[ad_1]
A Team Sky rider, whose name is not Chris Froome, won the 2018 Tour de France.
It would be wrong to say that no one judged Geraint Thomas as a candidate Legitimate at the GC – he won the Dauphine Criterium in June, after all – but let's be honest: few, if any, predicted that Thomas would win. That does not mean that her victory came from nowhere, she simply did not follow the predictions of the race.
Chris Froome has won the last three Grand Tours, and four of the last five Tours de France. Froome was the pre-race favorite. The main question regarding the Team Sky leader was his salbutamol affair, which placed Thomas in a co-leadership position at Team Sky, although most badumed that the Welsh would be "Plan B" if Froome was banned from running . Three weeks on the roads of France, Plan B became Plan A.
As a professional for 12 years, Thomas had never been chief of staff. team at the Tour. He had never finished in the top 10 of a Grand Tour. And with Froome at the starting line, it was badumed that he would start with his role as super-servant – practice across the cobblestones, in the team time trial, and in the mountains. A top-10 would not be out of the question. Thomas was fourth in the overall standings at stage 19 of the 2015 Tour before fainting in the Alps. Take off this bad day, and he could surely be in the loop for the podium, surely.
This, of course, is not the way the race unfolded. Sunday, Thomas will be crowned champion of the Tour de France, the third Team Sky driver to win the Tour in seven years.
But how? How did Thomas surprise everyone and not only win the Tour, but won it convincingly by holding the yellow jersey for 11 consecutive days?
The Welsh took the yellow jersey on the 11th stage. and time bonus, in La Rosière. He said something like "I won a stage and I went yellow, my race is done and I can work for Froome." He won again the next day at the top of Alpe d'Huez Froome on also 10 seconds time bonus, and this was the moment when something changed. Thomas was better than Froome – and as good or better than everyone else in the GC battle
Thomas was still talking about supporting Froome – "Froomey is a Tour winner four times, maybe the biggest of all time, is proven over three weeks "- but as the race continued, it became clear that Thomas was the strongest. All doubts were raised at stage 17, the 65 km day ending at the Portet Pbad, when Froome failed and Thomas did not. Thomas again sprinted to the line, opening a slight gap and taking four seconds of time bonus; Froome was healed by teammate Egan Bernal
Thomas had the answers to all the attacks on the Tourmalet and Aubisque on stage 19, and by the time he got off the starting ramp on Saturday, his 2:05 Tom Dumoulin was insurmountable on a course of 31 km.
On paper, it might seem that Thomas was just better than everyone else, which raises the question of how a former 32-year-old champion who had never been the top 10 could defend the yellow for 10 days and win the most prestigious Grand Tour of cycling.
But Thomas is just not quite the complete story of the 2018 Tour de France.
Thomas was very, very good, obviously. He drove to a higher level than ever before, without asking any questions. But there were several other factors that contributed to what he recognized was the race of his life.
Five of these factors are described below. Some – the critics of Team Sky – may not like that, perhaps suggesting that it is an attempt to explain what they consider to be inexplicable. Others – Team Sky supporters – may not like it, perhaps suggesting that it kills Thomas's success by reversing the path of victory at the most competitive sporting event. difficult of the world.
In the end, it is neither one nor the other. The races of the Grand Tour are nuanced and multiform, fortune, alliances and goals evolving in real time. There are no winners in the Tour de France, but there are certainly factors that favor a rider compared to others.
Thomas never cheated
More than 20 specials, Thomas never crashed. He never had any untimely mechanics. He never missed a break in the field. I do not remember that he even had a puncture. For a rider who has experienced half a dozen tragic accidents during his career, both at Milan-San Remo and at the Tour of Flanders, at the Giro d'Italia and at the Tour de France, Thomas seems to have exorcised his demons. After years of misadventures, Lady Luck smiles at Welsh
"I've been unhappy in the past," Thomas said. "A lot of the accidents have not been my fault, some of them, of course, I do not linger on, people talk a little about it, but I hear and I empty it."
Thomas did a flawless Tour, and that matters a lot – just ask Tom Dumoulin, who lost 53 seconds, plus a 20 second penalty, on the 6th stage because of a wheel Broken and an extended shot behind his team car.In the end, those 73 seconds accounted for 65% of his differential time at Thomas.
And it's not as simple as that this deficit, even before the race hit the mountains, changed the way Dumoulin ran against Thomas, forcing the Dutchman to attack, and because Thomas was still able to follow, these attacks were at the a wasted and demoralizing effort. "Dumoulin's mechanical and temporal penalty did not change the outcome, but she did changed the color of the GC battle
The support of a very strong team
Team Sky brought the best GC team to this Tour. They may not have won the team time trial in phase 3, finishing four seconds behind BMC Racing, and they did not win the team ranking, won by Movistar. But Team Sky put two riders on the podium, and using the biggest budget in professional cycling, these riders were backed by a team of stars. Luke Rowe, Gianni Moscon and Jonathan Castroviejo took the lead on flat roads, while Wout Poels, Michal Kwiatkowski and Egan Bernal often shot in the last few kilometers in the mountains.
Watch Team Sky's performance in the Saturday time trial, where Thomas, Froome and Kwiatkowski finished second, third and fourth, while Castroviejo and Poels, after defending the yellow jersey for 10 days, both finished in the top 20. If Moscon had not been fired from the race after step 15 to point another runner, he would probably have finished in the top 20.
It's impossible to overestimate how a strong team helps win a Grand Tour, especially for a runner like Thomas, who is not an explosive climber. For a driver like Thomas, with a diesel-type engine, there's no better scenario than having teammates at his disposal, putting a difficult tempo to his liking, discouraging rivals from jump, and if they have the power to help bring them back.
Team Sky has won the Tour six times in the last seven years. Thomas was part of Team Sky's Tour teams every year except in 2012, when he was focusing on the London Olympics. The British team clearly has the wealth and experience to dominate the biggest race of the sport; Thomas has been an integral part of it, and now he has been the ultimate beneficiary.
"Obviously, we are strong," Thomas said Saturday. "If you look at all of our individual runners, they are all incredible in their own credit, we work hard, we strive to be the best we can, we really want to perform, and I think our greatest strength is that we can not compete. is not just the legs, but the heads, and how we ride together.The team won this, it's not just me. "
A GC field weakened
This n & # 39; It's not a hit at Thomas – as mentioned, he ran a flawless run – but he clearly benefited from a weakened field of GC rivals [9] at step 9, across the cobblestones. Roubaix, saw Richie Gate give up, and Rigoberto Uran and Mikel Landa crashed heavily. Dan Martin crashed the day before the Roubaix stage and spent the next two weeks on the back foot. An incident with a spectator on Alpe d'Huez saw Vincenzo Nibali leave the race.
The saying says that a Grand Tour is won or lost in the third week, and by the time this Tour reached the Pyrenees, five top GC contenders were at home or had seen their chances of running for the victory be destroyed. Attacks in the Pyrenees from Porte, Uran or Nibali – in combination with Dumoulin and Roglic – may have softened Team Sky, but we'll never know.
Much has been done to keep Thomas away from pure climbers like Nairo Quintana and Romain Bardet – climbers who had not been bothered by injuries – but these two former podiums were not theirs best level. Quintana lost time in the Alps and only found his legs when his GC position dropped enough for him to fight for the stage win in the Pyrenees. Bardet lost a minute to La Rosière and was even worse on the Col du Portet, ultimately saying that he had never found the legs that he had hoped for.
In a way, Thomas's victory recalls the 2014 Tour, when Vincenzo Nibali won after Froome and Alberto Contador collapsed in the first 10 stages; from that moment, Nibali could not apparently hurt. This is part of the bike race, but it also helps to explain an unexpected winner
The Froome Factor
It's impossible to exaggerate how the mere presence of Chris Froome, the great Grand Tour racer, has had an impact on the pack. The cumulative stress of winning the Giro, the cloud of his salbutamol, his first-step accident – with pepper spray, a tackle from a policeman, and being booed and spat – have all caught up with the winner of the four-man Tour. times. Froome made a solid run, finishing second in the time trial and third overall, but for Thomas, having the pre-race favorite within the same squad as a decoy and domestic was an advantage huge
. on the Alps, when Thomas jumped for the stage win at La Rosiere on stage 11 while Froome scored Dumoulin, and again the next day where Thomas was able to score Dumoulin, who chased the Froome attack . We saw him again at Mende on stage 14, when Froome countered Dumoulin's movement, and Thomas followed Froome, slightly overtaking Dumoulin before Sunweb's runner started again. It was only at step 17, when Froome finally lost contact with the Col du Portet, that it was clear once and for all that it would be the Team Leader. Sky
"A big thank you to Froomey, he's committed to me, he was really happy to see me doing so well," Thomas said Saturday. "We are good friends, and I really enjoyed having probably the best road racing driver coming up for me."
The journalists of course fired shots between Froome and Thomas at Team Sky, but as far as I know, there was none. Froome was magnanimous in the way he handled the situation, praising Thomas's performance, saying that what mattered most was a Team Sky victory, and supporting him, whenever he could, along the Col. Aubisque
. I have been a teammate and friend of [Thomas] for 10 years, "said Froome. "We train a lot together, we live quite close to each other, we spend a lot of time together. I've seen how it's developed over the years. He has been an important part of my victories at the Tour de France over the years, and to see him here, now, in the form that he was at the Tour de France, it was clear to me that his he was going to be on the podium, he was going to be on the highest step. And he managed to do it, which makes me really proud. I'm happy to be here to be part of it, and getting on this podium on the Champs-Élysées will be a dream for us. "
Thomas was underestimated
By the time Thomas had won two highs – taking the GC's time in addition to a pair of 10-second time bonuses – it was really too late for that Dumoulin did a lot of things, Dumoulin had rightfully seen Froome as his biggest threat while Thomas, on the shape of his life, was an equal opponent – and one who had taken time in the team time trial and Had not lost time to an accident or mechanics Similar types of runners – time trial specialists who can climb – Dumoulin had met his match in the mountains and, as we saw on Saturday , against the clock too, Dumoulin attacked Thomas, but between stages 11 and 19, the Sunweb rider never took the time to return to the yellow jersey.
"Dumoulin is the type of rider that I am, "said Thomas." There was someone else who was more punchy, I should ride like Tom and let them go, but I was able to stay with Tom. It was good for the head.
What is the next step for Team Sky?
Finally, Thomas was the best runner in three weeks, strong against the clock and in the mountains, supported by a strong team and defense. champion, a little underrated, and yes, also a little lucky. And these are all factors that, if they are not necessary, certainly contribute to the victory of the Tour de France.
And Thomas's own words match this badessment. "It's just amazing," he said on Saturday, his eyes filled with tears. "I thought I could beat the guys here, but to do it on the biggest stage, on three weeks … it's crazy.It's surreal.I think it'll take a long time, I think. "
Remains to be seen if the stars will line up again for Thomas during a Grand Tour. What's happening at Team Sky in the 2019 Tour de France? Will Thomas and Froome be co-leaders again? And how long can it last until Egan Bernal becomes the competitor of the team's Tour?
Here are the problems that Team Sky's director, Dave Brailsford, will face after the end of the Sunday hangover. these are good problems to have.
The publisher of CyclingTips, Neal Rogers, writes a daily column during the 2018 Tour de France, focused on badysis, commentary and opinion.
[ad_2]
Source link
