0'25", Farrar: "Well, er, Cav made a really remarkable comeback after being dumped in the grupetto for about 70k yesterday..."
1'10", narrator: "...don't quite know what he was implying when he said Cav made a big comeback yesterday when he was dropped by the peloton..."
(Also, we'd like to state we don't believe Mark Cavendish cheated in any way whatsoever.)
Yeah, I was wondering the same thing. So, he's questioning how Cavendish could be in such supreme condition today (winning the intermediate sprint and besting him in the final sprint) after having spent nearly half of the previous days' stage trailing the main group of riders. Now, he didn't finish all that far behind them, so he may not have been in as poor a condition as Tyler imagined. But you do have to wonder how a person's form could change so drastically from one day to the other.
ReplyDeleteI think it's quite a simple matter: 1. We all know that while Cav's a superb sprinter, he's crap at climbing so he was expected to do poorly yesterday; 2. Cav knows he's crap at climbing, so he probably took it easy and just made sure the broom wagon didn't get him, thus he might not have been as tired as people think; 3. the masseurs at the TDF are very, very good at what they do, and a team like HTC-Highroad can probably afford the best; HTC's lead-out is a tried, trusted and very effective technique which has worked in tougher conditions than today. All in all, I'm not sure his win today was all that remarkable - or no more so than any other TDF stage win, anyway.
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