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Chapter 1: What is the significance of Stage 11 in the Giro d'Italia?
Welcome back to the National Recycling Podcast, the recap of stage 11 of the Giro d'Italia from Borgari, paper district, don't know what sort of paper they mean, to Chiavari, 195km, it looks like a classic medium mountain breakaway stage which could, it did give ample opportunity to a surprise ambush because there's flat first 80km where you can get Some strong guys in the breakaway.
Then there's constant up and down climbs on the Ligurian coast. And we're making our way to where San Remo begins the Cipressa, like a lead out. And then we've got steep climbs, narrow roads, twisty descents, technical. The two climbs of main note, there's 10K 6% climb, but then the Colla dei Scioli, 5K, 6% last. Six minutes is 9% descent. Very tricky descent.
Then the Red Bull Kilometer Sprint is at the top of a 5K, uncategorized 6.4% climb. First 800 meters, that was surprisingly steep, actually. Another descent. Then it's like, I don't know, 7Ks of flats to the finish. Absolutely nailed on brake sort of stage for like a Ciccone, Scaronis of the world. Me and Benji had them respectively, I think. And what happened in break formation, Benji?
No, you didn't. I always select the UAE rider for the breakways in this race, but I always don't pick a certain UAE rider that may or may not have done well today. So we'll get into that. But brake formation was really long. And when I say really long, I mean the majority of the stage was brake formation.
From the get-go, the flag drop, a group of 10 riders went up the road, Patrick, and they immediately took a gap of 15 to 30 seconds. And that included decent riders like Ciccone, your pick for the stage, Stuyven, Scaroni with two teammates, a few Polti riders, et cetera, roughly 10 riders up the road. And that group actually stayed up front for like 25, 30 kilometers. And if you look at that gap,
group, then there's a few teams missing. First of all, Alpecin's missing, but not the most relevant team to potentially win this stage, in my opinion. Polty, actually Polty missed this breakaway and started chasing it as well together with Alpecin.
But most importantly, UAE missed this fast breakaway, and they actually spent the first 25 kilometers of this stage, not just pacing behind the breakaway, but doing a bit of a combination of...
pacing plus jumping into moves and in that way trying to keep that breakaway close to try and keep the breakaway formation going and to be honest it worked because in the end they end up closing that breakaway after 25 kilometers so still 155k to go by the way and that's when we start the second breakaway formation phase patrick where Red Bull Bora is now actively jumping.
All these teams are actively jumping. The large majority of the peloton has selected this stage as a breakaway stage, and everybody knew that this stage would most likely go to a breakaway, so everybody wants to be in the breakaway. And yes, we do see Bahrain taking up a controlling role, and also Vismalisa Mike a little bit, perhaps.
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Chapter 2: How did the breakaway form during the race?
Then a second duo tries, Sobrero and Arrieta, so Joey and Lil Trek, but they fail in doing so. And then it's a, I think a second group that maybe forms for a little bit, or the front of the peloton forms a little bit of a mini breakaway, where then eventually we've got two riders bridging solo. Narvaez from UAE bridges solo from that secondary group.
25-ish seconds he bridged by himself to the front. And then Scaroni does the exact same, and that is the breakaway. Scaroni is now with two teammates, Betiol and Ulissi. Narvaez is back in the breakaway. Gap grows to two minutes. From this breakaway, Patrick, we've seen so far in this Giro, Narvaez is the ultimate favorite. Is there a way to beat Narvaez here?
Yeah, you've got to create some chaos because Narvaez, he is a little bit like... If you can get him in the Carapaz del Toro situation, he will succumb to that mindset. And I repeat again, he's having a fantastic Giro. He's a heavy favourite. With his power profile... He should be winning eight races a year, for example. Like, he's virtually impossible to drop except on a high mountain.
His sprint is unbelievable. But if you create a sort of semi, like, chaotic race situation, he will sometimes really kosh to himself out of a win. So I think the only way is to have two. Astana's the only team I think could beat him. And that's because Scaroni and Ulysses can... Yeah, like, they can... Ulysses, if Narvaez has had to work...
Or no, rather, I could see a situation where if Scaroni was attacking, Narvaez would refuse to chase because he would overreact to the threat of Ulysses in his wheel. Whereas I actually think Narvaez could just pull almost Ulysses to the line and still beat him in a sprint. But the counterpoint to that was I saw Harper in the break and I was like, he's just going to keep this going.
I didn't see some...
I didn't see Narvaez having to solve anything because when basically the break forms and then it just starts attacking itself again very, very quickly, Narvaez was almost never having to close the gap because the bad climbers would attack, or sorry, the climbers would attack and then Harper would chase for GC and then Astana had two so they had to be represented and I didn't see Narvaez actually getting worked over.
mean eater and that situation basically going into the last three climbs of today but to pull it back to the peloton i'm still not completely sure what net cop company in eos was doing at the front of the peloton because Yes, they were positioning themselves for downhills and doing downhills first. That is perfectly logical for a team to try and do that.
We see that Jonas Vingegaard doing it himself on a certain descent later in the race where these teams want to keep their GC while the 7B at the front. But it looked to me like Ineos was hard-pacing Clams a bit. And I'm having trouble figuring out what their strategy is because then they never activated anything. It's as if they were... just hard pacing without like a conclusion to their plan.
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Chapter 3: What strategies were employed by teams during the breakaway?
And I think Van Eetveldt comes back as well. We basically get the same exact group that we started the climb with. So the whole breakaway fell apart on this climb just to come back together at the end of the climb. But the descent is more important because there was a crash from Leonard Van Eetveldt. Like, I like Leonard Van Eetveldt, but... Def taxes Leonard van Eetveld crashing.
He crashes so many times, and once again, here the case where he crashes together with Zana and Scaroni, and Scaroni does come into play in some sense though, because we end up starting the second last climb, and this is one where I was perhaps hoping for some GC action, maybe not on the climb, but on the descent. We'll get to that.
What shocked me was that on this climb, the second last climb, Patrick, Is it me or did Ulisse look like he was continuously upping the tempo in the front group while Scaroni was desperately trying to come back behind?
Yeah, that didn't make sense. Now, I don't know if Scaroni's got on the radio and said, forget about me, I'm injured. He was riding at the same watts as the front group, but he was not in the draft the whole time. He did the final of this almost on his own with Bargui. And yeah, he cracks at the end. But I also, the only way Ulisse can win is with Scaroni.
It's the only way he can win, is if Scaroni is a teammate there. And yeah, Scaroni got within 15, 12 seconds at one point. And I think Ulysses should have been blocking in that phase. And... Then who attacked on that climb? Maas, or no, yeah, Ulisse, and then, but not even, Enric was like pretending, I think. Enric was like yo-yoing a bit. Harper came back. He keeps the pace going.
And then, yeah, we get to the descent. Scorone never gets back on. He's with Barghie. We've got Maas, Harper, Vlasov, Crescioli, the young Italian climber on Palti, Navas, Ulisse. They're all relaying, Ulysse maybe soft-tapping. They get to the final climb. It's uncategorized, and then it's steep and twisty.
I want to pause you there for a second before we get into that climb with the breakaway. In the peloton, I was expecting something to happen on the second last descend. The descend of that Schioli climb, the Colla del Schioli, is a really twisty technical descend. You can see that in the run-up to the top. We see Jonas Wingergaard moving up by himself to try and get into first position.
Riders are dropping because of the fight for positioning towards the top at this moment. That is because the descent is so technical, potentially dangerous in some sense, to the point that... I've been preaching it for a week, Patrick. Felix Gall has weaknesses. Descending is one of those weaknesses. He lost his podium competition at Catalunya because of a single descent. I was actually...
I was hoping for the sake of GC, but I was also expecting to see someone try to put some pressure on Felix Gall in this downhill. Because at the end of the day, if you wait for the mountain stages, Gall's going to take time on you, not the other way around.
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Chapter 4: What challenges did riders face during the climbs?
I thought, let I don't know. I get Moss. I think he had to just stop start. He would stop pulling for two seconds, look at Narvaez. Narvaez would be like, meh. And then he'd just start pulling again. He wouldn't even call Narvaez bluff at all.
You said it to me before this podcast started, and I agree. Looking at Anderik Moss trying to win the stage...
was funny, hilarious at moments, but I also don't know if there's a way he can actually win it, because getting over the top together with Narvaez, you've got a descent right now, then you've got a bit of flat in the last stretch where you can maybe play games, but there's about a 20-second gap on the second group there, game theory says that you should let the other guys come back.
So the second group with the likes of Harper, I think it was Vlasov and Ulysses, let those three riders come back so that you can try and attack those riders 1v4 and hope that the others look at Narvaez for the closing. But I actually don't think that would work for a rider like Hendrik Maas with negative acceleration. I think Harper could win like that.
The thing is, if Harper gets a surprise gap on the flat, like maybe he can diesel away, Enric's also slow on the flat. It was like watching... I mean, Navarro's nickname is El Lagarto, but it was like watching a deer that was getting more... Every time it breathed out or breathed in, the boa constrictors got tighter and tighter. Every time it got tighter and tighter and Navarro's just...
He's just all over him, and it's becoming more and more. Yeah, it was tough. It was tough to watch because I'm not even saying Enric really did anything too wrong. I mean, it was very clear that there's a reason why Enric hasn't won a lot of races, and it's not just because of his acceleration. It's also like you've come second in Grand Tours, man.
Let the group come back, or at least make Narvaez pull the final 3Ks. He's got 600 watts ahead of you. Narvaez should be able to walk the sprint.
With 1.6 kilometers to go, Moz goes to the front and starts reeling.
Yeah, that's where I was like, oh, come on.
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Chapter 5: How did crashes impact the race dynamics?
Was he in the breakaway? I didn't even realize.
He attacked from the peloton, I think.
Oh, that makes a lot more sense. Barghil in 9th and Rakhani and Oviero in 10th place.
I think Rakhani also did the same thing.
Nothing happened in the peloton. They finished on 324.
Yep, so a few more crashes today. Nalaez wins again. Third stage win in the Giro, pretty impressive. UAE have won four stages, so they're having a pretty good Giro, and it's only, we're about halfway through. GC changes there were. Harper moves into tenths, so he rides full gas to the finish and gets himself, yeah, three minutes plus back on the rest of the field.
So he'll be happy with that in the top ten. Verlocchi and Co move down. Scaroni also back in, moves up a couple of positions. Points jersey, Narvaez is now 19 points behind Manier, and he's not even contested an intermediate sprint. Ha, ha, ha. So I know there's more 50-point stages left, but like tomorrow, yeah, Navai's got to go for it again tomorrow. And that's a good preview.
Imperia to Novi Ligure, 175 kilometers long in the easier medium mountain stage. We have an uphill start, uncategorized climb, then a lot of flat actually on the coast.
to the west of genoa then they go up a category 3 11k is four percent some steeper sections in there then a 5.5k six percent climb pretty soon after that and then a descent and then from the end of that descent it is the can i count 35ks along some sort of hills Into the Finnish south. This is south of Milan. I think my train when I was a student might have terminated in this place.
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