🇮🇹 #GirodItalia A nice trip to the podium for his efforts today 🙌 Plappy claims the Intergiro prize for stage 6 🏆
“That was an insane day" - Luke Plapp left without reward for attacks on 'out of control' stage 6 at Giro d'Italia
CyclingThursday, 09 May 2024 at 20:30
Attacking and adventurous, Team Jayco AlUla's Australian National Champion, Luke Plapp was at the front throughout stage 6 of the 2024 Giro d'Italia. Despite finishing in the breakaway and at times having the virtual Maglia Rosa though, Plapp was left without reward for his ride.
“That was an insane day. The race was out of control the whole race, it was ridiculous for the first 80km and then when it had control, I was able to jump," reflected the 23-year-old to Team Jayco AlUla's website post-stage, after a brutally high-paced and frantic day in the saddle.
In the end, Plapp entered the finally alongside Julian Alaphilippe and Pelayo Sanchez, with the Spaniard being the one to take the win. "The three of us worked reasonably well to the finish, we played games a bit," Plapp says. "I was half eyes on looking for time and then half on the stage, so I ended up riding a bit harder than the others and they were sort of playing it out, but in the end, I’m happy."
"I felt really, really strong on the climbs, but those two are super punchy, so it was always going to be really hard to get away, especially on those short climbs, and I knew I wasn’t quicker than them in the sprint," he continues. "I tried to actually go on the gravel climb a long way out, but they were able to stay with me, and I was just glad we worked reasonably well together."
As mentioned, at times during the day, Plapp was into the virtual lead of the race. By the time Maglia Rosa of the Tadej Pogacar crossed the line however, the Aussie had gained just 29 seconds in the GC. "I knew they [UAE] were never going to let it go [the gap], you could see from the gaps they were keeping they weren’t willing to let the jersey go," Plapp rues. "I tried to be efficient and save a bit for tomorrow as well, but it was a good day, beautiful weather and it was a good day out there in the break.”
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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
- On the one hand, what he says is trivial. Of course it's genetics. It always is, in any sport. That's just obvious. Look at Mondo Duplantis, whose sprinting speed is key to his pole vaulting, for example - he's just plain faster than other vaulters and good at the rest of the event as well. In cycling, even when you take the most genetically weird group of people and give them amazing training, some will be better than others, as well. Distributions are distributions and there are outliers and that's just that. Pogacar's body is built for this kind of thing, it seems, with him only recently having had to pick up skills that others have used all along. I'm still inclined to believe that these folks are using entirely legal means to arrive at their shockingly good performance, given how more senior riders kinda complain about (or at least comment on) the regimens and control over the nutrition and exercise and all that. And in every population, there are edge cases of truly exceptional behavior.RidesHills19-12-2024
- 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
- Even amateur teams suffer this sort. But this is also largely due to the precarious sponsorship, in very few sports do you find kit with so many sponsors having to be integrated and changing so regularly.Mistermaumau19-12-2024
- I think it’s pretty obvious what was responsible for destroying interest that used to be there.Mistermaumau19-12-2024