Pais Vasco - 15:00

[flockmastoR]

Hello, open for discussions:

[Liquigas-CND]

It seems nobody has time to write during the race.
They are all watching hund...

[flockmastoR]

A bit late but lets do a little favo check:

Before the start of the Tour it would have been:

****) Ulises Veracruz
***) Peyton Manning
...
...
*) surprise rider

Liquigas has the team to easily control this race, the TT is very hilly and Ulises has more downhill and mountain skill than Manning. So he will not lose time on Manning during the TT, or at least not much. I even think he could win time there, but the downhill is still hard to predict. Manning on the other hand has good support with Gronkowski. On a stage like today and tomorrow he will prevent to lose too much time. Today maybe he doesnt lose at all, tomorrow he will lose for sure and on the day after also sure. So all in all Veracruz will collect many seconds. If Liquigas goes for stage wins (or 2nd 3rd places) too there are a lot of seconds on the street for him the next days. with that he could have 40seconds - 1 minute already before the TT, and that would be enough for sure. On the other hand we all know Liquigas refusing to ride for any chance he has. yesterday he was lucky that rasta rode for stage win, he could make bonus seconds on Manning already.

Hund vs Perin
Lets just look at this battle. Hund with 64 mountain should in any case win some seconds on Perin in the next days. If Perin really has better form than Hund it won't help him a lot, because he will lose time in the TT again in the downhill and flat parts. not really many but if he isnt able to get yellow before (which would be really hard with weaker form) the battle goes to Perin. If he has about the same Form as Hund I think the battle should go to Hund, because than he will land in front of Perin in the final siebs every time and he should also be able to win time in the last TT. Yesterday Perin and Hund landed in the same group after the split, that means he has a) better form and will not land behind him the next days, or b) he just had more power. Lets hope its just b

Hund/Perin vs Veracruz/Manning
Thats really hard to say and it depends on the way karaT (and Liquigas) will ride the 3 mountain stages. But even in the best case (for me) we will lose 6-7 minutes, and thats a really optimistic guess. TT no plan 3-4 Minutes could be possible. So all in all I am not really optimistic.

Points Classement
*****) Veracruz
Has already a big advantage on other climbers/Manning/Wouters, he will just get in troubles if everyday a big group wins or a rider gets through 2 times.

Youth Classement
Hund vs. Devos, depends a lot too on the GK situation, as Devos wont lose much time on the strong climbers in the mountains.

[flockmastoR]

Wuff Wuff

Deciding situtation today: After the sieb of Hund and Perin Liquigaas first rides tempo and stops right before the hill. Ampere and Turing could attack green and Wouters could devide the closest friends till now Hund and Perin. Perin refused to ride immediately which would have brought him in front but he would have lost some power and might be siebed later again. still it would have been the better reaction imo. I guess 1:12 is enough at least in the Hund/Perin fight. To the climbers its still 10 minutes now. Positiv thing is that my team is 100% fit tomorrow. maybe this can help me.

[team fl]

Lets call it a pack and not a team

[luques]

Good day for Hund, could have lost much more but seems that there wasn't agreement.

Tomorrow and so on we could have the same thing with karaT and Liquigas arguing, not doing tempo and Hund back after the sieb.

Difficult to see Liquigas working for his chances, karaT doesn't want to work if Liquigas doesn't, well..

There will be lot of fun anyway!

[flockmastoR]

Hola, Hund still in yellow 7 minutes now. If I lose again ~3 minutes today I think I really have a chance. Still not confident about it.

Lets look at the TT: 4 km flat, 10km downhill, 5 km uphill (2 of them really steep), will depend a lot on the time I lose in downhill, cannot really guess and I always forget to note such things

Yesterday's stage was quite hard. karaT and Liquigas really tried a lot. Still the farmer things didnt really work out. Tedesco and Tomic seem to be deadish right now, so foro Liquigas its really just Galimberto to ride in front after the Hund sieb. karaT has Brajkojic with strong reg and Lorentsen with very low. couldnt really see what that guy rode, but he had ridden with two guys, so I think Lorentsen should be under reg too (just saw he was in front just from 115 to 127 probably fit today). Yesterday I also had to watch my riders regs. Otherwise could have rode a bit faster. But Important to have all 3 fit today (Renner, Cauchy, Pauli), all in all I am happy there is so much downhill here.