Last night I wrote very briefly about how Jumbo Visma need to do something concerted to put Tadej Pogačar on the defensive. It’s simple enough: to beat the best, you need teamwork, and Jonas Vingegaard, the closest challenger to the Slovenian star, has probably the best team behind him. Today there is a nice article in Bicycling spelling out how this will involve sacrifice, specifically by Primož Roglič, if it is to really work.
The good news is that Jumbo or Ineos has a fantastic chance to beat the tar out of Tadej Pogačar in the next two days.
The bad news is it’s going to cost one of their GC guys his Tour hopes.
Here’s how:https://t.co/YrwGytoJNd— joelindsey (@joelindsey) July 12, 2022
Joe Lindsey is one of the better, more seasoned commenters on Cycling out there, and I am delighted to see him spell out what I was maybe starting to get at. That made me think of what really needs to happen for this to turn into a great battle. And it made me think of one of my all-time favorite Tours: the 2008 victory of Carlos Sastre.
Mind you, there are a lot of dissimilarities between 2022 and 2008. There, the presumed favorite was Cadel Evans, not yet either a world champion or a Tour winner; just a guy who seemed likely to do something if he ever had any team support. Pogačar is hardly down on his luck or lacking in support. He also doesn’t face quite the same dynamic that Evans did, with not two but three opponents from the same CSC team to worry about, in theory at least, in the form of two Schlecks and the eventual winner Sastre. But how that race played out should be very much on the minds of Jumbo Visma and UAE.
Coming into the Tour, CSC were a deep team with no true favorite to win. You might think that’s a problem, and we sure did at the time. Andy Schleck was the kid brother, just a gleam in Bjarne Riis’ eye, as lovely as a chip shot out of the sand to the green on a warm spring day. In time, this kid might be a big winner, but his shock second overall at the 2007 Giro (a lame enough course to suit Danilo Di Luca) was all that gave him hope. We figured he needed more time, and I suppose he did.
Older brother Fränk was more seasoned and ready for the challenge, but he had just become a meme at the Tour de Suisse.
Een drama, indeed. Whatever Fränk could in theory do, we sort of assumed he would torpedo on his own at some point, but hey, you never knew. That left Carlos…
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