I know this is a weird one: Tom Pidcock. The consensus seems to be (correctly) that he's overpaid, but that leads people to assume he's not a great rider. He is. French commentators said during the race that THJ was the betting favourite today and my only thought was "how's that not Tom Pidcock?"

I don't think anyone is against trackers, but the UCI needs to either accept liability for the trackers working, or give them to the teams year round so they can look after them. In their testing they were handing out the trackers minutes before race start, but teams were liable for them working.

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Adding to this list of riders I think are highly underrated: Lenny Martinez. Not necessarily in his potential to win races. I think that's fairly rated. But: He has one of the strongest punches on hard gradients and also ~30s efforts on steep climbs in the peloton. Way stonger than most GC riders.

Caught up on today's stages. Tim Rex is a monster and should and probably will ride every Tour de France from 2027 onwards for the next 10 years or so. Besides that, I don't understand Visma's tactics at all. WVA was gonna satellite on 17% with a 10s gap? Explain to me how that works?

t rex is a BEAST

If you've been watching Tirreno-Adriatico and Paris-Nice this week then tomorrow the timings are inverted with P-N finishing earlier at 3.00pm CET then T-A at 3.40pm

If this ends in a UAE victory, I'm gonna be annoyed.

I've just seen that Jessica Disley, paced by Tony Cassidy, has broken the women's derny hour record, riding 60.16km and breaking the record by almost 8km!

Man, once Affini is done in these stages, Visma are really struggling to hold Jonas in front....

So in Tirreno, where there are almost never break-away victories, the break won. Meanwhile the Paris-Nice stage that everyone considered the break-away stage is going to go to the peloton?

Veeeery very impressive today by Jorgenson. If only he hadn't crashed on that Gravel stage, he'd be fighting for the GC win right now 😭

Del Toro really can't just keep up that pace, can he? He keeps dropping Pellizzari, but then stopping. I think his sustainable üpace really isn't that high, he just has very string 10-20s efforts.

Del Toro really can't just keep up that pace, can he? He keeps dropping Pellizzari, but then stopping. I think his sustainable üpace really isn't that high, he just has very string 10-20s efforts.

Why is Cofidis riding in Paris-Nice? That's actually hilarious

The break in tirreno might make it 👀

I don't really understand what Steven Kruijswijk is doing in this race. Or in this team, really. If it's a loyalty retirement contract, I really hope the salary reflects that. He's a great guy, but I don't see how he contributes anything to the team in races that a motivated devo rider couldn't.

Riders are crashing during the mid-race passage of the finish already. What do they expect to happen in a hectic fight for the stage win????

what the fuck is that finish in Tirreno, that looks dangerous as hell

Tim Rex is so good, he's gonna ride so many Tours de France in his career.

Nooo, that sucks so much. Hopefully he can get back to racing at all, that sounds very serious.

Aww 🥰

Also, can we put the „disastrous season start“ narrative to rest now? Maybe? 😂

Adding to this list of riders I think are highly underrated: Lenny Martinez. Not necessarily in his potential to win races. I think that's fairly rated. But: He has one of the strongest punches on hard gradients and also ~30s efforts on steep climbs in the peloton. Way stonger than most GC riders.

I have to say, seeing Vingegaard like this feels good. I know this doesn't say anything about how he stacks up against Pogacar, but I was honestly worried he'd have to fight for every second in this race.

Lenny Martinez and Valentin Paret-Peintre have so much punch in those tiny bodies 😅

This P-N parcours is turning out to be pretty 🔥, even if the queen stage gets shortened

Especially looking at how this stage is going, Red Bull did the absolute perfect thing yesterday. Danny Martinez is clearly not the strongest climber in this race, even taking Vingegaard out of the equation. But because of the way Red Bull rode, he's still in great position.

Vauquelin is really good on this sort of climb. This is gonna be interesting.

Even though I am still annoyed at how Visma raced that Tirreno final, overall their strategy of blowing it up on the climb and then riding to the finish paid off big time. Jorgenson went from 7th in GC to 4th.

I am saying this now, so no one can accuse me of hindsight bias later: Wout van Aert better be riding for Brennan / Jorgenson in MSR. If he's riding for himself, I am going to be very annoyed.

I do not understand why Van Aert never attacked. They should know better by now than to bank on his sprint.

I have very little faith in Van Aert's sprint here. Especially because of the ankle injury. He said he couldn't sprint for most of the off season.

Christen is never gonna work for anyone other than himself, is he?

Visma riding for Van Aert for the sprint. We shall see if that has any chance of paying off. But Jorgenson is also not hurting himself here, some GC guys dropped and losing time today.

Wow, Visma absolutely nailed that run-in in Tirreno. Perfect timing and amazing job by Kielich

I won't repost it, but the Tirreno broadcast just showed a repost of a motorbike hitting a crashed rider. Not just glancing, but hitting. Motorbikes ride way too closely behind riders all the time. And it is really really damn dangerous.

I was too busy yesterday to fully appreciate how insane the PN results must have seemed to someone that didn't watch the race 😂

So Ineos are to step back as title sponsor with Netcompany taking their place. The Danish brand's colour scheme seems to recently change from various blues to a dark green. The latter will clash with the points jersey at the Tour, Vuelta, whatever the Dauphiné is called now and Paris-Nice.

Plus, Jonas said in the post race interview he wasn't freezing cold during the stage. While many riders clearly were. If it works it works 🤷‍♀️

Jonas Vingegaard in his dungerees wins Stage 4 (with a helping hand from Red Bull-Bora) #ParisNice 🤩👏

Also this is a GC race, so this is very different to riding with MvdP or Pogacar in the classics. Martinez is clear second now and there are still a ton of stages to go. If anything happens to Jonas, Martinez wins GC.

Since I've seen some comments saying Red Bull were wrong for riding: No they weren't, they did it perfectly. Not because second is the goal, but because if they don't ride, then Martinez still has to beat Jonas, but he has to beat everyone else too. They optimized his chances 🤷‍♀️

Also, Vingegaard was so damn lucky. The crash itself isn't on camera, but there is a replay that shows the split second right before it. Ayuso was seemingly the first to go down and Jonas was immediately behind him. The crash was behind a hedge from the camera, so I have no clue how Jonas survived.

I wonder if Ineos have regrets tactically about this. They will of course regret the crashes. But in hindsight, they should have waited for Vauquelin instead of riding for Onley- BUT: That wasn't really forseeable at the time. Vauquelin was a minute and a half behind Onley. That's an insane choice

This stage feels so weird. Vingegaard looked super strong, but also, everything went in his favour without him having to do a thing. I love that he won, but I would have really liked to see how he stacks up against someone that isn't Danny Martinez.

These moments are always so surreal, be that Vingegaard or Pogacar: "Oh, this is actually your top pace? Alright then, I can go twice as fast, byeeeee"

Haha, the Van Dijke twins will share the combativity. That's awesome

Lol, Milan, what the hell was that? That was like 300m too early

Tirreno about to finish, go switch over for 2 mins