Porte, Nibs all sat up, and finished 12m down.
Clearly GC was never in Porte’s ambitions, especially after the gastro.
Trentin has been awful in the first two stages - Terrible in the prologue and usually he could make the final of stage 2 - Hope he is foxing.
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Tonight’s stage profile is setup for a breakaway.
The breakaway will only succeed if Viviani struggles through the stage. I wonder how much Haig will focus on GC at the Vuelta.
I think Haig is a strong plan B for MS. He already said he had strong ambitions in this race.
The ITT will prove difficult for Haig - He’s very ordinary at this discipline.
Actually I don’t think he’s any worse than the Yates brothers.
TBH I don’t think he’s really had a decent go at one - riding in support there’s never any incentive to do so.
He’s had a couple of chances this year - Utah and Suisse - Hamilton is the best ITTer of the young Aussie climbers - Did you think Scotson of BMC will obtain a WT ride in 2019?
Perhaps for a team that needs a strong TTer. Otherwise, he doesn’t bring a whole lot to the table.
My guess is 50% chance Scotson will be at WT level in 2019 - I still would love to get Ackermann or wait a year and grab S.Bennett.
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Dombrowski and Roche rumoured to Sunweb.
And Ben King of DD wins stage 4 of the Vuelta from a break - S.Yates attacked the peleton with 4kms to go and snuck 27 seconds - he’s now third on GC - GC contenders missed an opportunity to put Kwiatkovski under pressure by riding a HARDER stage - Kwia looked vulnerable on that final climb - MS need to ride a conservative race until the ITT - Kwia will probably be out of the reckoning and the only other GC contender who can chunks of time is Kelderman.
And Simon Clarke from the breakaway wins stage 5 of the Vuelta ahead of Bauke Mollema and Alessandro De Marchi - Break of 24 riders took 60 kms to get away and then of course Sky went on their Sunday afternoon stroll - This allowed Mollard of FDJ who was part of the breakaway and down in GC by 3m and 56s to go into the Red jersey - Trentin was in the break and lasted 30kms - He’s struggling but tomorrow is another day.
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Sky quite happy to hand off the leader’s jersey for someone else to deal with for now.
Sprinter’s day coming up tonight.
It’s likely to be a sprinter’s day but you never know - And Kluge follows Ewan to Lotto Soudal - MS were confident they had Erviti and Bevin but no luck so far on the transfer front - Will be good to see Schulz show something in the Vuelta.
Where is Neal Stephens ? The Vuelta is his race, yet he is nowhere to be seen. Haven’t see him the Tour of the Basque Country.
And how about everybodies favourite, Nacer Bouhanni?
Dead last overnight, got in a flaming argument with his DS, punched out the team car and got penalized!
At least Bouhanni made the race unlike Ewan - Bouhanni has never learnt to SUFFER on a bike - And he may never do so.
Kind of pointless making the team for the Vuelta and behaving like a ■■■■■■■■. Given he’s out of Cofidis at the end of the season, his chances of another WT picking him up reduce drastically!
My understanding is Bouhanni will stay with Cofidis - Beyond 2019 may be a fork in the road for Bouhanni.