It was an exciting -- and bizarre -- day of racing in today's Stage 10 of the Tour de France. Multiple attacks on the final climb culminated in Magnus Cort just barely outsprinting Nick Schultz.
Cort is on the right; Schultz is on the left.
What made today's stage bizarre was the protest concerning the environment, which happened with about 35 km (22 mi) left in the stage. The race was paused and organizers had to determine all the gaps so that riders could be restarted with those gaps in place.
The photo I grabbed above shows the peloton waiting for the restart. What does a paused race do to modeling? A protest and paused race certainly were not in my model for today's stage! Riders had a lot of time to take fluids and rest. I worried that my prediction would be too slow. And that is exactly what happened.
- Stage 10: 3h 18' 50" (actual), 3h 27' 04" (prediction), 08' 14" slow (4.14% error)
I did a lot better modeling the peloton. Lennard Kämna made a strong push for the yellow jersey. He was the in breakaway group and jumped up to second place overall, just 11 seconds back, after Tadej Pogačar led the peloton across the finish line. Pogačar sprinted across, holding off riders who tried to sneak a few seconds on him. Pogačar finished 08' 54" behind Cort's winning time. We would have been nearly perfect with that time! But we want the winning time. Check out Cort's average speed.
- Stage 10: 12.41 m/s (44.69 kph or 27.77 mph)
Announcers noted that this year's race is the fastest to this point in the last 20 years. Nobody wants to see a repeat of what was going on in the Tour de France 20 years ago.
Tomorrow's 151.7-km (94.26-mi) mountain stage will be a true test for the climbers. Beginning in the 1992 Olympic city of Albertville, riders will head south into the Alps where they will tackle two hors catégorie climbs. The first will be the climb to the 2642-m (8668-ft) peak of Col du Galibier. The second will be the climb to the finish line at the 2413-m (7917-ft) peak of Col du Granon. Our prediction is given below.
- Stage 11: 4h 12' 20" (prediction)
That will be a pretty fast time. But given how this year's race has gone, "pretty fast" may not be fast enough.
No comments:
Post a Comment