#sivakov

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Cyclisme : Horaires, parcours et favoris, tout ce que vous devez savoir sur le Tour de Murcie

C'est la deuxième course de la série Europe Tour ! @lucas_metairie

La classique (1.1) Espagnole s’élancera le 11 février de San Javier en Murcie, pour sa 43e édition. Le Basque Ion Izagirre sera co-leader de l’équipe Cofidis avec Bryan Coquard La traditionelle tournée de classiques espagnoles du début de saison se poursuit ce week-end avec le Tour de Murcie. C’est la 7e course d’un jour dans la péninsule ibérique cette saison. Un parcours indécis C’est un…

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celebrations for team uae emirates

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banana army wins the team classification

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Nils Politt, Marc Soler, Adam Yates, Tadej Pogačar & Pavel Sivakov 📸 by Dario Belingheri/Getty Images

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corporate needs you to find the differences between these two pictures

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Team UAE getting some banana action on rest day 🍌

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this is the only France vs. England game I give a shit about by the way I don't care about Southgate's anti-Mbappe plan give me these two idiots bickering over who gets to blast the worst music in the team bus

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Giro d’Abruzzo 2024 | Stage 3 Pratola Peligna – Prati di Tivo

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"Pavel Sivakov (40952757670)" by Ray Rogers from Novato, United States is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

[oneminutefiftysixseconds]

hot take uae learned absolutely nothing from jumbo at the vuelta and are running full speed toward a completely avoidable situation at the tour. would be funny if it wasn't so mind-bogglingly frustrating to watch.

this got long so ramblings under the cut:

angliru may have been a PR disaster and team unity was in shambles but podium sweep + "making history" is not the worst thing a team could learn from

but yeah -- bringing three guys who between them have eight GT top-five results in the past three years, and ALSO tadej is... a choice for sure!

prelude: i'd like to see them support tadej to attempt the double.

anon i agree that it looks very frustrating, but i can see this working:

adam will very likely be in a superdomestique role again this year, and has said as much in interviews. not having had much opportunity to race against strong competition or race much at all since his UAE Tour crash so i don't think there's anything to be worried about there; he'll likely support whoever is strongest and be an exceptional helper in the mountains.

the other two in the AAA trio however?

joão's had a pretty reasonable start to the year, nothing special but he's shown such form in the past and will likely be planning his season around the tour + potential vuelta ambitions.

he has spoken to GCN and thecyclingdane about the lineup this year:

"I think as long as we are all on the same page, it can work really really good," he says of the climber-heavy Tour de France selection. "But if one guy is not on the page, then we might have a problem. It is up to the directors to manage it, I will do my job and my thing, then I can only control what I do, not what other people do."

"the stronger we are the easier it will be to take it as a team, to support whoever is the strongest. normally tadej, to support him to do what he wants"

a cyclist? being vague to the media? shocker! but i think joão will likely be riding at the back of leading groups in the mountains in service of whoever is strongest rather than his own ambitions, and that strongest is likely to be tadej. he's unlikely to try something.

juan however has been in great form this year -- 2nd+youth at tirreno and a win+youth at itzulia (that would likely have been a podium/top5 if not for the stage 4 crash), 5th at romandie against plenty of 2nd-tier GC guys, as a great climber i reckon he has a solid shot at fighting remco for the white jersey (because remcoco will out-TT him on the flat stage 7).

he's talked to gcn too, and was a little clearer about what he thinks:

“Tadej has shown that he is the number one and the leader of the team, but Jumbo has proved in the Vuelta a España that different cards can be played,” he noted. “We also did it during the Tour and it is something that we also have to do to take advantage for Tadej.”

a col-de-la-loze moment, tadej haemorrhaging time with juan stood to gain could be very interesting indeed as to what cards the team and juan might play...

“If I get the opportunity, I will obviously not give it up. It would be a big responsibility and I am going to prepare myself as best as possible to be in the best condition and, whatever the race situation, take advantage of the opportunities,” he said. “Tadej is the leader but I am not going to give up any chances the team or the race offers me. Obviously, I will go out thinking about winning a stage, if the circumstances arise, and also being able to fight for my personal goals in the GC."

he's young, hungry, hugely talented and ambitious -- the first non-jumbo of the 2023 vuelta -- and could probably try something if he wanted to, but given the rest of the team would be supporting tadej, it would have to be a very drastic situation indeed. he'd have to take so much time on the best bike rider in the world, and tadej would respond as strongly as we've seen him respond to jonas in the tour if juan were to become a threat to his GC. juan's chances, to me, lie only in tadej cracking badly and he would be stupid to attack him.

almeida is doing Suisse and ayuso is doing the Dauphine alongside the rest of the Tour squad barring joão/adam/tadej, so we'll see more of their form then.

as for the domestiques? i think it could be a good move to give the jersey away in the second week (should they take it in the first) on so tim & nils don't burn themselves out chasing the breaks on the flatter stages and then use marc & pavel to help retake it in the mountains.

if they're all on the tadej-is-our-leader orders there's certainly the climbing strength to answer a 2022 granon style attack -- as long as tadej is not isolated, and this is where the AAA cooperation could be crucial -- and their relative TTing doesn't matter as tadej is excellent, juan is good but not stellar and there's no TTT

all three of the AAA trio have likely been promised, if not outrightly then at least subtly, leadership for GC bids at other grand tours in the future. it would be a smart move PR and team-support wise (contract motivations unlikely to come into play: juan to 2028, joão to 2026, adam to 2025 and i can't see them letting him go just yet if he's still in form) to not end up with something like this: the movistar breakdown

picture the scene: it's the 2019 vuelta 2024 tour de france. marc juan gets in a breakaway and is the lone survivor. nairo tadej attacks from the chasing group and team orders come through that juan should sit up and wait. he has GC/stage ambitions but lost time earlier in the race, and thinks he can gain it back. he grudgingly waits after a very prominently internationally broadcast hissy-fit. tensions run very high in the team and it weakens their chance at winning the overall classification to the point of primož winning primož winning.

this would be supremely stupid and the team should avoid this situation at all costs, establish an order and stick to it. perhaps try for white with juan, as long as it doesn't jeopardise what matters more: the yellow jersey

(marc himself wouldn't reprise this i think he's chilled out a lot since then and knows he's not a gc rider.)

given primož's focus on this year's tour, jonas/visma as defending champions (sepp/matteo could be capable co-captains to either each other or a less than full strength jonas), remco's presence and the host of other GC riders that could present difficulties on the road to Nice, i think UAE will probably be too busy focusing on their competitors and winning with tadej for much intra team drama

doing the double for the first time in 26 years would, PR and prestige and history-making wise, massively outweigh winning with another rider/getting two riders on the podium

tadej won't be riding forever, and he won't ride the tour every year; there will be other opportunities for the AAA guys to try their own ambitions

they will have to be more tactically astute than 'another team catches the break then tadej go brrr' because the tour's parcours is harder than the giro's, the field is stronger, and well, it's the tour. there's always some surprises. i personally can't wait for july!

if crashes/cracks/whatever mean there's no contention from other teams by the third week? it would be heartbreaking to see tadej lose out on doing the double (this year is likely his best shot), but at the end of the day it's bike racing.

realistically? i think it's in everyone's long-term interests to focus on tadej and only switch focus if he abandons or loses like 30min remco-style, but humans are notoriously bad at thinking long term and they're racers by nature. we shall see, anon, we shall see!!

tl;dr:

uae's squad is either going to demolish everyone or demolish themselves and tadej's chances of doing the double.

as an openly biased tadej fan i want them to support him. i think adam and joão will support him unless the team say otherwise, and juan is a little more of a wildcard

the giro-tour double is more prestigious than the chances primož/jonas had to complete the giro-vuelta or tour-vuelta double last year so the team (and tadej) will want that more than jumbo likely wanted either of those outcomes.

anyone but tadej in yellow is not what they want and is temporary, like adam was going to be in 2023

now if juan does attack tadej? you heard it here first folks!

[marcelskittels]

PAVEL & COOKIE SIVAKOV

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tuning in for the last 30k of donostia san sebastian and getting waaaaaay to exited about sivakov bcs theres just no way he actually makes it to the finish line first but i would love that so much

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Italy Twofer: 9/11 Giro della Toscana; 9/12 Coppa Sabatini

Never been to Italy but with each race I see I want to go more than ever. We have two cat 5 one-day races on tap this week, both kinda climby, by which I mean that sprinters need not apply. First up, near Pisa in Tuscany, a little inland, Pontedera to be exact, the 96th running of the Giro della Toscana Those two climbs. Monte Serra done twice, makes this a climby affair. Last year Sivakov won…

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