Tour de France 2020

Very enjoyable race and the format was good glad the prologue had gone and the team time trial as well would have liked to see a few more intermediate sprints included.

 

Same. Team time trial has killed the race too many times. Jumbo & Ineos would’ve decimated the field. It was great having about 15 riders within 2 minutes half way through the race

 

Dumoulin's quotes are about as close to a cyclist accusing someone else of doping as you'll ever see:

"My values were World Championship-worthy values. That's great to see," he said. "That's why I was all the more surprised that Pogačar was 1:21 faster.

"I'm sure I can tell you I'm never going to reach that level. I may be able to win one per cent somewhere, but not five per cent."

 

He’s talking ******** in my opinion. He’s nowhere near the rider he was 2 years ago. Dumoulin’s spent all race been dropped by riders he would’ve beaten 2 years ago.

He matched Pogacar on the flat but blew up on the climb. Even his own teammate Van Aert out-climbed him. Dumoulin only finished equal to a 35 year old Richie Porte who’s never been on Dumoulin’s level at time trialling previously.

 

Good points, but there's not a chance Pogacar is clean. Carapaz took the flat section at a leisurely place to blast the climb for KOM points and was 1:15 down on Pogacar. Pogacar stopped using a power meter because he decided he preferred to ride on "feel" and definitely absolutely not to avoid there being data which might leak and prove his power was superhuman.

Between his age, the strength of his performance, the fact there's been a huge drop in out of competition performance due to coronavirus etc there's not a chance he's clean.

 

He may not be clean but I don’t think anything he’s done this tour falls into the category of Froome on Ventoux in 2013 or the 2018 Giro or Horner winning the Vuelta in his 40’s for example. I’ve seen loads of riders suddenly go up a level in performance in the final week (presumably after a rest day blood bag). Pogacar’s been consistent throughout.

Carapaz crashed hard in the first week, was called into the team late for this race & was regularly dropped on the hills when there were still 15+ riders in the lead group. He’s been nowhere near peak Giro winning form. He’s also not much of a time trialer.

People can look at Roglic & Dumoulin all they want but ultimately he’s only beaten Porte by 3.30 over 3 weeks of racing & only beat Porte by 1.21 in the final time trial & Van Aert by 1.31. Them times suggest Roglic & Dumoulin both massively underperformed regardless of what they might say.

Might only be a little thing but the Jumbo riders only re-conned the time trial course on the morning of the race. Pogacar had been & practiced it four times previously.