Vuelta Stage 19 Noja - Bilbao

Beasty

With ednwireland away I thought it best to start a thread in case anyone wants to discuss today's stage ....

Hail 2 Da Thief

The Basque fans are awesome! Really turned up in numbers.

It'll be interesting to see what tactics Team Sky use.

Beasty

Only catching it on Eurosport's online commentry, but it sounds as if it's getting interesting with Froome making his move and Cobo following

Hail 2 Da Thief

Yep, Froome made a big attack but Cobo looked pretty comfortable in following his wheel.

ednwireland

Cracking climb anton finally doing something for my fantasy team. Great riding fron wiggo and froome. Cobo countering everthing though. Thanks to beasty for doing the stage specific threads

mahoo

great to see anton win. he was away in the break all day so fair play for him staying away.... it was mad when froome made the break and hit that tight packed section of crowd. it looked like he plowed into them and had to slow down a bit. hope it didnt effect the result. in fairness cobo looked strong enough to hang on to anything froome threw at him. crowd was mental. basquetcases you could say...brrrrdm tscch

Lusk Doyle

Tomorrow will be THE day when it's won or lost I'd say.

Idleater

ednwireland wrote: »

anton finally doing something for my fantasy team.

Too little too late :rolleyes:

elduggo

Hail 2 Da Thief wrote: »

The Basque fans are awesome! Really turned up in numbers.

they're screwballs. What was interesting was the light tension between the Basques and the Cantabrians. Neighboring provinces, Cobo is from the latter. This morning at stage start the Euskatel bus was completely mobbed by orange-clad Basque cycling 'fans', while the Cantabrians were sporting blue and yellow Cobo t-shirts (not sure what they said but I'm almost sure one of the words translates as 'cheat').

Had an interesting encounter with a Basque yesterday evening. On finding out I was Irish he got a bit aggro, saying his mate had told him the Irish hate the Basques. News to me. I'd have thought if anything, the opposite would be the case, especially given the notions some have about their politics being somewhat aligned. I left him be and decided not to argue the toss (I actually used to share a house with a girl from Bilbao so really failed to see where the animosity came from).

retalivity

i dunno...i thought today would have been the better stage for sky to do something.
send wiggins up the road tting in an escape, make geox work, then let froome attack on the climb. instead, wiggins done about 4k at the front before froome took off.

tomorrow has 40k flat after the cat 1 climb. barring wind, which could feck everyone up, id say the big guns will be altogether going over the line