The best cycling commentator I have heard. Highly intellectual, informative, knowledgeable, eloquent and with very pleasant temperament and warm personality. 👍👍👍👏👏👏
@@ThePaellaGuy I should have say "is better now". They are now at different forms. I believe this is the first year that Almeida is not recovering from covid and he doesn't have the giro on the legs.
100% with Johan. Ayuso is a Rat on that ship. Pogi said it 6 month ago. The other Rat is Carapaz. He never help to pull. Happend 5 years ago with Roglic on the Giro, 3 years ago with Pogi and Jonas at the front, and now with Remco.
Johan is really excellent, the comments are very well thought of. JB is also great, with a good understanding of the race and what interests the viewers! Keep it up!
when Jonas stated during the interview after stage 4 "my time will come or our time will come" i can see the fire in his eyes...seldom you can hear that statement....its dangerous when a wounded beast still licking its wounds is talking like that....
I learn more about the intricacies of bike racing from Johan on this podcast than any other post race commentary. He was the first to highlight Tadej’s post race conversation with Remco and explain the significance of the gap he tried to leave. He is the only one pointing out Almeida’s comments to Ayuso. It’s obvious Johan knows the subtleties and power dynamics of the sport but he just seems to dig a little deeper or observe more analytically than the other “experts.”
Agreed with Johan. I saw the samething (watching Ayuso race throughout his career). Ayuso always thinks himself as a leader. He never ride as domestique. That't's why when you have Ayuso and Almeida in a race, you can't figure out who's riding for who. You saw this comical thing with UAE, Ayuso chasing Almeida or vice versa.. LOL.I think Ayuso is in it for himself. He is not good as a team mate. That's why he didn't come to the front. I'm sure he wants to keep his GC placing and chasing white. Maybe he was thinking of the Kuss scenario for his glory (he has no excuse to drop his leader). But being used to pressure Jonas, is a good smoke screen for his ambitions. Then he'll gain time or something. Almeida and Yates are truly pulling themselves out as domestique. All for Tadej. So I have a question. When Pogacar was racing last year, he was also lacked of his usual form. Then VL slowly tired him throughout 3 weeks, then he finally cracked. The logical conclusion would be 'he didn't have a good preparation." His lacked of fitness or whatever you call it. So now how does that different to Jonas? Jonas also comes to the race lacked of 100% form. And he hasn't raced even longer than Tadej. How that Jonas will improve in 3 weeks while Tadej was eventually cracked? I don't get it. If the same logic is applied, then the harder the race and with Jonas lacked of form to begin with, on the third week, he eventually would be found out? No?
Johan is dead on about UAE. It's a team of superstars who only reluctantly work for Pogacar and sometimes even race against each other when he isn't there. This isn't the first time we've seen them shout and wave their arms at each other during the Tour. But Pogacar seems to accept it. He respects riders who like him want to win everything all the time even when it isn't ideal for him.
Exactly You don't grow into a tour and strengthen in week 3 without base training. You need days off multiple a week to recover heal and get the benefits from first couple weeks to feel benefits it's why guys racing Olympic always race tour the have time to absorb that workload. If that base isn't there in preparation you lose gas through week 3its why Jonas could follow on Emilia but today lost more time on descent then climb tadaej made it endurance effort. Jonas tongue was on pavement by the line but not on summit of galibier that shows you it's endurance strength not punch he's lacking. Don't gather that in a tour unless something nefarious lol or tadaej has issues. Form is form there is a formula to training days and rest days to harness the power and not breakdown and one rest day a week doesn't do it it's why they train on rest day and do cool down rides. It's what makes grand tours hard you don't get better over a tour every one suffers attrition but it's relative to each other.
I saw those two going at it on the climb! Now Johan brought that chip on the shoulder to light. I wonder what Tadej is going to say hes low key. I think if it happwned on Lances watch wed see Ayuso strapped to the roof of the bus headed to the next stage! Le Tour is 🔥 up!! 👍🏻🚵🏽♀️💯🇨🇵
If I was Oliveira I´ld pull after Ayuso to the milisecond for now on. This Ayuso hypocrite didn´t even pulled as long and if I remember he only pulled once. UAE better slap him hard for his disgusting behaviour. Oliveira is a beast for his performance after beeing a super-domestique for Yates who also got dropped he was still going... Impressive to watch.
Team UAE rider time spent at the front of Pogacar's group on the Galibier: M. Soler: 15 sec A. Yates: 2 min 05 sec P. Sivakov: 3 min 20 sec J. Ayuso: 4 min 45 sec J. Almeida: 8 min Almeida's ride & leadership on the Galibier today was epic. 👏👏👏
Thank you. Totally agree. Yates has the excuse for being tired after Suisse but ayuso is an hypocrite. Almeida had all the excuses (who domestiqued for Yates in the tour of Suisse 2 weeks ago!!!) but also the impressive performance!
Great analysis. Ayuso will probably change teams. With Pogi, Almeida, Yates, and now Del Toro as the shinny new rider Ayuso will just get more and more frustrated.
With regard to the skinsuit debate, will Remco also get affected because he has to wear the White skinsuit (as best young rider) instead of the Rainbow jersey?
But the gap isn't linear, I bet Tadej regrets not attacking sooner. If he had attacked 3 kms from the summit it isn't like he would have gained 21 secs. Tadej would have been a minute ahead the way he was going. So, I think Jonas got away a little lucky. Remco is impressive though, he will only get stronger.
Not sure about the notion of replicating the MJ skinsuit? Surely ASO own it's likeness with Santini having a contract to produce it? UAE cannot simply replicate it and slap a Santini logo on it. That would be trade infringement. If Pogi wants to race in his skin suit, he needs to drop the MJ before the time trial.
Great Video. Question, how good would Jonas be, if he had not crashed only few month ago? His performance is huge (out of this world). Can we asume, that Jonas would be so much better then the rest...also based on the data of other cyclist who crashed and had that kind of injury?! My secound question is, why are you so confidend, that Jonas will be even better the next importend stages? If his regeneration can not keep up, then the oposit will be the case. And you can see this in many sports. Athletes come back on a good level and after a few events they fall into a dip and then have to come slowly up again. is this not also a posibillity?
Just wait and see Jonas is just getting back after his injury, he had issues following Progi 1 week last year also, the hotter and harder it will get there more Progi will be tested from Jonas despite Progi having a dream team around him, never rule Jonas out he is tuff as nails
Jonas has a suspect team in the mountains at best. Individual efforts are one thing. Not having a team isolated is another. He has no racing endurance from the last few months and had serious injuries. Good luck.
It seemed at the top that Jonas had a few seconds freewheeling and soft pedaling before gathering himself to descend. Makes me think he had to go way deep to stay at 7 seconds. If he can recover, maybe he can get stronger. But did he have to hurt himself so much the fatigue will increase too fast? Time will tell, but it caught my eye that he didn’t keep going hard until the road started going down.
Agree. It wasn’t a long climb after the attack, last year Jonas could easily keep up with Tadej’s wheels. It’s the 2nd time he looks back looking who’s coming for help. Last year he didn’t do it. No one seems to accept that Jonas is coming back from a serious injury. I would fear more Remco at this point. Jonas is already going above and beyond, he doesn’t need to prove anything on this tour.
Ayuso, Yates and Almeida are not in Pogacars level. An in form Pogacar and Vingegaard are heads and shoulders above all the rest. But yeah, those 3 would probably contend for yellow if Pogi and Jonas weren't there.
I gotta say, I'm not as positive about Jonas Vingegaard in this stage. I agree that it was well done on the climb and he also looked good before Pogacars attack. But I got worried about Vingegaards look on the descent. When ever Vingegaard was coming out of a hairpin he looked tired and couldn't accelerate. I believe Vingegaard's technique is slightly better than Pogacar's, which we especially saw on the time trial last year, but also on different other descents. He seems to cut the corners slightly better, but on this stage he lost time on the descent because he didn't have anymore in the tank and couldn't power out of the turns. Once they got down from the first 2-3 km with sharp turns Pogacar rolled away on the long straight stretches. On these portions Pogacar also looked much more on top of the pedals, and Vingegaard very heavy. In Danish we say that you have a square pedalling. I don't know the English expression. I think this will show in the time trial on Friday. My guess is Pogacar will beat Vingegaard by a minute in this time trial, and I also think Pogacar will beat Evenepoel by some 15-20 seconds. Also I think the advantage Pogacar will take into next week will take confidence out of Vingegaard, so that he won't be able to finish as good as he hoped for in week three. Sure it is a logical derivation that Vingegaard will get stronger, but I just have a feeling that he will get into an overtraining situation where he will be hit by fatigue instead, since his whole form has been chased into a schedule his body won't like. It might even have the effect that he will hurt his future ability to get into the same shape as former years. Time will tell. Former pro Brian Holm has been talking about this before: If you beat your body too hard, this might happen to you. The Tour is really, really hard.
Jonas was expecting to lose 2 minutes before the stage starts?! If we consider that the Visma team is weak, then even "AIvan" in week 3 will not help them (AIvan is a powerful virtual god, that have one weakens only, he depends on power grid). Poogačar didn't attack before because of the strong wind and this was a mistake, because the wind is the same strong for everyone, and the wind god was always his ally. The key is to make a separation, and in this TDF he knows how to do it! The sharp pace of the team uphill and acceleration out of sharp road turns from PogAttack is the key how to unglue Jonas from the rear wheel (the PogAttack ™ trademark is official now! it's an AI driven weapon, so don't try to steal it). So Pog should always attack on sharp steep road turns! But WvA was not suffering, he was holding back, the same was for Laporte, Visma knows very well how to increase efficiency during the race, where to spend energy and where to save energy, so I expect to see WvA in action in the second part of the race (by the way, you can train the AI to "read" who is suffering and who is holding back from the broadcasted images, a few seconds at in interval is enough!). But this time they are dealing with SuperPog, which does not even suffer from heat due to his excellent condition (do not try to steal SuperPog ™ nether, it's a trademark of future portable Air Conditioners product line). If we take into account that Pogačar has never had such a good team at his disposal, we can rightly expect another grand tour dominance from him. There is no reason why he should lose the condition during the race, not even the participation on Giro. Solving individual ambitions inside the UAE should not be so difficult, I do not see problems here. One tip for Roglič, he has to lower his head 10 cm when he runs the time trial, because that's the only difference between him and Remco at the TT! Bora is not great, but Primož never had the best from Visma team also, like Jonas has!
Kuss not there, Matteo had a bad day so he couldn’t set harder pace, which leaves Pogi with explosive legs and Jonas has NEVER won a 1-2 km sprint against him, always won by attacking from 5-10 km. So nothing new here 🤷♂️ other than Jonas usually can dictate tempo… shows how valuable Kuss has been for him.
When we reached the last summit I thought UAE have the 1, 3, 4 and perhaps even fifth position on the leaderboard. If the help riders were to ride a bit smarter sharing the burden going uphill they would be further ahead. One thing is for sure. Visma is getting free taxi service on the climbs. Who needs the Visma team when there is UAE? Visma should pay the UAE riders a portion as they do double duty. Hell make cycling cheap again and have a shared pool of help riders that will pull every climb, no matter what. 10 guys would do it. Each team gets to choose one or two stars that goes for the jerseys. In essence that is what UAE is at the moment.
Watching live with ITV4 in UK, the team were commenting straight away that Ayuso has to learn that you have to give 100% as a domestique and not go off lead role to ride behind on wheel. No wonder Almeida was so angry.
I don't get it...Pogacar was not 100% last year and could not match Jonas in the third week of the Tour. Why does everybody think Jonas will improve instead of breaking in the last week this year?
In 2011 they finished on Top of the Galibier. Andy Schleck won with an all out attack over the Izoard and rode alone through Briancon all alone to the Galibier. And i think there was recently (around 2016-2018) a finish on top at the Giro.
Could you possibly talk a bit about the benefits of teams during a race? I get the role as an „insurance policy“ eg with Cavendish on stage 1. But going up the Galibier, what difference does it make for Vingegaard whether he has 3 mates around him or just stays next to Pogacar? Are teams overrated?
Johans inside is brilliant! But for the first time I can remember he forgot an iconic historical moment: When Andy Schleck won stage 18 of the Tour in 2011, it finished on the top of the Galibier, and they raced it from the same side as this year.
If, in the last week, Pogacar has a bad day like last year where he loses 5-6 minutes, UAE will be happy if they still have Ayuso in striking distance for the GC. They look strong enough to have a second captain.
How much was Pog's win down to equipment choice, with Vizma running a 1X set-up, so presumably not having a large enough gear to push on the long straight descents?
Re the idea to make a skin suit identical to the standard TDF issue for the rider in yellow: Would this not get the team into trouble with Santini for counterfeiting their apparel? Apart from this I totally agree that it is ridiculous to accept inferior equipment as the leader of the tour in a sport that clearly thrives on advancement of technology in all areas.
About Joao and Juan- both are in for the White and it is a team decision to go for it and thats why Adam is sacrificed before them. TT will decide which of the two will get preference in pulling harder for Pogi. Also Pogi wants to do Vuelta as well and is not attacking early or super hard. There is a big chess game going on. First TT is gonna be the first real "cards face up" thing.
Johan a question in reference to stage 5 today. What causes Cav’s chain to fall off at the line? I think it was last year he had a chain issue when he seemed to have a sprint won and missed out? Was that the same type of issue too?
I understand the decent mind scramble. I’ve been dehydrated and spent at the top of a climb. Had to get down over a seven mile decent. Dangerous no doubt. Your mental state is very suspect in those situations and damn it’s frightening. But these guys dropping the hammer like that with wet switchbacks is bloody impressive
It s a lot better from ayuso to be up there. If jonas keeps being isolated and rides back in peak form he can be used to make him close down attacks by ayuso and let pogi sit on his wheel.
Okay, here is what I don't understand. If a team has 5 riders up front and they attack, why not just keep on the wheel of the favorite??? Pogacar is the #1 so he will not let his teammmates take the eventual win from him, so as long as you stick on his wheel, let the others do as they may.
it's the strategy of sending a guy out and then using him later to bridge up with and so now you got two riders on the same team charging ahead. teams do that successfully when it's an earlier or mid breakaway. but on the last climb it just makes more sense to shut that down.
it really isn’t a matter of logistics like he said. they simply finish at the the top, then easily descend to the first available spot on their bikes. i don’t mind the downhill finishes though
It was interesting that Pog gained a lot of his lead on the downhill. When he went over the top with less than 10s I thought Jonas would catch him not drop more time