Did Blockhaus Provide More Questions Than Answers?| Giro d'Italia 2026 | THEMOVE+

at Zero to Tyastage, getting the sweep of stage wins in the Valtut tour in the Zero. The big story is giantly beating his teammate Pelazari getting 4th 105 back probably a little too

“eager to follow, but Johan, what was your takeaway of today's stage?”

Well, Spencer, you said it all perfectly. I think that takeaway, I mean, we were expecting a victory stage victory of Jonas thinking of our today that happened. He attacked more or less where it was to be expected on the hardest part of the time. For me, what really stands out is the performance of Felix Gallo.

It's probably not going to matter in the end, but for me, it's nice to see that after the first

big Malton talk finish and a really hard climb. The race is not over. The race is not, you know, let's not decide it's everybody. Welcome back to the move plus. I'm Spencer Martin. I'm here with Johan Bernier. We are breaking down stage seven of the Zero. Detailia, a monster, 244 kilometer long stage top blockhouse. One by, you guessed it, Jonas Vinigar'd. Roodle summit finish. 13 kilometer, 13.5 kilometers long, eight and a half percent average. Vinigar'd sets the

“climbing record. Beets Nourikantana's time by, I believe, by over a minute. Felix Gallo surprisingly”

comes in second, 13 seconds back. Jai Hindley, a minute and two seconds back. And third, Julio Pelazari is Red Bull teammate and 105 been Connor with them. Matthias Rundell, the French writer on Tudor at 129. Julio Chocone confusingly in seventh. We'll talk about why is he going for G.C. when Tomau's perfect. Breakaway stage form at 140. Just to give people a quick primer of what happened before Johan and I break it down, the stage starts. It's extremely long. It took

them six hours and I was surprised that it only took that. I thought it would take longer. But a breakaway goes pretty much uncontested with Jonathan Milan trying to pick up an intermediate sprint points. Nicholas Zukowski on Q-35. Q-36.5. Jardie Christian vendor Lee on EF. Tim Naberman on picnic post and L Diego Pablo Sevilla on Pulti, visit Malta, get up the road. They get a gap of around six minutes. Bahrain and Visma are controlling the gap. Bahrain, they

have the racely, but I was surprised at how eager they were to control it, especially since no one in the breakaway was threatening their leaders jersey. The gap by the time they get to the base of the climb is down to 238. They quit Red Bull. Goes to the front. Not Visma. So right there kind of interesting, strange Red Bulls on the front for four-ish kilometers. Victor Campanart, from Visma's dropped key support rider. That's interesting. David De Pigan Zoli from Visma takes

up with 9k to go. Pigan Zoli, he pulls for three kilometers, pretty impressive. And then we have SEPCUSU polls for about 900 meters. You want to spend a guard attacks with 5.4 kilometers to go. Followed by Pelazari and Phil's call. Phil's call. Drops back is dropped. Unclear about a couple hundred meters later. Pelazari follows them. Gall after a kilometer after Vindigar's attack is 17 seconds back. A kilometer later, he's 25 seconds back from Vindigar, but Pelazari's been

dropped. Gall sprints by Pelazari. Pretty savvy move from them. And then in the last four K, kind of an unusual thing we saw. You want to spend a guard continues to press on, but is losing time to the chasing goal. So by the time he finishes, he is 13 seconds in front of Phil's call, who is right like right behind him. Like you can see him right there. Meaning Vindigar lost 12 seconds in the last four kilometers to the Austrian rider. I would say the big, the other than Phil's call

being 13 seconds back, you want to spend the guard winning his first career at Jero Tari stage,

getting the sweep of stage wins in the Valtta tour in the Jero. The big story is Jai Hindley, beating his teammate, Pelazari getting fourth 105 back probably a little too eager to follow,

“but Johan, what was your takeaway of today's stage?”

Well, Spencer, you said it all perfectly. I think that takeaway, I mean, we were expecting a victory stage victory of Jonas Vindigar today that happened. He attacked more or less where it was to be expected on the hardest part of the climb. For me, what's really stands out is the performance of Phil's call. It's not going to, it's probably not going to matter in the end,

but for me, it's nice to see it after the first big Maltta finish and a really hard climb.

The race is not over. The race is not decided, although it might be decided, but Phil's call is in the game. I think it's very, very promising that he took his own pace. Made up some time. I guess Jonas, to me, that means that either Jonas was stagnating a little bit,

great performance from Phil's call to be up there and to be coming back on the second best

stage racer in the world. That's pretty impressive, and so yeah, to me, golf's performance was really the fact of the day. You could say, well, you know, the race is still open. I don't think so, because golf is not a good time-travelist. He may lose. What is it? 41 kilometers, 42 kilometers, the time-travel? That luck for Phil's call that they decided randomly to throw like an old-school time trial in this race. That's, you know, conservatively, that may be two minutes. Right? Yeah,

Phil, Phil's call. You guys, Jonas. But still, the race is not over. In other circumstances, we could say, well, Jonas just blows everybody away and wins this with two and a half minutes

on the second rider, which could have been a possibility. And even Pelizari, you know, Pelizari,

“he, I think he made the mistake of trying to follow Jonas. He actually admitted that afterwards”

in his interview, also, that was a mistake. He learned from that. He's now going to focus on the podium, which may make it interesting. The fact is that I think from now on, probably, Gal is going to try to follow Jonas with new found motivation to be so close. But yeah, it's still, it's still open, it's still tight. If you look at the G.C., it's what is, what is, Jonas is, what 13 seconds separated from Phil's call, no, in the G.C.

Slightly more, right, because of the time, 17 seconds, because they got the bunch as a bonus table. Okay. Well, it's an off to the first moment of the stage. If, if the second real G.C. rider is only 17 seconds down, that's, that's a win for everybody, is for the fans, especially. And yeah, I like that. I like that. Super hard mountains. By the way, we also should mention a Fanzo Ulario, our race leader retained his race lead by three minutes in 17 seconds,

getting dangerously close to the defending that in that stage in time trial, who knows? He could hold him off by three minutes. You said that a couple, couple things to catch up on here. So with 4K to go, the Chase group was 52 seconds back. So, no, sorry, 57 seconds back. So that's like, Hennely and Pelazari were not really Pelazari. Hennely and others, it would later be kind of Hennely and Pelazari and who else was with them, Fino Connor. And then at the finish,

Hennely is 102 down. Pelazari is 105 down. Oh, Connor is 105 down. So that would tell you that Vinaigarde was not pulling out a ton of time against them for the last 4K. As, Felix, I was pulling him back, Felix, I don't want to spoil this race for anyone. He's probably not going to win the race, right? Because you don't just Vinaigarde, but today was a big, you said it didn't matter, but it matters for the podium, because he gets time on Hennely,

Pelazari, O'Connor, all those guys, maybe accept Jai Hennely or a better time trial listen him. But now he's in the mix, like this guy could finish second or third overall. If he can get through that time trial. So it was a big step for him in terms of finishing top three, which, what do you always say? Like, let's not talk about stages. Let's talk about stage. Like,

“if you want to win a grand tour, let's talk about the podium first. So I think that would be a big”

step for Phillip's call. Yeah, he's never finished. He's finished fifth in the tour, right? 5th or 5th last year in the tour. Yeah, there we go right. So it's kind of logical that he should be considered a podium candidate. If you look, Pelazari has never been on the podium of a grand tour, it means, of course, who else is up there. Come on, Pelazari. Well, you're a bomb,

never finished on the podium. It's only his third year pro. And he did finish top six twice in

two grand tours last year. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But so yeah, I mean, I think, I think, and then we, I'm curious to see Jai Hennely, how he's been on all that. I thought that was super interesting. It hit me as a writer, you know, he comes into a grand tour, doesn't make much noise, but a

“first big appointment he's there, you know? So, I think they're both probably on equal, on equal”

grounds now, Pelazari and Jai Hennely, in terms of their chances for the podium, although Red Bull may and will probably back Pelazari rather than Hennely, because, first of all, he's in Italian,

may be on his way out in Red Bull doing out a team. Yeah, that's probably for the best. I mean, it's, yeah, a little too crowded over there, but looks like Visma is in pole position. That would make a lot of sense, actually, and replacing some of the eighths. Yeah, and then open the zero,

“tell it works. Perfect. Yeah. I mean, I, I felt like Visma kind of misseminates today. I think they”

got a little lucky with Red Bull leads into the climb, pulls for the first four, five, K of the climb, and then Visma camping arts just dropped while Red Bull's polling, probably to do with his breakaway and one of the hardest stages anyone's ever raised. Two days ago, still unclear to me why they did that, and then Pigan Zoli does a very good turn of work for them, like he kind of bells them out, because he pulls for three K basically. So Pigan Zoli is going to be the key rider

for I think for you on us. If you look, obviously, Seb Kus is, you know, he has the pedigree of the ultimate teammate in the mountains, and he was the last man to lead out you on us, but Pigan Zoli, if you look what he did already, on stage two for you on us, on that shorter climb. He was the only, and he was super strong. This guy looks like he's in really, really good shape. This guy comes from bolted. Yeah, what a pick up in the off season. Yeah, it comes from bolted.

Yeah, last year. Yeah, really good rider, really good rider. Why did he, so this is a thing Visma does. He pulls off with what did I say six K to go, six point three K to go, and he's fightin hard. Middle, the good gets pushed out of the way by field of skulls, the Catholic teammate finishes the stage in 16th, two minutes, 25 seconds down with the pink jersey

with Egan Bernal. Seb Kus, Seb Kus kind of always does us, he finishes two seconds later.

Why is Visma doing this? Yeah, well, it's not the first time. Spencer, we've talked about this in the tour already. You know, they just, you know, the guys who were doing the work in the mountains, they keep going. They, you know, they don't, they never sit up. No. I don't know, man. I'm not a fan of this. Is it to be able to use them, you know, to keep them close enough that when a big group goes, they can put them in big groups and they're a threat for G.C. I mean, listen, if you have a leader

and, you know, the number one and only favor two in this race, like Jonas Wingard, you don't need

“to do that. You just, you need to have confidence in the strength of your team, and know that you're”

going to be able to control, you know, basically the whole Chiro. It costs energy, and, you know, we've all, we also see at Visma sometimes that, you know, the guys who have to be there logically

are not always there, you know, but they kind of switch, you know, when one guy is not good enough,

then another guy comes in. It has a great day. But it's, yeah, it's strange to see that they let these guys, I don't know if they allowed them or if they actually tell them, I'm going to guess it's the second. It's an instruction, you know, okay, you have to keep going. You have to keep going. Why? I have never, until now, I have never seen a situation in the tour or in the G.R. or in another stage race. I mean, smaller stage races, maybe you could say maybe, you know, because

a difference without power, but in a big tour, I've never seen a situation where Visma actually could play that card where they could take advantage of the fact that they had one guy decently placed in the G.C., and could use that situation having that person in a breakaway and put pressure on

their teams. I don't know. I mean, listen, if Pagan Zoli is, you know, you always have to think,

you know, okay, if you're number two or number three or number four in, it actually did happen once. CEPC was one of the world stuff like this. So, is it since then? Are doing this? Is it since then that they said, okay, let's try this, you never know. But, you know, like Pagan Zoli, if he keeps going, I don't know where he is now in G.C., but let's say he's five minutes down or six minutes down. He's down for a reason. He's not up with the first guys for a reason, because he is not of that

quality yet. The guys could still improve because he's he's he's a young rider, no? But

“yeah, I, I'm not a fan of this tactics. I think you should, you know, especially if it's”

a three week stage race, you have to manage the energy and the strength of every teammate. And when their job is done, it's job done. And that's okay. Then it's everything on reserve,

in my opinion, still the best formula to, to keep your team together and have your guys

recovered every day. You need them. So, possible they're doing it in case Jonas has a mechanical

“and they have people close to him. I mean, the only thing I can think of.”

That's, listen, that's not, it's, you know, it's not, it's not, yeah, I've not taught them. I would actually be, if you think about the like, I would actually be more useful probably than there's a scenario where Pagan's soul, he gets only gets in a breakaway and the problem with, yeah, I mean, it could you write, it happened with subconscious, but you start to get in a magical thinking territory. Like, so he's in a breakaway with no other GC writer and then holds everyone

off to win the GC. You don't see that so often, probably. No, yeah. Let's talk about Jonas's attack. So, I counted one time where he left the saddle. He was completely, he was seated the entire time he was attacking and we, we know he must have been going hard because he was, he, they

distance this group so fast. Like we said, goal loses all his time basically in the first K of the,

he's something like 19 seconds down in the first kilometer of the attack. He pulls back 12 seconds on Jonas in the last 4K. So, we know he's going fast when he's seated. He stands up with 4.6 K to go and that is when I clock Pelazari cracking. So, maybe he stood up to crack him. His power, I've estimated this is even a little conservative. 395 watts for 38 minutes, 26 seconds. I'd knocked a little bit off because it just looked high to be. But Derek G, we have his power and

front of us is real power. He did 40 minutes on the climb. 433 watts, 6.1 watts per kilo. We have vinegar at 6.5 watts per kilo for almost 40 minutes. That is, that's like a two to France level climbing performance. So, we know he was good. It's not like he's struggling here. So, that makes it even more impressive that golf pulled it back. But what do you make? I have a lot of people writing me with theories about the seated phenomenon we've been seeing. But what do you

think about this? I mean, I wouldn't, I wouldn't, I wouldn't look too deep into it. I mean, it's, it's probably they tested this, it's his most efficient way, especially on longer climbs.

“It's on shorter climbs. You can, you know, I think you can get out of the saddle and not pay for it.”

But, you know, I mean, if you get out of the saddle, your power goes up dramatically for a very short period of time. And I think they've, they've discovered or calculated that, you know, staying seated, you can distribute your power more evenly, especially for, you know, 30, 40 minutes effort. You know, we, I mean, a lot of people say, I, you know, Pugachar does it. Now Vingagar does it. It's the new trend. I think it depends from writer to writer. I think Jonas is a typical, we

not before already. He was not often all of the saddle. Is it because we focus on it now? I mean, I don't know, I feel a Pugachar used to see them, you know, Jonas, like, you know, you have this vision in your head of him when he was winning tours. It'd be out of the saddle. Do you think it has the shorter cranks? I mean, someone's simply theory that if you've really short cranks, it can you mess you up to stand up. And also, I mean, you listen, if you have shorter cranks, you can maintain

your cadence, uh, yeah, easier than, like, pushing a big ear. I don't know. What is Jonas now? Is it me? Because I've, I mean, this, we know Pugachar's 165, right? So I've seen last year,

“I seem to remember that at some point he wasn't 155 and then went back to 161, 65. What's,”

what's he writing now? 155 seems extremely short to me. Seems very short. I would want to go to a written measure this, um, which, um, but I think I think, you know, the shorter cranks do allow you to stay seated and maintain your cadence more comfortably than if you have long of cranks. But also, it's, I mean, it's better. It's not that. I mean, it's, it's, it's more efficient. That's for sure. They've done the tests. They know the science behind it, right? But it's not

that big of a difference. You know, 165 or 178. It's five, you know, it's half a centimeter. But if you've gone down from, let's say, 178.155, that's one point five centimeters. Is that right? And in the metric system, something like that, and imagine if you like raised your seat 1.5 centimeters, you know, it would feel drastically different. So yeah, but that's not the same. You could like, that's lit. If you're standing up, it's like changing the center of your gravity

got a bit. It may be wonder about short cranks and sprints, actually. The more you think about it. But whatever he's doing, he's putting out a lot of power. It's working. It does drive me crazy. It times with golf. I was like, just stand up. Like, let's go anaerobic man here. You could catch

it all. No, golf cadence is amazing. You know, he was right. He's not the smallest gear he had at

correct. But for his, for him, it works. You know, he's not hydrodynamic at all at an ever. You know, he pedals with his knees out, but you know, he's he goes fast up those times when it works for him. And he's very steady. You know, he's very steady. You know, he doesn't have any ups and downs. It's, it's, he's incredibly incredibly steady. And so here. I just have a list here. You tell me what you think right or wrong. Very simple. Good, medium bad days. Good. Jonas Fenderguard

probably saved to say he had a good day, right? When he's the stage. It doesn't take the race lead, which is good, right? Now he still has Ularya when the race lead still is by rain as a friend. That's fantastic. Feel, let's go. Good day. He gets, he's probably, I feel bad. The guy had probably

the best climbing performance of his career. Really incredible climbing performance. And we're

saying, ah, he's not going to win the race. What if he goes on, he could, he maybe he does, but you probably want it. But for the podium, this is big. So a good day for him. And then Ron Dell, Matthias Ron Dell from Tudor Procycling. Yeah, I thought that was a very good day for us. Do days ago went through the back window of the UAE car, but yeah, which we didn't see, but we saw the broken window. Yeah. Yeah, it's a good climber man. Young rider. He's been, he's been at

some races already, came to the forefront. Yeah. Really good day for him too. I would say, balidzari, medium day, you know, a movement, we can't say it's a bad day. You know, he's, yeah, it's a great day. He's turned in the stage, no? A four to four in the stage. Right behind him. One minute, one minute down. So it's not a bad day. Obviously, he expected more, but all is not lost. Definitely up for the podium. So good day for Jay Hindley. Also, really good day. All in all, not a bad day for

Red Bull. I mean, I still, Spencer. I mean, I still question what they were doing at the bottom of blockhouse. 13 and a half kilometers and, and Visma only comes to the front with 8K to go. So that

means that the first 5K were, you know, it was Red Bull in command. Was it necessary, probably not,

at the same time? You know, you could also argue, well, you know, we have, we have three riders on the team and there's nothing else they can do than just ride these five kilometers here at the bottom of the climb. But, you know, normally it would be on Visma to already start using their riders there. And I mean, on the other hand, you could also say, well, you know, if Visma

“starts straight away, then maybe you want us to attack earlier and we lose more time. If I think”

if you don't have to attack earlier, probably we could have seen this scenario where phase call actually comes in to get it with you and us if you don't start this effort earlier. Yeah, or pastism. I don't know, this is in high bed, right? Yeah, but it'd be hard, because they were stronger than quite a bit stronger than Visma at the start of the climb. Let's say they don't pull. Then Visma is going to have to go to the front, probably most likely they're going to

burn their riders earlier. You want us to attack earlier, but is the attack off a slower pace?

Does that give people, is it easier to follow? I don't know. I just don't, I'm never a big fan of

pulling if you're not, if you do not have the strongest ride. If pulling at the bottom of a climb when you don't have the strongest climber in the group, I don't know. Right, so the first big

“climb is also also a discovery of how is everybody, right? I mean, how strong are they really?”

Now everybody could say, well, you know, we're, you know, Visma's incredibly strong, but you know what? Let's test them. Let's see how strong they really are. Turns out they were maybe not as strong as they thought, because they only had big hands, only and set goose with you on us. Yeah, the pushback to what I'm saying, the crit my criticism, the pushback to it is, you're right. Sometimes you want to test them, because you don't know, because I think

it was, I want to say the 2017 Tour de France, the perigood, some at finish, they let team sky ride the front, they let Chris from sit there and then Roman Bardet attacks at the end and Chris from explodes, you're like, well, maybe someone should have tested them earlier. You would have found that out. So there is something to be said for that, and they did find out that maybe Visma's not quite as strong. If Visma has to defend the jersey to the third week, it, I would, like, I don't,

“I'm not full of confidence in them after the stage, am I crazy for that?”

I mean, they're already, they're also, they're one man down. Let's not forget that. And it was super important, right? By the way, Roman, the other man would have been probably the Ford guy in, you know, because they have Tim Okili, they have Campanard's,

Calderma, right? Who would be there just before Paganzoli? I think they're strong enough.

“Yeah, I mean, Paganzoli wasn't impressive today. I got like, I really impressed me.”

I just, yeah, I just can't get over that pickup. You know, I would imagine he was quite available. If you're on Palty, Visma Malta, you probably would go to a lot of teams and they signed them. But they picked up two Italians, say, you, everybody said, you know, well, this is a surprise, you know, they got all the other guys. Yeah, they got all the other guys. Yeah, they got who, if you're ready, who won, throw Broly on, you know? He's like 30 years old from a,

pretty what he's on. He comes from, you know, Yani, so, you know, they must have had information from, I don't know, an Italian rider on, I mean, probably on the team who said, hey, these guys good, and then, you know, they, they must have had data that, to back it up. And for the moment, these two riders, it's proven that it was a really good pickup, good choice. Shout out Patrick Bro. Good job. And so to finish, I had,

medium, I had Henly Pelazari, Aaron's been store. And then bad, I had to do this. Innerk Moss and Ian Bernal, I would say, had not bad days. Yeah. Yeah. I guess we should say, then we good, Ularya, we should put him in a good bucket because he defended us. Yeah, I mean,

“this was, I think it was to be expected. I said, you know, two and a half three minutes,”

they're not to be three minutes, to be expected, because let's not forget this guy, two days ago was, he was, he was 240k in the rain in the front, that took a lot of him. Yeah, we got that. So easily, he's a good climber. I said, he's a good climber. He's probably going to have to jersey until, maybe after the time trial still. There is still another summer finish before the time trial. So I guess he could lose a minute on that. I don't know,

though, maybe, maybe less. Yeah. If he holds it after the time trial, it starts to get the story becomes interesting. I don't think he would actually hold it until the other rays, but he might hold it until stage 14, almost the second rest day. So, that would be good.

We can make that Spencer, that, you know, he's never, he's not going to hold it till the other race.

You want to bet on that or no. No. Okay. Wait, this year. That would be impressive. What if they never pulled them back and he's just losing 10 seconds every self finish? I don't think that's, I mean, even stage 14's, I'm even the hardest day of the race. And you look at it. It looks like a tour de France, like, serious mountain stage. And they're not even at the hard mountains yet. So, no, I don't think he's going to hold on. And I was going to mention one of the things, oh, okay.

So, in Rick Moss, this is not great. He gets dropped with Egan Bernal. Bernal finishes in the group with Ullario. Not great. Two, fifty, seven back on the stage winner. You want to spin a guard.

“And I think Moss, Morton, five minutes. In Rick Moss was almost six minutes back, surrounded by”

his mobile mobile star team. So, that's really not good. No, no. And, you know, they came in with, I mean, I've seen a few interviews. I mean, he did not race a lot. He had this, you know, this physical problem. I had a surgery for something. I don't remember what it was for. Eli had a coronary. I believe. Wasn't it? I don't know. Okay. I don't think so. I was something to do with the veins. I like the various veins or something. Yeah, it's something like that. I think. But,

but, you know, he sounded really, really confident that, you know, everything was in place. And he was, you know, he came into good shape. He was going to improve during the, doing the zero. But,

you know, shows that you never know. You know, I mean, the day was obviously not, not a good day. He looked

pretty good until now. It was always up there. The day, the day that John Christen attacked, he was actually the last guy who brought him back, he goes to the gap. Yeah. Yeah. For, or, or, we saw a lot. So, you know, I mean, for shows that, you know, a rider like Enrique Moss was a climber when he's up there in finals of those kind of stages. He said, okay, you know, he's probably in good shape, you know. But, today, man, there was no hiding.

There's, you know, it was, if you don't have it, you know, have it, you know, have it. Eggman, all the same, you know, I mean, I just saw a little interview from him. He had no explanation, didn't feel good. He said, it was too fast when this moment was pulling. And that was it, you know, he had no excuses. Well, he said that on stage was at stage four, that his heart rate was at 190 when he had dropped. It's a quite high for, I mean, I don't know if that's a dehydration

aphib, but that's like, I don't know. Yeah, that's not that's outside of just who this is hard. And I'm getting dropped. I would tell you there's like some sort of hydration thing or his body's

not recovered from the first few stages or travel. But I mean, today, actually, he was better than

stage four. But yeah, it's not probably not going to be a GC4, so the team's probably all in our announcement. No, no, this is, this is, no, I said already a stage four. I said, if this happens now, you know, it doesn't look good for the next two weeks. First big appointments, you know, Doc House, it's not, I mean, it didn't really break down. I mean, he's only two minutes. What is he two minutes? So something behind today? Yeah, he's not, he's not that far behind.

Well, 247 behind. Okay. Okay. The stage winner, Vinny Gerd. So he wasn't from the, he wasn't from the value. He was, sorry, 257, so he's two seconds behind the value. Okay. Okay, okay. He's kind of good alone along at the back of that group. And yeah, not, not, not, not good. Orange one was okay. I think, you know, orange one could limit the limit the damage. But, you know, if we talk about Aaron's mom, we're talking about maybe a top five, right? We're not talking about the podium.

The only pushback is I'm even looking now. Maybe he's too far back. How is he as a time trialist compared to Jai Hindley, Felix Gaul? Vinny Connor Pelazari. What do we say? He's good. Yeah. So that's where he's existing a lot better, right? I mean, a lot better time trialist. Yeah.

“So he could, if he stays that, I mean, that's why today was like, you know, maybe lost a little”

bit more than he wanted to, but if he stays close and then they go into that time trial, they could be a good stage for him. Yeah. But I thought he looked like he was hurting before

Jonas attacked, which is not great if you're going for the podium. A lot of someone always looks,

you know, though, I don't get fooled by his style, you know, he's all over the bike. He never looks like he's comfortable, but, you know, he's a good rider. And then I thought that again, he went two stages in the two last year. Yeah. Two miles straight impressive. Derek J. West, kind of a good day. Eighth, one forty two back, put now at four hundred three watts for forty minutes, not bad. Yeah, but that's, you know, at these numbers don't mean this

and you can push whatever you want this to result in counts, you know, it's like, okay. But he's another guy. Great numbers, but you know, in the top three of the stage. But he's another guy, though, that the time trial is going to favor him way more than that. Yeah.

Like, potentially he's going to take back more than he lost just today in the time trial on

goal, Hennely, O'Connor, Pelazari. We'll see. But he's probably the best time trial that's besides Jonas of the GC group. Don't you think? Yeah. I know not at this one. Yeah. Yeah. So, now it's

“for the time trial. Now, way to go, you have to tie it. Now, maybe not a terrible course design,”

but let's take a quick break. And then I have a, I have a question for you about Julia Chicone, and then we're going to preview the next stage because they go hand in hand. Hey, everybody, this episode is brought to you by Rujiet. Life comes at you fast between work relationships and everything else on your plate. You want to know you can show up on accounts. And that includes the bedroom. If things aren't working out the way that you're used to,

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interesting stage. Stage 8, 156 kilometers, flat along the coast, slight uphill start to get to the coast. Think of the climb out of this little valley there and flat along the coast for 95 kilometers. And then we have three climbs, right, four, four climbs. One of them, the finish, sorry, five climbs. One of them, a finishing climb, super steep section of it, like 13% for almost a kilometer with pitches of 22%, then you go up to the finish and you have a 10% pitch right before the finish.

because he is only, he's in fifth place overall. He's a minute, like a little over a minute behind

you on a spin at guard. So he's not going to be in that breakway. He was great on the day. He finished seventh on the day, 140 down. Why did he do that? What is going on here? He said in the interview,

“he's in 8 in GC, I think Spencer. We both messed that up. Yeah, yeah, he's in 8, but if you look”

amongst the favorites, he's maybe in fifth. Yeah, he's too close to be able to go in a breakaway. Was that going to be your question? Why is he up there? He said in the interview after the stage that he wasn't here for GC. Tomorrow will be perfect for him. All these things cannot be true, right, because why would he have done this if he's not here for GC? Yeah, if he's not here for GC, then today, it's probably not, not a good idea to hang on. If he loses three, four more minutes,

the day tomorrow is an ideal stage. Now the question is, it's going to be a breakaway, tomorrow. We don't know, right? To me, it looks like it's an ideal stage for a breakaway, but maybe the pattern on the sides differently. Well, do you know who would be? You don't know, it's also possible that Julie is just a very good guy and wanted to help Derek G. And like be there for Derek G. Like where I guess we should explore that possibility. Yeah, but another theory I have is that little

track does not want this to be a breakaway day. That they want it to be contested from the Peloton, so Chicone can win. That's also a possibility. Yeah, it could be, but, you know,

it's ultimately not going to be a little track. It could decide on that. It's going to be Visma

and Bahrain who decide on that. Yeah. Bahrain is the control this Peloton. This is their

“Peloton. They were very eager to work. I think maybe we weren't recording yet, but you thought”

maybe there was a deal struck with Bahrain in Visma because Bahrain was really helping out all day. This stage, super interesting. I'm quite curious to watch it. It's not that long. 156 kilometers. So just under 100 miles. And it has these long stretch, 100 kilometers basically of just flat along the coast. And then it gets into, you know, short, short-ish mountain passes. Like 10 K-long and 4%, the first one. Then 5 K-long at 6%, a bonus second. A bone, a red bull kilometers

sprint at the top of a climb that is 11% average. And then we have these tough climbs up too. It's one of these Roman Helptop towns furmo is where the finish is. Who do you think wins this thing? I still, I mean, like logically, it should be an ideal stage for a breakaway. It's very difficult to predict Spencer. It's a wild guess. But if it's a breakaway, I'm looking at names like, for example, Alessandro Pinarello, from NSN. He's, you know, he's been

good in good form this year. We haven't seen him yet in his Giro and then Lorenzo Milese, who's a young rider on Movistar. And did an impressive performance that they that Movistar did the selection on that climb for Alessandro Larr. I'm just throwing those two names out there, but it's a wild guess. But I do think that it's an ideal stage for a breakaway, with a very hard finish, with a very

“hard final. So it needs to be a rider who can, I mean, you need to be the best climber of the”

breakaway. You have to be far enough down in the GC to get into the breakaway. And then you have to be the best climber from the breakaway. And you have to get into the breakaway on terrain that's not suited to climbers. So it's not so easy. So it's a win that when you think about it like that, I'm going to, I like your picks. I really like Alessandro Pinarello. He could win this. I'm going to go Darren Rafferty on EF. EF's going to be in that move. They've been in

every move the last few days, right? So EF's going to be up there. He had an incredible bridge.

What was that on stage? Five. And so I think he's a good enough climber. I think you could win the stage. And then John Marco Garafoli on Still Quickstep. I think he could win too. Okay. But what we're doing is we're just picking the top six from stage five, which is not a bad not bad, because that shows you who are the strongest climbers that can go on breakaways. I mean, we don't think obviously Olario is not going to win. That would be unbelievable.

He got in the breakaway. He got into three more than this one stage. Probably not going to be Thomas Silva. Probably not going to be Igor Arietta, right? You don't see a double up?

bit of time today is, I think, young Kristen. Yep. Did he not lose a lot of time? He got dropped very

early on the climb. Let's look where he is. Yeah, he's in 23rd place. Okay. So, you know,

“Jonathan Arvice, UAE is, it's the UAE is going to be active tomorrow to get to be in the break. I think”

there are various, I think maybe that stresses even his ability. That would be for him to be

able to out climb everybody on those climbs. I don't know if I can see that. Short ones, I mean, especially in the final, they're all short ones as deep ones. So, I think I think he, yeah,

“I think you could do it. The problem with the on Kristen is he's seven, 50 back.”

Is does he get in the break and the people start freaking out and chasing him? Probably not, right?

Yeah, I mean, it's, yeah, there's, listen, after the first mountain stage already now,

everybody knows a little bit where they are, there will be people already starting to think, not just about the wind, the podium, the top five, the top 10, like two doork. It's just, yeah. So, so in that case, young Kristen would be a threat for some of those people. Well, so we like

“our guys. I like your pick of Alessandro Penarello. I think he could win the stage. I think Darren”

Rafferty could win the stage. But I also, as I said, I don't think it's impossible that it's not a breakaway day, because it's such a difficult, it's not easy breakaway formation terrain. And it could make it really weird. You could have a breakaway go late after the flat part. And when the climbs begin, we just don't know. And Johan, you have anything else on today's stage where it could be for months. That's it, Spencer. That's it. All right. Well, thank you so much. And we'll

do back to break down stage eight tomorrow. Okay, thanks. I'll get back.