Five guys who had syringe costumes all planned out for the next few legs just went "oh merde!"

I guess Horner is really getting by on snickers and cokes based upon that graphic.

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Suffer Well.

Now that is funny.

Here is a picture from today and his bike looks fine to me.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/...rance-2014-live.html

I heard rumors about Menchov's positive almost two years ago. There will be more like him

"I was thinking the same..."

i don't think it's fishy. if jens voight or FC were out there pacing a rider over flat and CAT 3 climbs, keeping fairly even pace with 2 or 3 lesser astana riders switching off on the front of the peloton, i don't think anybody would say anything. tony martin is clearly the best time trialist in the world.

now, if he's at the front of the break at the top of the col des chevrieres, maintaining the same lead over the main pack, that will raise an eyebrow. if he's still keeping that same pace over the peloton halfway up la planche, yeah, that's kinda fishy.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

commentary now saying bike fell off a team car and he hit it?

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

Exactly. Judging from how big the chasing peloton is, and still full of non-climbers, they're clearly not going anywhere close to flat-out. For the past 3 years he's shown over and over that nobody can catch him in 40-50k races.

Yeah but I think u are forgetting what he has done during the last couple days.

1. Yesterday he won
2. Don't remember the day before yesterday
3. Cobble stage he was up front too

Let see how he does in the last couple of hills.

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The entire event (IM) is like "death by 1000 cuts" and the best race is minimizing all those cuts and losing less blood than the other guy. - Dev

dude is a STUD!

almost walk his bike up the hill :-/

great great f job!!!!

slowman was right!

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The entire event (IM) is like "death by 1000 cuts" and the best race is minimizing all those cuts and losing less blood than the other guy. - Dev

Well he blew up pretty big at the start of that climb.

Yup, as expected Martin has just dropped off, and the gap's closing the whole time now they're going uphill. With Movistar, Sky and Astana all having an interest in shutting down that breakaway they'll do well to stay clear.

"Let see how he does in the last couple of hills."

bear in mind that before he blew up today his group's gap over the peloton had been halved, from 4min to 2min. i don't know who's doping in the peloton and who isn't, but i don't see anything martin did today as evidence of anything other than a selfless team assist that's going to hurt a lot between his blow and the finish line.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

...and he imploded big time. As expected.

You reckon the others didn't do the stage before yesterday? Or skipped the cobbles? Tony knows how to dig very, very deep into the paincave. Should I bring up the image of his bloody crotch again?

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ZONE3 - We Last Longer

I think it looked a bit fishy cause the past stages but u right the hills were "that" big.

it will take him awhile to finish today stage

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The entire event (IM) is like "death by 1000 cuts" and the best race is minimizing all those cuts and losing less blood than the other guy. - Dev

Speaking of the gap now it's at 1:35 from Kwiatkowki and Rodriguez to Nibali. Going to be very interesting at the finish.

Great to see Kwiatkowski attacking that descent after looking completely spent on the last climb!


Scarponi just had a pretty bad crash, that could be bad news for Nibali. Maybe a chance for Sky to have a little dig and put some pressure on him?

I'm not a Sky fan at all, but god I hope you are right. I really hope that Porte or someone is able to make this interesting. I like Nibbles and think that he will win, but I hope it comes down to a death match on Hautacam.

Looks like I had it back to front, Nibali's off and left Sky and everybody else for dead! Hope somebody makes a competition of this, but have to say I'm loving the way that Nibbles has raced so far this Tour.

Kwiatkowski completely melted down on that last climb. He just does not have the climbing ability of the little skinny guys. I think he needs to rethink the who grand-tour GC rider idea. He may make a better career of single day classics and TTs.

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Remember - It's important to be comfortable in your own skin... because it turns out society frowns on wearing other people's

Today Nibali showed the dominance he had at last year's Giro. Unless he crashes, this one's over.

Certainly looks like nobody can touch him in the mountains now that Contador's gone. If they want to go for yellow, the other teams are going to have to get on the attack, try and break his team (they looked pretty tired yesterday) and isolate him.

I can't see Sky riding that way though, it's not traditionally been their style (and besides, I suspect they'd be pretty happy to settle for a podium finish after losing Froome). Tinkoff-Saxo have the team to do it but nobody left who's in GC contention, so will presumably just target breakaways and stage wins. Maybe Movistar?

Today showed that anything can happen. It could be an interesting next couple of weeks.

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Suffer Well.

Ya...he is looking strong & the rest of the field is thinning out.
Early report: AC broke his tibia (shinbone).

Sheesh, how on earth did he keep on riding at all?! I know the adrenaline can mask the pain (I managed to ride 5 miles home after a crash once without realising I'd cracked the radius in both arms until I discovered I couldn't turn my front door key), but that's pretty extreme.

Guess that kind of injury would also cast doubt on his ability to ride the Vuelta? You can sit on a trainer with a broken wrist/hand/arm/collarbone, but surely not with a cracked tibia.

fixed that for you.




I might be able to go with your version if you mean Frank, but even he could warrant pink.