Tour de France

Still, Sunweb had a fair go at them last year with some minor successes, as did A2GR, and they weren't even the biggest budgeted outfits. Nobody has particularly tried, or been able to do the same this year. Movistar generally have a conservative policy and will also be trying to protect their lead in the team standings, so maybe Roglic & Krusjiwik's Lotto NL might have a go as they are the ones who stand to gain most out of any chaos. 

It leaves a big finish atop each climb, where all the big guys have legs to do something. Thomas put time into the others in a few of the stages, but not much. It's a far cry from the days when Froomewould fly off into the distance with 5k to go and win by 90 seconds

It isn't so much that they are setting the pace, if they weren't, someone else would be regardless, its the fact that with all of them at the front, all the time, up to the very last few kms usually mean all attacks are shut down more or less immediately.  One man, on his own, say like Martin usually is late on, can't chase down every single attack at that stage in a race, after the 2nd or 3rd attempted break someone will get away & stay away. Froome or Thomas on their own couldn't either, not in every stage. Because of Skys tactics, that is what we are not seeing. 

Froome would arguably have been a lot further back & lost more time today had Bernal not been there for example, though he may also have latched on to Martin, so its hard to say that for definite. Teams always had one or 2 specialists to look after the main men in the mountains to do that exact job, but it wouldn't necessarily be the same fella every day, mainly as it takes an awful lot out of lads. Sky though, have 5 or 6 of them all day, every day. 

The general idea for the other teams is to try get rid of some of those 5 or 6 earlyish, so that they can isolate the Sky leaders later on so their own man/men can have a go.  Last year, A2GR attacked them on descents, which worked some of the time, Sunweb had a few goes at taking them on in flatter stages with limited success, this year, no team has really tried at all, even the next strongest team in Movistar. 

Today was a good day for other teams, or about as good as could have been expected, but it was Katusha with their mid race pace setting who probably had the biggest influence in shedding some of the Sky lads (bar Bernal & the 2 leaders) early, or at least earlier than usual. And once they were gone, Roglic was able to put some time into Thomas, while Froome was lucky enough to hang on at all. Think everyone knows no team is strong enough to try take them on every day, but some real attacking talent like Bardet, Martin, Roglic & Quintana are being shut out more by tactics rather than any individual weaknesses. 

How they are able to have their entire team on the front all day every day when no other team can manage it is a different story entirely and will probably only become apparent with the passing of time. Riding at the front gives no protection from the wind, so takes more effort, but these lads can do it every single day for 3 weeks, that is something that never really happened before. Look at old TDF footage, especially on flat stages and you would see the leader's team doing half an hour on the front, before moving to one side and letting the 2nd or 3rd placed fella's team take over for a while, back then it was a tactic of the 2nd or 3rd team not to do their share to conserve energy for later on, but these days its one team on the front all the way to 5km from the finish, every single day. Even though the 2nd or 3rd fella's teams are conserving energy by not being on the front, they still can't overtake or attack Sky. It all seems a bit odd. 

The requirements to be a good climber and a good time trialist are the same however, been able to sustain a high power output over a prolonged period of time. The difference being a pure climber was much lighter and had a higher power to weight ratio so would climb faster, where as on a TT it generally came down to raw power.

So when you see sky dropping pure climbers like Bardet, Martin and Quintana it does make you scratch your head. Their TTs yesterday is what you would expect of a climber, and none of the climbers were anywhere near challenging yesterday.

Of course most riders weren't going flat out yesterday as there was no real need to, so it's hard to judge properly, though sky did have 6 riders in the top 25, in fairness though they have 3 national champs in their team.

The last climber that could time trail was Contador, and we know about his past, but at least he was exciting to watch!!

I may be wrong but how much have power meters ruined racing? Would the sky train be as effective without them?