I Can't Believe this Nearly Happened Again | Paris Nice 2022 Stage 8 | Roglic against Simon Yates 

indeed...the Tour should have at least 2 of these kind of stages....one at the end of the first week....and one right before the last stage ending at the Champs d'Elysees!

I don't think a Tour stage over this same terrain would break up the field nearly as much. The quality of the field in the TdF is quite a bit higher.

The tour is generally a crap race to watch compared to the other 2 GT's. imo because they insist on starting with 8 days of pancake flat but dangerous which results in 4 hours of boredom followed by multiple serious crashes and the loss of several contenders before a single mountain or TT has been ridden. Italy and Spain get stuck in pretty much straight away so full fields contest at least a few proper days of GC racing. They are generally more interesting (admit Giro wasn't brilliant last year either).

@@winstoncat6785 The Tour usually also has much fewer hard mountaintop finishes than the Giro and Vuelta, which also means for much more boring racing, as its harder to create separation. Some times a mountain stage in the Tour is a huge mountain followed by a 20-25k descent to the finish, which usually nullifies most advantages gained on the top.

@@winstoncat6785 Le Tour is le Tour. Meaning best teams, best athletes, multiples goals. You can't see this type of stages in July because the yellow jersey team lock all the GC candidates.

And the Polka no where in sight haha

Peter Sagan, in his prime, could have done that if he ever had a yellow jersey guy in his team

@@S0ulinth3machin3 no way wout is a way better climber

@@Yes-sc1pb I agree that Wout is a better climber, but Sagan in his prime could keep up with the climber's groups. Not anymore.

started watching cycling recently and this van aert guy is literally everywhere.

I agree. Usually riders are very good at one or two disciplines of cycling. But Wout is good at everything. A bit of a shame that he isn't the pure leader in a team. Imagine his palmares if a whole team would only for him at every race he is attending. Valverde is an example of that, he has a team behind him and thus able to produce top 10s every 2nd raceday throughout his career. Obviously, Wout could be a rider who does not finish ANY race outside of the top 10.

@@chrisko6439 Hasn't Wout literally topped 10 every race day since he started this years, except stage 5 and 7 of PN where he selfdropped? Actually it is even better, he has ridden podium 7/9 race days this year, with the 2 aformentioned self-drops being only ones of the podium. Those are already crazy statistics. If he keeps this up, unbelievable. Theoretically he could make it 13/15 considering the next races he'll do, though that will be incredibly hard.

@@chrisko6439 he doesn’t have the constitution to win 3 week races. He is too big sadly. Because big gaps are only possible on steep hills. And he can lose minutes when the climbers really get going.

@@rokstern7042 WvA is what, 6’2 and about 175? The dude isn’t quite Ganna, but he’s a unit. I think people forget he’s literally 35-40 lbs heavier than all the other GC guys.

@@rokstern7042 If he really focused on it, he could become better at GTs. Probably would take away his bunch sprint ability and his srength at the classics. But he has it in him to win an "easy" Giro or Vuelta with enough TT kms. Obviously, he can't wait for the decision at steep mountain top finishes. He needs a team to isolate other GC contendors and then take time on these all day up and down stages. Of course, he won't beat a Pogacar when in form. But Pog cannot race all Grand Tours. Or at least he isn't. Once Roglic has retired or his strength declined, Pog should try for a GT triple - if there is no new challenger we don't know about yet.

Think if he went easy previous days as Rohan could be the Lt but showed if he hadn't been fresher Roga possibly loses the lead to Yates.

Wva has already won the Milan-San Remo classic 💪🏼

Sad he would have to choose between the TDF and classics, he weighs over 70 kg so dropping to the weight of the Nairo and Yates guys is impossible even if he would, too much musclear power would be lost in the 'transition'

Facts 💯

Unfair to compare Roglic to Pogacar. There is a 9 year age difference.

Well said!

@@umutaymakoglu4418 you just compared their ages.

Hard to blame Pogacar for being so good. Given that he is such a beast, Pogacar seems to go out of his way to make his wins as spectacular as possible. Also when he is out of shape, he still spices up stages with attacks for fun.

Agreed, Yates on the day, Rog would have lost that if he didn't have WvA, great race

Roglic has won the UAE tour, Tirreno-Adriatico, the tour of Romandie twice, Basque country twice and the Vuelta 3 years in a row. I'm not saying he isn't nervous, maybe he is nervous for Paris-Nice specifically because of last season but I don't think that he is cursed or that he is worrying too much about not being able to win these smaller tours or even grand tours. I reckon Roglic was either not quite good enough yet (can't really blame him since it's very early on in the season, his goals like LBL or more importantly the TdF are still months away) or Yates is in the best form of his career. I think it's most likely a combination of the two but not really Roglic being nervous or cursed. He only lost Paris-Nice last year due to bad luck and the Tour de France due to a combination of Pogacar being amazingly good and maybe being a bit too cocky beforehand relying on his TT too much when he might have been able to hurt Pogacar more in some mountain stages. Other than that I can't really think of any instances where he lost an important tour when it looked like a sure thing so I don't really see it as a curse personally. Edit: completely forgot about Dauphiné, that one is on me

I think he couldnt follow and than waited for wout so on the decent and flat wout could help him

@@alexwyffels9788 He is nervous when he has "yelow shirt of leader" on.... Tirreno has blou, Vuelta red, UEA red, ... ;)

I think Roglič’s only weakness are really really steep climbs. Put him on 10% for 30km if you want and he will crush pretty much anyone. But when you put him on 14%+ he struggles.

Yeah he was definitely riding slow up the mountain but I thought he waited for wout near the top of the hill so that he could draft wout on the descent and on the flat to catch yates. Incredible that wout couldn't bring down a 20s gap against a small guy like simon yates on a down/flat. I'm guessing wout was pretty destroyed after the climb.

He's always good in rainy conditions. He's already pulled of medium mountain solos at tour de romandie. Also remember his third place at the Yorkshire WC in 2019. His weakness is his explosivity. Ghent-Wevelgem last year was the perfect example. That makes it almost impossible for him to win a classic.

He's a tank for sure. But the power output is diesel and not much punch. I think it's hard to make any initial separation on rivals in a classic. He's so unlucky though, I'd love to see him pull off a big one.

I'd love to see him score a big one. He just always seems to run against the one guy that's better than him.

I definitly would like a little "what should Küng do" of LR and Benji

@@Olivier-wm9mh Maybe Paris Roubaix is possible for him.... Its good race for strong TT rider, its possible to drop everyone on cobblestones. But yeah, he has to have fantastic day to drop all the classic riders bcs in sprint its no chance for him.

Word! It's so great and refreshing to finally see a superb athlete that a) isn't only specialised on a small field, but brings a vast amount of skills close to perfection b) is a winner on his own rights but still shows perfect loyality to his captain and is willing to sacrice his own goals for the team's sake

not with performances like stage 8..

No, his team’s resources will be split trying to give both big stars a chance to reach their goals. UAE will be more focused.

@@patrickbateman7444 if Roglic doesn’t compete for Yellow the Tour will be pretty boring on GC. No one else has a chance unless someone puts a sniper on Pog in the high mountains.

@@stephenbarrett8861 totally agree, just like last year

@@patrickbateman7444 what I really want is Ineos to say f#%k GC and take a major stage hunting team.

Australian cycling, being led by an Englishman.

Lopez Col de la Loze?

It is tough call. Roglic had 47 which is not small advantage. We will newer know what would be without Waut. Anyway WVA is most presious domestique as anybody could imagine. Kudos to him, I will newer said anything against Waut.

@@rein2523 yeah, that was a monster performance by Lopez

Lopez gamoniteiru Vuelta 2021

@@LanterneRougeCycling that was a different kind of dropping tho, I would say last time he got hard-dropped like this was the vuelta last year (angliru or the final mountain stage)

He did last year in Tireno and finished second in GC only after Pogacar

@@matissenimmegeers5352 yeah but Wout, Mathieu and Julian hyped each other up to a level which resulted in them still being in recovery state for Milaan San Remo.

@@davydebrycke6106 i hope we see WVA raise above them by winnig Milano san remo twice

@@dsdf_fdp1858 Yeah baby blue is a much lighter, powdery blue. And yeah, looked like he was dressed ready to go straight from the podium ceremony to a snorkelling session in the Ligurian Sea.🤿

Yes!

It beats having to buy a pyjamas

If it were not for WVA Roglic would have lost a minute easily as he was paced up the climb, on the decent and the run in. Yates was not on a super ride, just a good one, otherwise WVA would not have closed gap.

He is too much of a all rounder, its just retarded seing him outclimb pure climbers, i think its enought for him too be strong on flats, time trial , and cobble classics. Good old times where every class has its own strong points and weakness.

@@flyingberserker3965 wva to win 2023 tdf change my mind

@@timetzkampg2087 haha would be crazy, curious if he can take the green jersey

@@flyingberserker3965 yeah the guy is just ridiculous

@@timetzkampg2087 not even roglic can win tdf, pogacar already have it on their pocket, change my mind

Wout soft pedalled stage 7 while roglic was covering attacks. Cycling is a team sport.

@@asib12 absolutely, but if wout wasnt here today, I think he would have cracked completely... After the last descent, the gap reached 27 sec i think and roglic probably didnt have the legs to keep it at that on the flat

Ice cold take

We will newer know what would be without Waut. 47s is nit small advantage. But we know that he is best help that can ne imagined.

Just imagine Ganna and Van Aert as mountain domestiques...

i'm afraid i agree with this. need genuine imagination and superlative teamwork from jumbo to overcome the pogeyman. but still doable! esp with wva & vingegaard on board

Remember Simon Yates bonking stage 16 Giro? Anyone can bonk hard. These guys are humans working on the edge, no machines w/ buttons. Throw a dart and you'll hit a pro rider who has bonked and lost time.

@@dsdf_fdp1858 well compared to his best performances on medium mtn stages, he certainly didn’t do great yesterday. It’s normal for all GC riders not named Pogacar, but that’s the problem. Their versatile domestiques will be the key

@@dsdf_fdp1858 I think he definitaly learned from this paris nice. Remember that these courses are all preparations for the tour

he has other faults surely. Crashing too much to name the one that comes to mind first

Totally agreed. This is exactly the importance of having your domestique right there with you. Had Rog been isolated, he probably would have panicked and tried to close Yates' attack, only to tire himself even further. Fortunately, WvA was able to keep a cool head and bring Rog back into it. I'm reminded of how Martinez helped a frail Bernal at last years Giro, quite epic.

With 10k to go I thought they were going to catch him!

@@stephenbarrett8861 so did I....but at that climb Roglic was about to break, right?

@@pauljansen1137 yeah, really tough day at the office for Roglic today. He clearly had to dig deep to hold on to van Aert's wheel. Gutsy performances all round. Superb day of bike racing.

@@pauljansen1137 yeah Wout 100% paced him back into shape.

@@pauljennings3572 same, Yates was excellent! Without Van Aert he might well have won GC.

That was some wormhole...😂😂

One could say record breaking levels of 'desire'

I suspect some sort of android technology.

Almost correct He can’t beat best climbers He is superb, drop 7 kilos, win tour

Well he fooled me last year after winning Tour of the Alps, he looked so strong. I was all in on him for the Giro and he under-performed aside from Stage 19. So I'm skeptical that March Yates is a good predictor of what May Yates will do.

There were rumours (said by France 3 TV) that this wasnt planned. So leave place to doubt ;)

This is a mightily premature comment based on one weaker moment from Roglic against a much stronger field compared to what Pogacar has faced in Tirreno.

Van Aert can easily get green and still work as a domestique for Roglic in the mountain stages where it's needed. WvA only needs Teunissen as a leadout for sprints, he gets a lot of points in TTs which other green jersey contendors won't get and he can get in a couple breaks in mountain stages where, again, other green jersey contendors have no chance of following him. The only stage where I can see trouble is the one with cobbles.

@@DonQ94 Premature? The most used phrase on commentary all day was "it's happening again...". If this was a one off, I would give the benefit of the doubt as we all have off days. Its becoming a worrying trend for him over last number of years.

@@DonQ94 I'm not sure the Tirreno field was much weaker than the P-N one. Pogacar beat the n2 of last year's Tour, Mas, Landa, Carapaz, Uran, ...

IMO. some tunnel vision tactics from Ineos. They could have changed tactics for the final stage. Martinez was 1min behind Rog, Yates 1min50. A near impossible deficit for Yates to close. Yates could have played domestique for Martinez with Rowe and Fraille driving the Ineos train

@@kenosisibambato1558 fraille completely split the leader group on the penultimate climb. I agree Yates should have been used differently, but then Dani Martinez himself made that separation with the attack at 47km to go. At that point it was an individual fight as Adam didn’t follow that move. We were robbed of Dani and Simon trying to work over Wout/Rogla on Col D’Eze… if Dani had got in Simon’s move too, 2 vs. 2.. maybe even Wout wouldn’t have been able to save Rogla. But I agree, Adam Yates wasn’t really used by Ineos during the actual stage - their in-flight tactical decisions have sucked for ages, probably going back to Nico Portal untimely death.

Didn’t Froome manage it when riding for Wiggins in TDF? It’s been a while so I cant remember what he placed

According to Interviews he hinself likes more to win the Hilly Classics

Could be yeah! He’s to tiny.. And most of the guys were wearing a second sleeve…

Rog was wearing all the gear and progressively stripped it off up the last climb

@@epincion maybe he shouldn’t …

So, for bigger time gaps, like minutes, they would somehow have to estimate the chasing group's speed. Which can be difficult!

Cavendousche will be moaning arrogantly, as always.

@@ronwhite8503 Cav was seriously ill a couple of seasons ago, then he was dropped from the TdF team, so perhaps we'd all moan in the same situation. But he seems to be bouncing back now in 2022 with sprint wins in the Tour of Oman and UAE Tour. Hopefully he'll be riding the TdFrance this year, he's currently joint stage winner with Merckx on 34 wins, and one more stage win will make him the greatest TdF stage winner of all time..:)