Stage 19 of the Tour de France was a tale of two parts for Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe, who ultimately finished the day in third – which they will likely hold until Paris – but along the way went all-out, failed in an attempt to win the stage, sacrificing fifth in the process.
The headline is that Florian Lipowitz is very likely to finish third in this Tour, his best result ever, and the accomplishment of the goal that Red Bull came here to achieve.
And whilst all is well that ends well, stage 19 was a strange day for the German team, with their second GC rider Primož Roglič going on a long-range attack, being reeled in, then dropped, and falling from fifth to eighth on GC, not to mention the fact he wasn’t able to support Lipowitz in the finale.
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In the end, Lipowitz clearly didn’t need any support as he was in the GC group that shed podium threat Oscar Onley (Picnic-PostNL) and he then paced to the line to solidify his spot in third. However, Red Bull took a risk on Friday, and did lose some things because of it.
“I would say that it was clear already yesterday that Primož really wants to win a stage here in the Tour de France,” Red Bull Sports Director – and main strategist – Enrico Gasparatto said as to why Roglič attacked from the foot of the first climb.
“For him, yes he knows our team goal, to finish on the podium, but for himself he wanted to win a stage badly, so in the end this is what he did. He tried yesterday, and I think he missed the momentum in the moment that Ben [O’Connor, stage winner] went, because was trying to do what he had to do, and in the end he missed the opportunity.
“So today for him was the last opportunity to win a stage. He wanted to go flat-out from the start, he said so, which for us and also for Lipo could work, and this is what he did. In the end I think it’s a tactic that we agreed on and was part of the game.”
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In fact it didn’t especially work for Lipowitz, as Roglič was caught before the climb to La Plagne, and then subsequently dropped, unable to work as a satellite or support rider for Lipowitz.
However, this was a risk that Red Bull were willing to take, and ultimately even though Roglič did not win the stage, all it cost the team was his own fifth place on GC – something that the four-time Grand Tour winner is probably not too worried about.
“It’s a game, and I think if you want to win big, you have to risk a little bit, otherwise you don’t win big,” Gasparotto said of the team’s tactics. “We did a lot of analysis about the performance of Lipo yesterday, numbers and everything, with our analysts, so this morning we were quite confident that if staying on the wheel of Onley then Lipo could be secure in the final.”
After Lipowitz lost time to Onley on Thursday, Red Bull attracted some criticism for their approach to the stage to Courchevel, which Gasparotto admitted didn’t end how they’d hoped, but he defended their tactics.
“I tried to re-read the race 100 times last night, because the outcome was not what we wanted, and I think we can talk a lot about it, but on the top of the Madeleine yesterday we had 35 seconds on the yellow jersey and two minutes, 30 [seconds] on Onley,” Gasparotto explained.
“If we think about it, if Visma went flat-out until the end, maybe Primož is still there, and if we stop Lipo and he stays with Onley and then Lipo loses the white jersey. Then Lipo decided to attack because he’s a young kid, he’s authentic, he does everything with instinct. Obviously it surprised us when he attacked but in 30 seconds he gained one minute, and then after one-minute-30 he had two-minutes-30 on the yellow jersey and five-minutes-30 on Onley.
“So it’s easy to say afterwards ‘oh you should have stopped him’ but in the end it was a crazy day and a crazy stage, and today we are happy about it.”
Whatever the wider cycling world may think about how they got here, the ultimate result – the one that matters – is that Lipowitz is going to ride into Paris in third overall in his very first Tour de France.
They may have lost some minor placings, and taken some gambles, but in the end, that podium finish is exactly what they came here for and what they will leave with.
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