beer, he was allowed to take some on stages when it didn’t imply much risk. Why not, OTOH, if you’re having a relatively relaxed approach to a given competition? He also lost time on the road for lack of focus. I guess his approach changed in the following years because he’s now reported by some insiders as personally committed and perfectionist bordering obsession on many little technical details (he also looks genuinely interested in those).
Anyway, I’d say that the whole thing is more mental than anything else… as such, extremely important, of course, but not bound by biological determinism. If we speak of 2-3 small beers in three weeks, of course, not every night. If anything, and unlike Contador, I wouldn’t say it’s about calories but rather the possible effects on microbiota and liver metabolism.
Tinkov’s legacy lives on with his bank which is, by far, the most consumer friendly of the big Russian banks (it’s app is the only one that uses the uses the system language). It’s a shame that more entrepreneurs didn’t follow his model.
Any predictions about who is in pink tonight?
It’s a tough one, keep thinking one way and then change to the other.
The thinking goes if Eulalio is going to lose out, has to be 3.4 seconds slower per kilometre than Vingegaard. That’s a big loss rate and works out at about a 2.5km/h difference.
Eulalio’s record in time trials is weak but often because he’s sat them out, cruising around because he did not have to race. But even when he’s tried he’s not got results on flat courses either. Now he’ll be so much more motivated and he’s clearly in great shape and the team will have devoted more thought to his pacing.
So it’s close. Vingegaard ought to be able to do it, but Eulalio has every reason to do the TT of his life.
At the end of the previous stage Eulalio coyly commented to RAI that, ‘time trial is not my best discipline’, fair enough but I do think he’s been constantly underestimated and downplayed, even by team mates; ‘oh yes, you mean Eulalio, well he’s in pink, but he’s young’ – Damiano Caruso interview on RAI.
He’s consistently been the last Bahrain rider standing at the end of a long week of punishing stages. So call me old-fashioned but I do think there could be a bit of respect for the Pink (and White..) jersey in a WT on a rider who took his lead in fine fashion and held on against expectations. When Thomas Voeckler pulled off a similar exploit it marked him as a leading contender so I hope Eulalio’s bound for bigger things – just not in a long, flat ITT.
Voeckler had a surprising run in the Tour which he couldn’t repeat but I think we’ll see more of Eulalio in the coming years, he’s a punchy climber and this is how Almeida started out. Perhaps too obvious and also difficult for a comparison but he’s on the right track. Put today’s TT aside and keen to see how he does in the Alps with repeat long climbs, can he hang on for a GC or will he implode one day?
I think I passed Oleg once, near Saint Jean de Belleville. I was descending, he was going up. I assume it was him anyway – there can’t be that many big-framed, blonde haired, guys cycling round the Alps in full Tinkoff-Saxo kit (and this was 2019 – just days before the stage going up to Val Thorens).
IIRC from an Inrng comment (or tweet?) years ago, Tinkoff has/had a place in/around that area.
Could well be, he started a luxury ski lodging called the Datcha in nearby Val Thorens.
And for any spectator unfamiliar, Saint Jean de Belleville is indeed on the road up to Val Thorens.. So.. that fits in perfectly!
Really interesting reading about Oleg Tinkoff, I assumed he was just another rich oligarch. But it definitely softens my opinion of him!
I know it’s been asked a lot but is there anyway to support the site and your writing. I get so much enjoyment everyday from it, it’s a highlight every morning with a coffee.
Inrng: BRING BACK THE CASQUETTE
Campaign starts now.
Most of the “oligarchs” in Russia made their money through rather dubious relations with the state and/or criminality. Many got their break through the mass privatisation of Russian state assets under Yeltsin, which they acquired well below their true value.
Tinkoff, I think, was a genuine entrepreneur. As far as I know, he didn’t have much to do with the Russian state and built new businesses from scratch that focussed on consumers. He largely kept outside politics, and away from “the oligarchs”. I am surprised he doesn’t have Italian citizenship now.
I couldn’t agree more – balanced journalism like this needs to be rewarded to make sure it continues. I wonder if Escape Collective might hire INRNG on a freelance basis?
I do suspect that our host’s qualities rely rather on their merits than on anyone’s rewards; but why should you suggest them to commit an unforced error?
It’s just a blog here and have contributed to various sites and magazines before. But with this comes deadlines, wordcounts and more, and the fun starts to go out.
Have been thinking of some kind of supporter t-shirt but again the design, the distribution etc… it’s time spent not doing something with the blog itself.
One pre-order here, don’t care what it looks like…
A jersey would be great! I’d definitely get one to support the site!
I might be wrong, but, speaking of that 2015 Giro won by Contador, wasn’t that also the last occasion there’s been a longer TT than this one today – of any kind, including TTTs, and in any GT?
Pogi’s Giro came close, and some old Vuelta, but it’s quite impressive that my “ol’ style” idea of a “normal TT” in the last decade (and more) it’s the absolute roof in terms of TT distance for a GT stage.
And that’s got nothing to do with TV because a 45 kms ITT performs as bad as a 15 kms one.
Longer ITTs make the logistics harder to organise. For example, for a 3 min ITT (racing one minute apart), the teams need one team car and three moto-TV cameras can cover over half the riders (note the need to get from the finish to the start to cover a new rider). A 20 mins ITT typically needs three team cars and the moto-cameras can cover about 20 riders. A 50 minute ITT needs six team cars and three moto-cameras fully cover only 6 riders (in the past this mattered less since TV coverage started later in the race).
I can see why few races have long ITTs anymore. Grand Tours often hire several additional moto-cameras to cover more riders: but they can only show a small proportion of the riders. The extra time between starts (such as 3 minutes for the last few ruders) also reduces the logistical problems. While personally, I would like each GT to have a long time-trial, I can understand why they don’t happen very often.
But does every rider need to be followed by a team car? Genuine question.
TV for sure doesn’t need to follow them all, they show a part of the contenders, often not even the full GC top 10, and that’s not a fuss.
Hardest logistical challenges have been tackled for, say, uphill ITTs… which also bring mediocre TV figures, and yet!
Some today won’t get a team car. Their team might give some spare wheels to another team who is riding one place behind them; or some other vehicle from the race convoy follows them loaded with a spare bike. But you can equally get an early starter with a team car full of bikes and staff and they are using this to double-check the course and conditions after this morning’s recon.
Yes, this is a good point. There is a lot of inter-team help for riders in time-trials, outside the front of the race. This also happens on mountain stages amongst the riders at the back of the race.
Yes, I fully understand that there is no need for the TV cameras to follow every rider, but viewers probably want to see more than six riders: they want to see all the key contenders for the stage and also the GC battle. A long time trial basically means there is almost no TV-coverage for the riders in the middle start-times.
Every rider needs some sort of logistical support. In the past, when they rode normal bikes and toe-clips, it was easy for riders to be helped by other teams or neutral support. So it mattered less if they had to wait 10+ minutes for a support car (perhaps from another team or neutral) to find them. These days the bikes are so specialized (and have different pedals) that it really requieres support from the rider’s own team: they won’t be able to ride a non-team bike.
I’m not convinced by the tech explanation. As I said, longer TTs still happened 10 years ago.
And 40 kms ones are still being done without major accidents or issues, they don’t look borderline logistics which would imply actual issues manifesting themselves at least sometimes. So I can sort of take the above as “why not 60 kms ones”, but it doesn’t look an overwhelming set of problems.
As for TV, given that you won’t grant by definition a full coverage of any rider (just one screen to watch), normally you use heli to cover different riders, plus intermediate on course cameras, plus the motos move across different athletes. Yes, something might end up not being caught on video… just as in any stage. ITTs are even more predictable in that sense.
Gabriele:
Another interesting exercise is to consider how many police-outriders are needed in long time-trials: basically, very few riders will have a moto (quite far) in front of them to mark out and/or clear the route. You also need many more marshals on the course when it is long. Today’s route goes up-and-down the same road, reducing the number of marshals needed to secure the course.
As I said, I can understand that long ITT cause logistical problems.
At what point would it be possible to have drones filming every rider, with trackers to ensure the drone stays in position (and other sensors to ensure the drones don’t collide with each other)? I’d guess that it’s technically feasible right now (at least in terms of drone and tracker technology). Perhaps the barriers are financial cost and logistics (e.g. what to do if a drone were to crash?). And maybe also the need this is addressing (e.g. maybe no need to have drones following all riders? Devote one drone to multiple riders who are less important for the stage and/or GC).
Will it is possible technically. But still requires a big R&D budget to make happen in cycling, then a lot of staff, just monitoring the video footage would need more directors.
So in practical terms a broadcaster won’t be doing it soon, filming a grand tour is already very expensive.
By the way, in today’s ITT, the riders have 2 mins intervals. This reduces the number of team vehicles needed, and allows more riders to be televised. But increases the amount of time the road is closed. And the risk of weather being different for the later riders.
On a parcours like this I would also warrant a mention of Alpecin’s Johan Price-Peitersen. He has an enormous engine but his stature – like Ganna’s limits him when going upwards. He seems to be returning to his initial skill which is TT.
Among the early starters he could set a benchmark to aim for.
Another pick but the list was getting long and I could have just left it with Ganna.
If I was a billionaire, I wouldn’t live in Forte dei Marmi, in all the places in Italy !
I agree. It seems a rather odd place to live: pleasant enough I suppose in the summer season, but rather miserable during the rest of the year.
When you’re that rich, you have numerous places you own you can stay in, never mind all the high-end hotels.
At that level, you travel around on whatever whim you have.
You can put your yacht there but yes. For some reason it became popular with wealthy Russians in the 1990s; just as Nice was in the 1860s and the 1920s.
ivan romeo is not here
javier romo is not well suited for a pan flat route
Of course, will fix that.
Hindley reportedly fell ill as Pellizzari and Moscon before him. Visma had indeed insisted on a bug being around and that being their main worry. A stomach thing, it can hit hard any GC expectation.
No one seems to be tipping Bjerg for a good result today which surprises me, he has no GC teammates to take it easy for
But he’ll be more useful to Narvaez tomorrow?
He’s going pretty quick so far!
Derek Gee is riding under the radar here. He’s been gradually improving day to day after an interrupted spring, and has a very good TT record. Would not surprise me to see him leap way up the standings.
I mentioned above that the real gc standings start today. Don’t expect anyone to worry JV, but Gee and Arensman should be way up there. And there are usually a couple of riders who tumble down the standings.
It’s too bad Vine wasn’t able to make it to this stage.
Tjotta tomorrow ? Last by a nearly 2-min margin today…
Did anyone watching the TNT / Eurosport / HBO broadcast catch the mention of INRNG by the English-language commentators? It’s mentioned by the commentator who at the moment was paired with Adam Blythe, his name escapes me now (it’s not Rob Hatch) and the mention occurs at 2:44:25 into the broadcast.
“One of my favorite websites out there — if you’ve not discovered it — is INNER RING . . .”, and he goes on to cite our host’s chainrings predictions for this time trial stage.
I did! Wasn’t he commenting on the lack of chainrings for anyone other than Ganna? Which proved to be correct, of course.
Yes – that was Matt Stephens making the direct reference to Inrng.
Thank you both.
I enjoyed that moment of recognition for the site.
I’d missed this as watching RAI but thanks to them. This blog is read in high places and low ones probably too although it’s probably been a year or two since I logged into the Google page that shows where/how much as there’s no point chasing or targetting this; there are no ad sales to hawk.
These previews used feature in team briefings but the advent of mapping software, Veloviewer etc means there’s less need to rely on someone who has ridden the route ahead of the race / knows the roads etc, there are few surprises now with good maps; plus team briefings can now be so long they do on them on the eve of the stage rather than the morning when these previews come out. But feedback says riders still using them, one rider up the road yesterday in the break even emailed to ask for more details for the stage, he clearly had plans.
Inrng: international man of mystery.