Originally Posted by
Marco
It's very flowery, Graham, but what does it tell us that we didn't already know from watching yesterday's highlights show?
Kwiatkowski was lucky, and he admitted it himself. Under normal circumstances the breakaway would have been caught before the summit; I think he said "We had a free ticket to the bottom of the climb"
As to the Ineos Grenadier team, they don't have a genuine GC contender and haven't for some time. I don't know if this is through under-funding, (relative to other teams), poor coaching, or bad recruitment. Yes, they've had some bad luck, including a really bad crash to Egan Bernal a while back, but a team of their stature should have two top leaders.
I don't see Ineos Grenadier winning a grand tour anytime soon, unless it is through a top GC contender crashing out and them inheriting the win. If Rodriguez and Pidcock were going to be top GC contenders we should have seen it by now; they are 22 and almost 24 respectively and Tadej Pogačar and Remco Evenepoel both won grand tours at 22. Contenders, maybe, but with Pogačar, Vingegaard, and Evenepoel all racing at the moment it's going to be hard for anyone else to win a grand tour in the foreseeable future.
Not mentioned in Stephen Puddicombe's writing is the other two-horse race in this year's Tour de France; the battle between the Yates twins. In theory it should be Simon, as Adam is doing heavy-duty domestique duties for his boss, but I'm not sure that will be the result as Adam looks to be in slightly better form.
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