🇪🇸 #LaVuelta24 A day in the break nets Florian Lipowitz the white jersey! 🤍
BORA's tactics a 'big gamble' according to Johan Bruyneel at La Vuelta: "O'Connor is a man of three weeks, you cannot underestimate someone like him"
CyclingFriday, 23 August 2024 at 12:16
Ben O'Connor has turned the Vuelta a España on it's head on the sixth stage of the race with a breakaway where everything went to perfection. He was the strongest in the group and managed to win the stage; and took advantage of a perfect set of circumstances that saw a lot of hesitation in the peloton to keep the gap in check. Johan Bruyneel also shared his opinion on what many consider a tactical disaster from Red Bull - BORA - hasngrohe on the day where Primoz Roglic may have gotten a new main rival for the race win.
"I think they took a big risk. They calculated it well, but O'Connor was much stronger than expected. He kept gaining time and destroyed the other riders in the leading group," Bruyneel said in 'The Move' podcast. "What I find strange to see is that there is no mutual agreement between the classification teams. When one team started riding, the other stopped again". Bruyneel agrees that Florian Lipowitz' presence in the front group was a justification for the lack of work, but were then stunned at how well the Australian rode the final 60 kilometers, gaining time over the peloton instead of losing despite some work behind.
Bahrain - Victorious, UAE Team Emirates and Movistar all worked briefly but with the lack of steep climbs or truly flat roads, there was never an all-out chase or attacks behind that could really cut down the gap. With BORA refusing to do the same due to Lipowitz gaining time as well on the GC rivals, it led to the peloton taking it rather conservative which saw O'Connor win 6:32 minutes on the road to the big group.
"It is easy to agree that you do not want to lose the race. If you have the ambition to reach the podium, work together. What they (the peloton, ed.) did was not logical. I may be old-school, but in the past we kept our chances intact by making agreements among ourselves," Bruyneel argues. "What they did now was a big gamble in my opinion. O'Connor is a man of three weeks, you cannot underestimate someone like him."
"He now has five minutes and they have to win that back somewhere, on someone who has finished fourth twice in a grand tour. In addition, the big favourites for this race are not exactly riders who gain minutes on competitors. In my opinion it is a big mistake, I hope they don't regret it in Madrid. They have reasons to worry," he concluded.
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- Exactly who, Joey, is "they"? Flimsy, illogical conspiracy theories aside, it is in no one's interest (financial or otherwise) to "drive away small local events." Major cultural and macroeconomic factors are reducing ridership, but there is no "they" in this context.verve82520-12-2024
- And our virtual platforms allow us to "ride" famous place that we can't get to in person, which is a pretty fabulous aspect of this weird weird sport.RidesHills19-12-2024
- Which off-season are you referring to? The one after he won the Tour of California? The one after he won 3 stages and was on the podium of the Vuelta? The one after TJV screwed up, never put him away, and lost the Tour on the time trial? We've seen the guy hit the wall, lose energy, nearly fail, and lose races ("I'm dead") more than once. He's got a visible threshold and his fueling regimen is a clear weak spot. You'll need more detail to make this more than under defined insinuations .RidesHills19-12-2024
- Interesting analysis. And yet, I'm in the US, and at a recent wedding reception as a group of us older folks had to stand at a certain place to keep track of a thing, we got to talking, and every single one of us had a favorite rider, a favorite circuit of races, a moment when we fell in love with the sport, and a joy in the complexities of it all. None of us knew about the other's fandom until that moment. It's wonderful that these are my brothers-in-law, and we now know to talk about this when the spouses aren't listening. Point being: there are fans all over, and for US folks, the loss of GCN+ has been huge. As so often, it's the media bottleneck that matters more than anything else. Look at F1 in the US before Netflix, as an example.RidesHills19-12-2024
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- And it’s likely going to get worse. They are going all-out to drive away small local events which are where a lot of new riders come from. They want fee income and Olympic medals. That’s all.JoeyB19-12-2024
- Oh Lordspock12319-12-2024
- Interesting suggestion, fo you think testing Tadej’s (or Bolts’ or so many others’) parents would have given us a preview of his potential then or what criteria do you have to pick parents with?Mistermaumau19-12-2024
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- I think it’s pretty obvious what was responsible for destroying interest that used to be there.Mistermaumau19-12-2024