this post was submitted on 19 May 2025
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Stage 14: Trรฉvise โ Gorizia, 195 km (Saturday 24, dep. 12:45-12:55, arr. 17:00-17:30)
Stage for sprinters-punchers (meaning this time "sprinters who can pass small walls"). A few inroads into Slovenia๐ธ๐ฎ (the country of cycling since 2018) in the final part of the stage.
Stage with light difficulties, 50 points to the winner.
The '3 km' rule applies for falls/incidents within 5 km from the finish.
Delays: 9% if โค 37 km/h; 10% if โค 41 km/h; 11% otherwise). Expected average speeds: 43 km/h โ 29'55'', 45 km/h โ 28'43'', 47 km/h โ 27'17''.
There was a stop at km 0, for advertisement of the Pinarello factory.
Then a breakaway of a dozen of riders developed. First there was a FDJ, then De Bondt (Decathlon) joined him, then a group of 8 including Van Aert, Asgreen, Cerny and I guess 1 or 2 riders managed to join them a bit later.
Yet this breakaway disbanded / was caught up; and a new breakaway of 2 + 3 riders was formed after 20-25 km, including Asgreen again and another FDJ. That's the 'good' one, apparently.
Why is polti pulling the ayuso/roglic group??
They have their GC guy in the group, Piganzoli (only 17^th^ but that's relatively important for a small team like this). I thought they had their sprinter too, but I am not sure.
Yeah but you still have to leave it to bora/uae to do the chase. Wasting energy that could be used later
Used when?
Dunno. Breakaway in later stages... get your TV time later in the race, not pulling 2 teams with more to lose and motivation to pull... Either way, seems like a waste of energy for no gain
Maybe i play too much pro cycling manager trying to conserve the green energy bar
Yeah... well, it is going to become harder to get in breakaways, from now on, so I am not sure they can join anyway. However, the first quarter/third of these mountain stages will still often be relatively flat and host 1 or 2 intermediate sprints that can interest Polti, so they should indeed try to break away. Yesterday, a couple of their riders just worked a few miles (altogether, the crash was about 22 km from the finish) and Monday is a rest day, it shouldn't have serious consequences on the future of the team.
During the Tour of Abruzzi, I had noticed that the Polti team liked to pull in the last 10 miles of the race when they had a numerous presence ahead, instead of letting UAE work. Yet in the final walls, none of their riders were in top-10... So it was a bit weird already, especially as it happened the same way (pulling when UAE could have done it + failing in the last km).