GIRO Stage 4

What on earth happened to Rasmussen? He's supposed to be one of the team's main TTer and practically had his claws on the pink magic... Another day gone wrong. This game is harder than expected! Still good fun, tho.

Glad i took Navardauskas in, He has Pink and White, 2nd in Blue

But other than that, Phinney 5th in pink and red, 2nd in white. So thats some points.

But he's still getting ditched

Surprised that sky are so far down, and that Katusha are so far up.

Pink

1 NAVARDAUSKAS Ramunas LTU GRM 10:01:53 0:00
2 FARRAR Tyler USA GRM 10:02:03 0:10
3 HUNTER Robert RSA GRM 10:02:03 0:10
4 HESJEDAL Ryder CAN GRM 10:02:04 0:11
5 PHINNEY Taylor USA BMC 10:02:06 0:13
6 BOARO Manuele ITA SAX 10:02:12 0:19
7 THOMAS Geraint GBR SKY 10:02:14 0:21
8 ROSSELER Sebastien BEL GRM 10:02:18 0:25
9 VANDEVELDE Christian USA GRM 10:02:19 0:26
10 RODRIGUEZ OLIVER Joaquin ESP KAT 10:02:23 0:30

Interesting to see J Rod up in the top 10 already

Dropping like a stone!

Was gonna bring in Kristoff today but decided to wait till tomorrow, bad mistake

Katusha was a shock,but I think Saxo was a bigger one....Rasmussen to get dropped by Garmin so early was unbelievable....Going to make the lumpy stuff really interesting now though,with J.Rod gaining a few precious seconds on the other mountain goats......Its certainly been entertaining so far and an injured Phinneys off-road save yesterday was fantastic....

I think the one thing I've learned today is that the TTT is not really worth bothering with when planning a stratergy. Top score was 108, dream team was 148 but that includes 7 Garmin riders so that's not even possible. The actual highest possible score was 124 when you apply the rules (two per team).

I thought I'd planned a great team and through bad luck and bad judgement got 78 points, only 30 behind the top score but probably not more than 10 or 20 points ahead of most of those around me.

I'd have been better saving as many transfers as possible and just limiting my losses. oh well, we live and learn.

Agreed drheaton,it was a day to try and save some transfers for the forthcoming stages due to the impending switch from sprints to lumps and just sort of get a tickover score on TTT day....

Agreed again - I kept 4 transfers for this morning and am happy with my team now, and still got 64 yesterday so didn't lose too much ground. Still, annoyed about Navardauskas, this is probably the first time he's ridden this season when I haven't had him in my team!

Thats why I only scored 63, as i bought in visconti for ferrari for s6 and had brought in navardauskas for another rider who i cant remember.
Had 4 transfers for today and used 3, so will have 3 for tomorrow of which i know 2 of the transfers im gonna make.

Anyone know if Meersman is OK? He lost about 5 mins on Monday, but I've no idea why, and he's one of the (admittedly many) guys I was considering for the next few days...

I haven't been paying much attention, and i just transferred him in...ooops!

He finished with his team yesterday so hopefully he's fine, I've brought him in too...

First time I've tried a purist team in a Grand Tour and more than happy with 2nd place in the Giro Purist table.

Probably won't last though as it's very TT heavy

Pinotti
Thomas
Pozzato
Farrar
Larsson
Kwiatkowski
Phinney
DeMare
Rasmussen

I just transferred out Bos for Hunter and my team for Stage 5 will be:

Cavendish
Thomas
Pinotti
Hunter
Phinney
Navardauskas
Balloni
Boaro
Guardini

Probably make 1 transfer tomorrow and that will give me 4 for the change in terrain to stage 7.

Bennati
Cavendish
Thomas
Lastras
Navardauskas
Rasmussen
Clement
Demare
Izagirre

Took in Bennati last night for the sprint and Izagirre for any break he might decide to get into.

Saving transfers to work on my mountains team

Cavendish
Goss
Thomas
Haedo
Kristoff
Navardauskas
Lancaster
Demare
Guardini

Sprint heavy but I shouldn't have to make any changes tonight leaving me with 4 transfers for stage 7. I'm hoping stage 6 will be a sprint but might use 1 transfer on a breakaway guy tonight, we'll see.

Well that could have gone better......

Garmin
Katusha
Astana
Saxo
Omega Pharma
Greenedge
Liquigas
Radioshack
Sky
BMC

thats your top 10

Don't forget, Navardauskas is also leader of the white jersey, so 25 points in all I think, 10 for the stage, 10 for the GC and 5 for young rider.

DAMN, Movistar 11th

But i had two Garmin and still have the Pink

Never expected Kristoff to be my main man today! Looking forward to seeing the GC once its all sorted out...

Well that didn't go to plan. Very happy I saved a couple of transfers now.

Still get the points for Rasmussen on the stage (not the GC obviously), even though he got dropped, right?

Phinney through the weeds! Crazy stuff, but will definitely cost BMC some time. Navardauskas in pink??

And

Quote:

Ironically, at the same moment, Alex Rasmussen (second overall at 13 seconds) has lost contact with Garmin-Barracuda. Ramunas Navardauskas is now the man who will move into pink if Garmin manage to extend that lead over BMC.

not great news for anyone who, like me, kept Rasmussen.