The Craziest Start to a Race I Have EVER Seen | Tour de France 2023 Stage 12 

i watched from the start, thought "omg this is gonna be the most insane stage ever" then turned it off when izagirre crossed the last climb cuz they weren't gonna bring him back and there was no GC action

@scpython1you continue to have bad takes. Kudos.

It happens often that the start is more interesting than the rest of the stage. We just didn't get to see that since the last few years. Thankfully we have full coverage of all the Grand Tours nowadays.

I wouldnt say its weird. I make a habit of watching the start of stages. Sure, sometimes a group goes early and I can turn back on later, but sometimes you get chaos like this :)

I have no idea what this team is doing 😂

Oliver Naesen said it was to defend their position in the team classification in an interview with the Belgian press.

I think it was just to get the sponsors some exposure since they’re the most blah team on tour

@@mattiarubio3240far from it astana kazakhstan??😂they never even on the screen

Someone ( I can't recall who) had had a theory that AG2R were chasing down Pinot, just because he's on a rival French team.

At several points there were more riders in the break than in the peloton

I tuned in at the start and was in absolute shock at the state of the peloton when I tuned in

@scpython1 JV is the strongest team, they can afford to race harder than everyone else.

Jumbo did what they did b c of fear that pogacar wd win 8 bonus secs top of last climb This gc race down to secs in Paris If at start of Paris stage the difference is 5 secs is last stage full on racing? No promenade? Does Paris stage have time bonuses at finish line? Where are time bonuses stage 13? For the time difference tomorrow b t pogacar and vingegaard likely tiny, so bonuses matter. Stage 13 short k, favors p Weather report needed please. Heat favors v. But Pogacar perhaps did heat training to prep for tour. P seems better in heat this yr Time bonuses cd mean who wins gc. They’re about equal tt

Aren't stage wins way better both for publicity and UCI points?

Exactly

Urban myths... he hasn't won for 1 year or more. He is amazingly strong (THE strongest) but his strategies are the worst I've ever seen. Non sense.

​@@mondociaociaolast time he won a tour de France stage was 23 july 2022, thats not more than 1 year

Peter Sagan had a far better race strategy when he was at the top than WVA ever has, Wout is like a headless chicken in this tour, has been in a lot of breakaways and ended up getting dropped.

@@doommonger7784 (the strongest) headless chicken! 😄😄😄 Perfect definition.

One of the most beautiful bikes out there right now 🤌🏽🤌🏽

ASO helps with the preselection..

I had the same thought about those 2, victims of their own strength. I'm just a viewer and most days I turn on the tv wondering "What are Wout van Aert and MVDP doing today?" so I can only imagine how close their actual in-race competitors monitor them.

Very well said. The old playbook needs to be thrown away

Well, you're comparing Sky/Ineos to Lampre/UAE and Rabbobank/Jumbo - MFers couldn't handle a shopping cart

yes, I think if he wasn't injured he would have won the 2019 tdf

Jesuschrist, moneybags

Agreed - Every time

Agreed!

Excellent day for UAE with Benoot, Aert and Ving all putting in wayyy too much energy before these big fews days coming in. Only Kuss managed to conserve energy

I hope he becomes madder, or Tadej's gonna take that jersey away from him.

Martin was so so good. G2 would have been way different, and more effective, if he hadnt been there

Also for Mattheo Jorgensen, he did so much work today and didn't get rewarded. Especially at the end, nobody in the group was relaying or putting any work in to try and catch up and win the stage except for him and the jumbo guy. And then after trying to attack like 10 times he finally broke away with another rider (who never did a single relay at the last 20k), and then got out sprinted by him and lost 2nd place.

WVA is finding out what Sagan Syndrome is all about.

Why are you gutted for those two? any more than any other rider, both think they are a modern day Peter Sagan and failing when it comes to this years TDF.

@@doommonger7784they’ve become riders that even though they don’t race for GC everybody marks and blocks - ah WvA is in the breakaway? Yeah let’s not even go then, save energy for next race, ah WvA looks decent before a sprint finish? Let’s not give him any wheel, keep him isolated and attack in a proper sprint finish that we’ll lose to alpecin anyway - sound good? Yeah sound good, let’s lose to alpecin I’m exaggerating OF COURSE but they legit keep him marked, isolated and attack him as if he was a GC contender on every stage where he could try this year.. it’s quite funny to watch how much respect is given and so far it’s worked (for some teams anyway)

@@johnkirk1772 I will give WvA one thing in this stage, he managed to do knock Pickcock off his bike earlier in the stage. At least Pickcock managed to finish up in the yellow jersey group 7 mins ahead of WvA.

What the fuck

I am in Southern Ontario with massive air pressure at 120 meters and winds near the lakes pushing 25 km hr with 20 km cross winds, you can barely get away with 40mm wheels on a 7 kg bike. At 180lbs I am being tossed literally to the ground, anyone claiming anything over 30km hr solo speeds is selling you snake oil here. I grew up in Europe and cycling there is a joke compared to the crap weather here specially in the low flats here were your speeds are severely limited ( winds near lakes, crap roads that would scare the crap out of those high end bikes, cars everywhere). Grew up in the mountains in Southern Europe so much easier and faster riding bikes there.

​@@danfuerthgillis4483who asked? But good for you i guess

Clap…..clap…….clap

@@erzhaider Bad for me is more like it battling these winds pushing 300 watts ( and the usual battle with 500 watt scooters) LMAO!!

yea why not.. eh?

Well, he's no longer The Hour Guy and man's gotta eat 😂

Yea the group mindset is far more visible these days

We might never ever see a flag-to-flag solo ever again

Jonas did a ton of work. Not sure why. Seemed really odd.

​@@throxidk why tf he is riding like a pannicking headless amateur.he literally just lost the tour for himself.pogi is gonna hit.him.very hard cuz that kid is calm cool and collected compared to last year where he was doing the same as jonas.

@@jjlove2725 I think Pogi coming into form has the whole JV team a bit rattled. Twice Jonas burned his whole team to deliver him to the final climb and Pogi just outclassed him at the end. He needs someone up the road and to be able to drop Pogi in a bridge across. Also worth noting that when he dropped Pogi in the first mountain, it was mostly because Pogi got stuck out of position and caught behind traffic. By the time he could react, Jonas already had 20m.

We're just seeing that NeoLampre and NeoRabbobank are just the old Lampre and Rabbobank and neither can manage a GC 🤦🏻‍♂️

That’s what I thought. In the old days one of the big teams would have taken 3 of their rouleurs and just put a 55kph average into this stages first 100km to shut everyone up. Then the rest would have been insanely slow because everyone would be quiet and then a sprint 😂😂😂

I don’t want him to but yeahhhh he needs a miracle to stay top 10

Ineos & AG2R don't have a fight with Jumbo. Their fight is with the rest of the top ten.

My guess is Vingegaard got sick after his great ride, now has been recovering and shit will be fun till the end

Have you ever owned cats and tried herding them? That’s what it’s like getting WT level cyclists to cooperate

You work together, you cook yourself, you only get 7th. Or get 2nd

G. Martin must have been loving it

The mistake is overestimating VDP, which keeps happening. When VDP covered Izaguirre everyone relaxed. It wasn't the chase that doomed them, it was the failure to react right away, which happened because VDP reacted, which should have been considered as no reaction.

No participation prizes in the TdF, he's gotta race to win.

True, cus it's starting to look like he is gonna pull a Derek Gee from this years Giro. Hope he takes one soon.

@@ktakashismith I mean there literally is. They do race for secondary positions which have prize money. But I do get your point.

? lmao

Why? His job as day like to day are either keeping Pogacar´s wheel or attack to take further time. As the stage started it would have made no sense to attack the attacking with a billion kilometres home and many stages to follow. He followed Pogacar and actually did try late to see if he could steal a little time when he were closer to the finish and apparently felt fine. So clever and calculated as it are needed to win a TdF plus of course not having any critical days of. A tactic he certainly always have to consider. If not you do not win TdF!

Every year the same comments. Can Aert wouldn’t be at the tour if he didn’t agree to work for Vingegaard whenever requested. They said it 100 times already.

No, they're good friends and team mates. Wout knows he is here to support Jonas. If Wout wanted to be the leader, he could go somewhere else.

Perhaps he just had a bad day and is feeling much better now?

Because hes riding like a headless chicken amateur that is making the same mistakes as pogi from last year. Hes done for and just lost the tour for himself.pogi is gonna hit him very hard.

@@jjlove2725 Nope, delusional. He'll drop Tadej on the big climbs like he always does and gain 2-3 minutes in a single race. Jonas is a machine, he'll just sleep tonight and recover that energy.

Pogacar hates high pace for long periods of time, it's how he died last year in the Granon stage

I think that's precisely what they're doing. The high pace affects everyone and that's when Jonas pulls ahead. Pogi will keep winning smal victories of 15-30 seconds while Jonas needs those big drops where he gains multiple minutes on Pog. That can only be achieved with high paces.

Typically just the big group that's important

group with the GC riders (Vingegaard, Pogacar, Hindley, Rodriguez were in this group)

I suppose it's something like the front group of riders that aren't doing some sort of breakaway/attack. Everyone in front of the peleton is either a satelite that waits there for a teammate to attack, closes the gap to him and then do some work to drag him along to make his attack a bit easier or a rider that is trying to win the stage.

When all the riders begin the stage together, that's the peloton. As the group splits up, you might have a breakaway with say 20 riders (which is a big break), and then the peloton which is wherever the largest group is on the road at any given time. You can also have things like the "yellow jersey" group if they happen to get separated from the pack.

@@TheSaturnV Yeah basically what I tried to say but better. Nicely put.

You're wrong, Luisito - This stage was designed for GC contenders to ignore while people fought for a breakaway win. Only way to have a large sprint finish is for some team to have a very good climber-sprinter and no GC options (IDK why Alpecin didn't try with MvdP)

Tommy SuckCock has always been a weasel, IDK how he has fans 🤦🏻‍♂️

Around 15-20 years ago, 90% of Spain decided that any kid with athletic talent should be a football player. Oddly enough, Basque kids haven't showed up that much at the top level since - We're now suffering through that and I'm sure there's a bunch of Spanish Remcos that never got away from kicking a ball around 😓

Peloton is gonna go superslow before the final climb, breakaway will win Sunday we could get a Jonas/Tadej win

Agreed on Alaphilippe. Pinot is actually riding quite well this year.

@@louistimmer6879 Alaphilippe can come back but Pinot can't do much other than climbing. He cannot seem to get aero so he will never perform on the flat.

@@louistimmer6879 if you're talking about giro, it was one of the worst giro ever, if remco hadn't abandoned and been trhere to attack, pinot would have not even been top 10 again, that was a rly and passive giro

They were both in front during a very very very sélective breakaway during the biggest race on the planet. They are not at their Peak but they are defenetly not finish.

Pogacar is so cool and collected that he was sprinting for 15th place today and 2 days ago he was dropping his own teammates while personally trying to bridge the gap to the breakaway. Admit it, they are both madmen.