Wednesday 9: 13:10 → 17:45
French Caen-Caen
The first individual Time Trial. Basically all flat, it is rather long compared to many others nowadays.
Rankings:
1- Van der Poel🇳🇱 & Pogatchar🇸🇮
3- Vingegaard🇩🇰 at 8″
4- Jorgenson🇺🇸 at 19″
5- Vauquelin🇫🇷 at 26″
6- Mas🇪🇸 at 48″
7- Onley🇬🇧 & Almeida at 55″
9- Evenepoel🇧🇪 at 58″
10- Skjelmose🇩🇰 at 1′02″
Surely a safe Evenepoel victory, but I wonder if Vingegaard can keep up with or even beat Pogacar.
Did Vingegaard tell something to explain his mediocre performance?
Just said he had a bad day, way lower numbers than in Dauphiné. Actually a healthy sign that he's not on whatever magic sauce they are feeding Pogacar.
Thw result was mostly just Vingegaard being shit, not Pogacar being amazing. He was even slower than the washed up Roglic who started his season earlier at the Giro.
Yes, it's natural to have bad days, not natural to be in tip-top shape 8 months of the year and win in all terrains.
Pogatchar doesn't take part in many days of racing, though (neither does Vingegaard). Despite riding 2 Grand Tours last year, he ended up with less than 60 race days. This year he only rode the equivalent of 3 weeks before starting the Tour of France. Even Roglitch who is very often injured, thus needs to abandon races and requires recovery time, rides a bit more than Pogatchar.
Pogacar was 28 seconds slower than Vingegaard in a time trial half this distance last month, but go off. It wouldn't be the Tour without one-eyed fans arbitrarily deciding which rider is doping based on whether they were happy with the day's results.
You're right that I should probably not bring it up here, but my opinion is not based on today's results - it's based on everything I've seen the past 5 years from Pog and 35 years of watching cycling.
I don't really know how anyone can watch cycling for that long and think only the very best rider is doping. There's absolutely no way Team Visma is clean if Pogacar is not.
Not what I said, but the performances of UAE in general and Pog in particular are more suspicious than e.g. the performances of INEOS or AG2R. Right? Especially when you consider that UAE almost never ride smart, they're just all stronger than everyone else.
That said, I will keep my opinions to myself in race threads.