Saturday 19: 12:00β12:15 β 17:05β17:45
The second and last mountain stage in the PyrΓ©nΓ©es. A flat start, and then a hell of 4 passes in a row with little (false) flat in between, starting with the Tourmalet and including climbing Peyresourde again from the same side (not sure Evenepoel will fancy coming back on this slope!).
Weather shall be significantly cooler than on the previous days, and it should be drizzling.
Beware: the stage starts earlier than usual (still not in the morning, though).
It's going to be quite funny watching the sprinters go for that intermediate but then immediately have to tackle the Tourmalet. I wonder if they'll try to get up the road in a break before the sprint, so they have a buffer on the first climb and can take it a bit easier.
I suppose so. The way I see it, there should be a large and long breakaway today, so anyway sprinters wishing to score points would need to get into the breakaway (and with the long flat start, they have it comparatively easy).
GG gaps are such that even guys ranked 10^th^ in the general classification (14 minutes behind) might already be allowed to join the breakaway and win the stage. 12^th^ is 20 minutes behind. Even Johannessen, ranked 8^th^ is more than 10 minutes behind the leader (but only 3 minutes behind the podium, though).
Unless Pogacar and/or his teammates are super tired and need a break, I don't think they'll let someone else win this stage. Pogacar wants to win almost every single race he's in and he easily has the capability to do it on this kind of stage. The sponsors and his team directors will expect it, too.
I don't think so, but we shall see in a few hours π
For the sake of variety, I hope you're right!
After the stage, I still don't know who was right and who was wrong π€·ββοΈ π
I mean, Pogatchar didn't win but UAE led the peloton and never let the gap get over 4 mn. And they led it fast enough in the last climb. But not so much before that climb, losing downhill what they had gained uphill.
Pogatchar probably could have caught up Arensman (not easily though) but he did not nothing but follow in the last climb.
It looked like the goal was to bring back Johannessen and such (showing than no one in the top-10 was allowed to get away), but not necessarily to win the stage unless it fell naturally into their hand.
Some say that UAE wanted to catch the breakaway along as it contained Visma riders, and that this would have been motivated by the team classification.
Dunno.