anybody felt a bit sad for Ted King when he fell off the pace early? That was painful to watch, and probably pained him even more. Apparently his injuries were bad enough that he had to use a road bike...

Completely agree. But I think they have the ability to be very disruptive to the GC contenders if their guys are on form. Lots of strong climbers, I would expect to see them in breaks on some of the mountain stages. If they manage a win from a breakaway then they could have a rider that the GC guys need to pay attention to. I just think they have the potential to make things interesting, and have a long shot of making the low step on the podium.

also, Chavanel is apparently only 1 second down, and with tomorrow's lumpy stage, he may very well go for broke (pun intended) and see if he can pull on the MJ.

Dan Martin def has it in him. He won Catalunya by basically going on a break and holding on (in a stage with a MTF finish). May very well challenge for the polka dots if he maintains form for three straight weeks.

very sad, just heard he's out of the tour because of the time gap

Yeah, I laughed at crazy Uncle Phil saying that the time loss wasn't that big of a deal for Cadel, but then when The Shack crossed the line he was ruing how much time AS had lost, etc. There was only a 3" time gap between BMC and RS!!

It is past time to put these him out to pasture.

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Chicago Cubs - 2016 WORLD SERIES Champions!!!!

"If ever the time should come, when vain and aspiring men shall possess the highest seats in government, our country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin." - Samuel Adams

Even before he was gapped, you could see he was struggling to hold pace....like within the first 200 meters. I did notice that he had road bars on, though....

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Chicago Cubs - 2016 WORLD SERIES Champions!!!!

"If ever the time should come, when vain and aspiring men shall possess the highest seats in government, our country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin." - Samuel Adams

Not a huge fan but when he said that he thought that AS had lost over a minute. Its not really much better on other feeds, most of the toime the announcers are reading the same feed and make the same errors.

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Styrrell

No kidding, big relief for Saxo. Orica is the Cinderella story so far.

Huge bummer for Ted. As you can imagine, this race meant a ton for him and it was what he really wanted in this season and for his career. He was also super stoked to have his parents planning to go over and see him race, so while I'm sure he's in the hurt locker, he'll soldier on if it's physically possible. If he can get through next couple days he'll be good.

He missed the time cut.

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Styrrell

Just saw that, that really sucks. Incredibly lame of ASO since their incompetence on stage 1 caused the crash to begin with. Cannondale should have also left a teammate back to help him. They weren't going to be anywhere near a good time regardless, and they'll need the HP later on in the race.

I'm past accepting his mistakes....they are too many and too egregious. If I can look at a TV screen and know what is going on better than they guy getting race radio and producer feeds, you know he is past his expiration date.

The guy is just awful now.....another example was when Bakelants hit his brake in that left turn and briefly locked them up. "That will cost Radio Shack a second or two." Uh, no it didn't. He was 5th wheel down.....the lead guys didn't slow up in the slightest. It costs Bakelants a few extra watts to close the (small) gap, but the team lost nothing from it as a whole.

As for King, I wondered if Cannondale would send a rider back for him, but my guess is they didn't want to risk losing two riders to the time cut. It happened so damn early in the race that it woudl have been a monumental task to even nurse him across the line and make the time cut, IMO. So he was basically sacrificed.

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Chicago Cubs - 2016 WORLD SERIES Champions!!!!

"If ever the time should come, when vain and aspiring men shall possess the highest seats in government, our country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin." - Samuel Adams

Agreed.

And apparently it was only 7 seconds...

pure idiocy on the part of ASO and the UCI commisaires, but then again it's redundant to call them idiots...

Schitt...really? 7 secs?

Poor form by ASO to exclude him over 7"......quite disappointing.

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Chicago Cubs - 2016 WORLD SERIES Champions!!!!

"If ever the time should come, when vain and aspiring men shall possess the highest seats in government, our country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin." - Samuel Adams

I agree that his time is up but I think that he's kind of right on this one. Cadel losing this amount of time hurts him, but AS losing this time kills him. AS is going to get smoked in the individual time trials whereas Cadel can hold his own.

AS will need to break away on one of the climbs and put a couple of minutes into everyone else. Cadel won't need to do that to the same extent.

Watch for Schleck to lose a bunch of ground on the double Alpe D'huez day. He's crying that the descent from Alpe D'huez is "too dangerous" {I have no idea if it is or isn't}. IIRC he's a pussy descender at the best of times. A tough descent should see him losing some time.

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How does Danny Hart sit down with balls that big?

Complete BS. The TdF race officials showed a great deal of incompetence with the handling of the stuck bus. Apparently Ted King had his time at 8 sec faster off his powermeter.

From Ted King's twitter.
By my count, I'm at 32:24. I'm honestly not sure where 32:32 is from. pic.twitter.com/bebYFMBL0e

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Suffer Well.

He's being way more diplomatic than i would if i were in his shoes.

Four letter words would be flying.

What an outrage...

hmm, DeGendt is in the break, which may or may not survive. Don't think he'll stay away today, though i really do like him

yeah, even phil and paul are lamenting the lack of fairness ...


I wonder what the affect of the TdF is on the tourism industry? Each and every time we watch the tour we renew our resolve to get over there one day. (maybe when we have less than 6 tickets to buy)

also, does anyone know if the podium girls are the same throughout the tour or are the local to each stage? I found this

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http://harvestmoon6.blogspot.com
https://www.caringbridge.org/visit/katasmit

I'll join Hesjedal in being tired of him crashing out. Broken rib? I'd say that mops up his chances of podium. Dammit.

I don't see this going anyplace but froome.

I saw his interview today and he was pure class. While I can't argue that if I were in his shoes that I would be dropping 4 letter words too, King probably gained a lot of fans this week and he may be better for it in the long run as far as name recognition and sponsorships. Who knows...maybe after this tour they'll look at the rules again and make a "Ted King clause." At 30, I'm sure he'll be back in the tour again.

i hope he'll be back, too

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Last 2 minutes of Jurgen Roelandt's SRM file. pretty impressive stuff right there. A solid 20 seconds above 1000W.

alrite, the action starts tomorrow. Get your picks in for tomorrow's race.

I'm going with

Nieve/Anton from a break ftw

and for the GC

Quintana,
Contador, ST
Froome, ST
Evans, ST

Piti Valverde to get gapped significantly

The action today was pretty good. Textbook strategy/Textbook execution. Dam impressive.