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Winning the queen stage of the Tour de France, taking so much time out of his rivals, gave Miguel Ángel López the luxury of reaching the last decisive stage with the peace of mind that has a good time income in its favor to maintain third place on the podium he currently has in the general classification.
The time trial will be 36 kilometers, of which 30 are flat and the last 6 in a first-class mountain pass. The Colombian is not one of the best in this type of test, but neither are several of the cyclists who are at the top of the table.
Primoz Roglic and Tadej Pogacar, the Slovenians who are in the first two places of the race, are very good in that modality, but they are not the main concern for López, who will surely lose a lot of time with them due to historical differences there is between each one in time trials.
The leader of the Astana team will have to defend his third place from the cyclists who chase him in the general classification, but especially from only one because the others appear with a lot of time lost with respect to him. For Saturday, the Colombian’s rival is the Australian Richie Porte, who is fourth in the standings, one minute and 39 seconds away.
In fifth place is Mikel Landa, two minutes behind ‘Superman’, but the Spaniard usually suffers a lot in the timetables, so he does not appear as a threat to the Colombian. The sixth place goes to Enric Mas, a runner from the Movistar team who appears 2 minutes and 52 seconds behind López, a time that is very unlikely to go back to the national corridor in just 36 kilometers.
Not to mention Adam Yates and Rigoberto Urán, who are located more than three and a half minutes from Miguel Ángel.
Lopez is too close to making the final podium in Paris. Richie Porte usually does better than him in time trials, but the minute and 39 seconds that the Colombian has in his favor is an important income, especially now that all cyclists have the accumulated fatigue of three weeks. He knows it and that is why he did not rush to cut off the Australian when he punctured on Thursday’s stage, as confirmed in the statements he gave to the media after crossing the finish line.
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