Tour of Flanders - Spoilers

[nooneline]

Originally Posted by fried bake

What do you mean she clearly wasn’t staying away solo? She had a strong teammate to disrupt a chase which contained the top sprinter and on form rider (Vos) and the SDWorx riders who were either on bad day (Kopecky) or had done a ton of donkey’s work chasing the winning move. All of those factors clearly favored her apart from the fact that she was also clearly in good form. You might recall she won Trofeo Alfredo Binda in the exact manner just a year ago.

She had been dropped earlier; yeah, her move was super strong, but going up the Paterberg saw her lead cut in half. I wanted her to stay away solo but halfway up the P'berg it looked unlikely - frankly I was surprised that ELB and KW didn't blow right by her. Her lead was down to <15 seconds to Kopecky et al on the Paterberg (from what, 25 seconds at its peak a little bit earlier?), and they wound up pulling the ELB/SVA/KW trio back to 9 seconds by the finish.

I was initially surprised that ELB went so hard at the top of the Paterberg, but I figured that Lidl-Trek knew more about what was going on in the race than I did in the moment*, and so here's why upon consideration it seemed like the right call: ELB had to go hard up the P'berg - Niewiadoma was looking really strong and SDWorx were on the ropes. At that point, Lidl-Trek's best option is to have ELB twist the knife on SDWorx and try to bury them, to join SVA and put as much distance between them and SDWorx as possible. Because if ELB sat back, two things become more likely: one is that KW makes it to SVA and it's 1-on-1 instead of 2-on-1. The other is that the Paterberg and its aftermath is easier on a struggling SDWorx and since they have numbers behind, they mount a chase and pull back SVA. Sure, you have ELB ready to go, but you're still rolling the dice against Lotte Kopecky and Demi Vollering (and Marianne Vos too!) and wishing that you put 20 seconds into them on the Paterberg when you had the chance.

*At the end of the day, Lidl-Trek went 1st and 3rd in a monument, so it's hard to argue that their tactics were bad. So I tried to look at that situation as "Why is this good for them, even if it surprised me in the moment?"

[fried bake]

That’s a fair assessment. In the end, the outcome justified the tactic and judging by the photo posted above, Shirin was good with it.


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[shadco]

Originally Posted by jdp211

Can see her elation at the result as her teammate crosses the line

She knows very well who signs her paychecks.

Gutted for Kasia but kind knew with those 2 it wasn’t going to be her day.

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