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As professional biking eases into the quickly approaching 2024 season with pre-season coaching camps and, at the least for my part, much-too-early Tour de France workforce reveals (by way of the discharge of the 2024 racing schedules for his or her main stars), an attention-grabbing pattern has emerged that differs considerably from 12 months’s previous: The foremost GC contending groups are all placing collectively Tour de France tremendous groups in an try to tackle the Jonas Vingegaard/Visma-Lease a Bike juggernaut.
For instance, the Bora-Hansgrohe and UAE Team Emirates groups of the 2 greatest GC challengers (Primož Roglič and Tadej Pogačar) to the two-time defending champion Jonas Vingegaard, have all introduced they’re sending groups stacked with all of their high GC contenders in an try to fight Vingegaard and Visma with a dose of their very own drugs.
And, maybe most curiously, as an alternative of the normal “we are going to let the highway determine” mantra we’ve seen from multi-leader groups in years previous, Bora has already come out and explicitly acknowledged that their gifted workforce can be totally behind Roglič from the beginning of the race.
Equally, UAE has implicitly signaled their stacked workforce can be solely behind Pogačar because of the easy proven fact that Pogačar is the only workforce chief, with out query, at any race he participates in (a small perk of being among the best riders of all-time within the prime of their profession).
This pattern runs counter to the traditional knowledge of years previous, which acknowledged that groups ought to unfold their finest expertise out throughout the three grand excursions as a way to maximize their possibilities of success.
The perceived safer route could be for Bora to ship strong GC riders like Aleksandr Vlasov to the Giro d’Italia, as an alternative of committing him to experience in assist of Roglič on the Tour.
Whereas holding gifted riders again and sending them to focus on different Grand Excursions is an intriguing concept and is one thing that “feels” prefer it ought to work, the return on the technique has considerably decreased lately.
For instance, within the final three editions, the Giro has been received twice by riders who had been close to the highest of the GC meals chain on the time of their win (Egan Bernal 2021 and Primož Roglič 2023).
In the meantime, 4 out of the final 5 editions of the Vuelta a España have been received by Primož Roglič and Remco Evenepoel, with the fifth victor, Sepp Kuss, profitable as a consequence of having two of the most effective riders, Vingegaard and Roglič, on his workforce.
Going into 2024, the Giro total classification can be contested by top-tier riders like Pogačar, and doubtlessly even Wout van Aert, whereas the Vuelta, as has change into the norm lately, will virtually definitely proceed to function the world’s finest GC riders.
In summation, the non-Tour de France grand excursions are not the low-hanging fruit they as soon as had been, so the motivation to carry your high GC riders out of the Tour to focus on them has all however disappeared.
One more reason we’re seeing that is that groups notice that the one solution to beat trendy tremendous contenders like Jonas Vingegaard and tremendous groups like Visma-Lease a Bike is to throw every part at them and try to sow chaos (very similar to Jumbo did to overthrow the seemingly unbeatable Tadej Pogačar on the 2022 Tour de France).
How this technique might swing the stability of energy on the 2024 Tour de France
Exterior of the straightforward proven fact that this can (hopefully) produce essentially the most attention-grabbing GC battle on the Tour, it contradicts Vingegaard’s Visma workforce’s 2024 grand tour technique, which is seeing them stretch their workforce skinny throughout the grand excursions.
Mockingly, Visma is the workforce that has used the “stacked-team, swarm-attack” technique with essentially the most success lately once they applied it to win the 2022 Tour de France and 2023 Vuelta a Espaňa.
We must always be aware that that is partly by design since, because the workforce of the odds-on favourite to win in 2024 with Vingegaard, they’ve considerably misplaced the flexibility to run this technique again.
That is the case as their finest likelihood of profitable requires them to fall right into a defensive/management mode from the very starting of the race, since they’ve essentially the most to lose by racing aggressively.
This implies the chance/reward ratio doesn’t align for them to carry a number of leaders, however as an alternative, it incentivizes them to carry extraordinarily robust domestiques who can set such a tough race that they will management assaults from their rivals.
As a reference, once we have a look at the recently-released full begin lists from UAE, Visma, and Bora-Hansgrohe for the 2024 Tour de France (in addition to Ineos’ partial begin record), we are able to see that UAE, Bora, and even Ineos have extra potential GC contenders* on their Tour groups than Visma.
It goes with out saying that we must always take into account that these begin lists can and can change as a consequence of rider damage and type points as soon as the season truly will get underway.
*This was calculated by monitoring the highest Grand Tour GC outcomes inside the three years previous to that Tour for every workforce’s riders and, via an admittedly goal course of, by tagging a rider as an ‘Precise’ or ‘Finest-Case’ GC contender.
2024 Tour de France choose workforce GC contender rankings
1) UAE Emirates
Tadej Pogačar (2xTdF Wins)
Adam Yates (1xTdF podium)
João Almeida (1x Giro podium)
Juan Auyso (1xVuelta podium)
Pavel Sivakov (1xGiro high ten)
Marc Soler
Nils Politt
Tim Wellens
Totals: 4xActual GC Contenders
5xBest-Case GC Contenders
2) Bora-Hansgrohe
Primož Roglič (4xGT wins)
Jai Hindley (1xGiro win)
Aleksandr Vlasov (2xGT high 5)
Daniel Martínez (1xGiro high 5)
Lennard Kämna (1xGiro high ten)
Matteo Sobrero
Nico Denz
Danny van Poppel
Totals: 2xActual GC Contenders
5xBest-Case GC Contenders
3) Ineos Grenadiers
Geraint Thomas (2xGT podium)
Carlos Rodríguez (1xTdF high 5)
Tom Pidcock (2xTdF high 20)
Totals: 2xActual GC Contenders
3xBest-Case GC Contenders
4) Visma-Lease a Bike
Jonas Vingegaard (2xTdF wins)
Sepp Kuss (1xVuelta win)
Steven Kruijswijk
Jan Tratnik
Dylan van Baarle
Christophe Laporte
Matteo Jorgenson
Tiesj Benoot
Totals: 2xActual GC Contenders
2xBest-Case GC Contenders
2023 Tour de France choose workforce GC contender rankings
Once we evaluate this to the 2023 Tour de France, we are able to instantly see that whereas Visma-Lease a Bike’s workforce energy (as judged by the uncooked variety of ‘Finest-Case GC Contenders’) is roughly the identical as 2024, Bora and UAE have considerably elevated their GC contender depth between the 2023 and 2024 version of the Tour.
1) Visma (Jumbo-Visma)
Jonas Vingegaard (1xTdF win)
Wilco Kelderman (1xGiro podium)
Sepp Kuss (1xVuelta high ten)
Tiesj Benoot
Christophe Laporte
Wout van Aert
Dylan van Baarle
Nathan van Hooydonck
Complete: 1xActual GC Contenders
3xBest-Case GC Contenders
2) UAE Emirates
Tadej Pogačar (2xTdF wins)
Adam Yates (2xGT high 5)
Marc Soler
Rafał Majka
Mikkel Bjerg
Felix Großschartner
Vegard Stake Laengen
Matteo Trentin
Totals: 2xActualGC Contenders
2xBest-Case GC Contenders
3) Bora-Hansgrohe
Jai Hindley (1xGiro win)
Emanuel Buchmann (1xGiro high ten)
Patrick Konrad
Marco Haller
Bob Jungels
Jordi Meeus
Nils Politt
Danny van Poppel
Complete: 1xActual GC Contenders
2xBest-Case GC Contenders
2022 Tour de France choose workforce GC contender rankings
Once we return and have a look at groups of the highest three riders within the 2022 Tour, we are able to see simply how a lot Visma (previously Jumbo-Visma) has drifted from their multi-prong chief technique that they executed so effectively on Stage 11 of that race to dismantle Tadej Pogačar’s UAE workforce assist and, in the end, crack Pogačar on the ultimate climb.
1) Visma (Jumbo-Visma)
Primož Primož (3xVuelta win)
Jonas Vingegaard (1xTdF podium)
Steven Kruijswijk (1xTdF podium)
Sepp Kuss (1xVuelta high ten)
Wout Van Aert
Tiesj Benoot
Christophe Laporte
Nathan van Hooydonck
Complete: 2xActual GC Contenders
4xBest-Case GC Contenders
2) UAE
Tadej Pogačar (2xTdF win)
Rafał Majka (2xGT high ten)
George Bennett (2xGT high ten)
Marc Soler (1xVuelta high ten)
Brandon McNulty
Mikkel Bjerg
Vegard Stake Laengen
Marc Hirschi
Complete: 1xActual GC Contenders
4xBest-Case GC Contenders
3) Ineos
Geraint Thomas (1xTdF win)
Daniel Martínez (1xGiro high 5)
Adam Yates (2xGT high 5)
Jonathan Castroviejo
Filippo Ganna
Tom Pidcock
Luke Rowe
Dylan van Baarle
Complete: 2xActual GC Contenders
3xBest-Case GC Contenders
The above information makes it clear that Vingegaard and Visma’s Tour de France GC rivals have clearly made vital changes in an effort to place up the most effective struggle they presumably can with the rosters they’ve.
These deep rosters, simply as we noticed on the latest Vuelta, give groups a number of methods to squeeze the workforce of the pre-race favourite.
Particularly, sending a second-favorite into the early breakaway, simply as Jumbo did on Stage 6 of the 2023 Vuelta and Bora did on Stage 5 of the 2023 Tour de France, can add vital stress and enhance the bodily workload for the workforce of the race chief/favourite.
Whereas it isn’t clear if this “full chaos” will truly work, and does include a major quantity of danger because it means UAE and Bora are pooling invaluable sources at a single race, it’s promising to see groups pivoting shortly to face the formidable risk of Jonas Vingegaard’s Tour de France year-over-year dominance.
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