Stage 9

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Stage 9

Day 9 Saint Meen le Grand - Lorient 177 km

Analysis

Before I begin with today's analysis, let me regress to comment a little on yesterday's stage. As the Tour progressed and Hincapie seemed to be doing well and staying the top GC spots, I forgot about his broken shoulder and lost training until just a few hours after I posted yesterday's analysis. Then I realized that Hincapie had obviously lost more form than previously thought by anyone. It also explains why he worked to gain the Yellow Jersey in the first few stages. He knew he was off form and might not win or gain the lead later so he was trying to provide PR exposure for his team and sponsors.

If he is far enough off form that he lost so much time in the time trial, it is very likely he will lose more time in the mountains. If this is the case, most likely, DSC will be forced to ride for Savoldelli for GC or turn its focus to stage wins because they don't have much else in the works right now for subtitles. This would explain their effort to get Martinez in today's break.

The DSC team seems to have imploded and it should start riding for stage wins and possibly the KOM title in the mountains. If they don't do more this year than it looks like they will, it is very likely there will be a major shake up on the team this fall and winter.

Concerning today's stage, TMO sent Kessler up the road in the break to force PHO to work chasing as much as possible while TMO rested today. This is a strategy I teach in my e-book in detail.

This was a critical strategy because TMO started the Tour with only 7 riders or down better than 20% on team strength so they have to conserve as much energy as possible instead of just towing the peloton for hours every day. Each rider on their team has to do 20% more work to get the same job done or ride 20% smarter. The latter is the better for energy conservation and TMO forced PHO to do TMO's work for them today. Can they do it enough with the good offensive control techniques like I teach in my book? We will see. It was a great move and worked today. Remember that I teach you to keep track of team strengths.

The riders knew today was a good day for a break win so there were several large breaks before the winning break finally got off. The combination of riders and teams in the break helped a lot since at least one sprinter team was represented in the break along with other strong teams which normally chase.

I told you McEwen saved his legs yesterday for today's stage and he won the pack sprint to increase his lead for the Points Title. He is a smart rider.

I saw Calzati contest and win a road prime and then he didn't show in the first three for the road prime in Plouay. I wondered what was up until he shortly after attack for his winning break. He had set out the Plouay prime to rest his legs and attacked the other riders tired legs right after the prime. Great move and it worked.

Tomorrow

Tomorrow will be a rest day and I will provide my normal coach's analysis for the Tour to this point. I will look at the past events that should influence the Tour and potential winners after having seen the riders for a week.

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