After two days for the sprinter (sic), this should be a day with gaps between the GC contenders, with maybe a breakaway winning.
Good win for Kuss, and lovely to see Lenny Martinez get the Red Jersey. With a 2:30 lead over the big favourites, I could see him keeping it quite late in the race. It certainly sets him up really well for a good overall result.
Evenepoel held it together well after being dropped and is still marginally ahead of Vingegaard and Roglic. I was surprised by how split up the GC contenders were, basically in ones and twos.
INEOS look out of contention for now, Thomas and Arensman both shipping time.
Lenny Martinez get the Red Jersey. With a 2:30 lead over the big favourites, I could see him keeping it quite late in the race.
It is possible, but there are other contenders closer than the favourites, and they may try something earlier. However the closest 2 are super-domestiques and they may not be given the liberty from their team to try anything, and the 3rd one is already pretty far.
It certainly sets him up really well for a good overall result.
It is possible too, but so far he has shown some growing difficulties after some point when efforts accumulate day after day.
Evenepoel held it together well after being dropped
It is often like this with him: it feels like he’s badly cracking, but after a while he stops the loss (strangely often around 30 seconds in my admittedly faulty memory) and sometimes comes back a little or completely.
A bit like Almeida, even though Almeida doesn’t give so much the feeling of cracking but more of letting go; and then finishes more frantically, catching up with the best.