Edvald!!

chapeau, Paul, thank you for all of your threads, reports and commentary. I too want to be 'over there' riding and spectating. Maybe there is a ST Rendevous in the future.

hard to not pick Matthews for the sprint - and it will come down to a sprint!

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Anne Barnes
ABBikefit, Ltd
FIST/SICI/FIST DOWN DEEP
X/Y Coordinator
abbikefit@gmail.com

I was just listening to the Stages podcast and George Hincapie cautioning that with the hard U turn the Champs guys can be riding the brakes into the U turn, while the riders heading out are cranked up to full speed (like 70 kph) and small gaps can easily open up. Bardet just has to make sure he he is in whatever group Landa is in!

I was actually planning to be in France this week riding at Jimmy Riccitello's camp based near Alpe d'Huez, but I have had some complications with a disc/nerve injury that causes spasms in my left leg, so no proper riding, so not worth going over....hopefully by next year!

I've enjoyed all 21 of these posts. Thank you for spending the time doing them. Your write ups are better than the the stuff on the official le tour site!

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--Chris

Fearless predictions.
- We'll see pictures of the Team Sky riders and the DS in Team Sky vehicle drinking champagne.
- We'll see pictures of the Team Sky riders riding while they've got their arms around each other's shoulders.
- The Patrouille de France will fly over the peloton on the Champs trailing blue, white, and red smoke.
- Greipel will win the stage.
- The French fans will be loudly chanting "Froooome!" when the final Yellow Jersey is presented.



(OK, Greipel's far from a lock, but you can bet on the rest off these.)

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"Human existence is based upon two pillars: Compassion and knowledge. Compassion without knowledge is ineffective; Knowledge without compassion is inhuman." Victor Weisskopf.

Thanks dev for hosting - most useful pre-stage comments and most interesting discussion anywhere : )

And for those saying this years tour was boring, I had a great time watching - only Porte not crashing would have made it better.

I think Edvald is currently the fastest guy, but I don't think he does enough field sprint/lead out train work with him as the designated sprinter. As such his positioning isn't very good at the start of the sprint, though he may have the fastest Strava segment for the final 500m.

I am going to guess that more than any other stage, this sprint on the wide flat road will favor a strong, traditional, lead out train.

Griepel hasn't shown anything that looks remotely close to winning form, but I am going to go out on a limb and predict that the Lotto train will deliver him to victory. Confidis/Bouhanni are my super outsider pick.

If you ever get a chance to watch this stage in person it is astonishing. The Cobbles on the Champs are rough & the speeds this guys ride it at after 3 weeks is pretty crazy. Highly recommend it!

Doesnt the clock for GC stop when they enhet champs? Or is that only when it Rains?

rain

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"The person on top of the mountain didn't fall there." - unkown

also rule 5

boobooaboo wrote:

rain

According to the hourly weather forecast, it is supposed to start raining as they pull into Paris, but the rain is supposed to stop before the finish. Does this change anyone's predictions that a breakaway could stick against the sprinters?

http://www.accuweather.com/...weather-forecast/623

I am sure that the riders would prefer if the time clock for gc neutralizes when they hit the cobbles on the Champs due to rain. As a fan, I don't want the time clock neutralized, but on the flip side with the time neutralized and the GC teams having no need to keep the gap tight (especially AG2R) and stay glued to the sprinter to get "same time", I think it opens up a chance for a longer range breakaway of 4-6 riders.

I posted this video of Jeff Pierce's win from 30 years ago from a 9 man breakaway:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFDaw6G4P34

....which includes another one of Steve Bauer's many second place finishes....it's almost like Steve either had the Canadian attitude that 2nd is good enough or he was cursed by it....Americans and Chinese at least in business, it's first or go home and don't even play...cue to Taylor Phinney for a long range attack, building on his mom's attack from LA84...fast forward to 1:08....Carpenter, Twigg, Canins, Longo :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oS8m4Nfqwpo

Can someone mail this video to Vaughters and get Taylor to watch it over and over and over

"Can someone mail this video to Vaughters and get Taylor to watch it over and over and over "

Will do.
Taylor is currently planning his return to Boulder, where he will put on his sarong, tie up the man bun, eat gummy bears and listen to the new Radiohead album.
All of which is okay because he is a beast.

World Tour seems like a healthier place right now. Sure, there are cheaters and always will be. But overall, you've got the big money winning the tour the was it was supposed to, and Landa may move on and sign a big stinkin' contract to take his shot elsewhere.
I would have loved to see Porte go. He looked to be ready to win it.

Cannondale already has the new sponsor name on the chamois (Oath) and a podium and a stage win. Not bad for the second tier guys. Sunweb has a great group, Bora too, but got hosed. Bo Hag got one, as did some other new guys. The French are coming on, the cheating Italian ethic of Diluca, et al has faded as has their pro racing. Katusha behaved themselves as did Astana. Aside from Sky controlling because they're loaded, seems like all the teams had a decent shot somewhere along the line. the "boring" racing looked like clean racing. That's GT racing.

You didn't see the guys like Contador and Voeckler all of a sudden find the fountain of youth and go all ValVerde and what not. They did what they could do.

I give the French a a lot of credit for first, being clean relative to the pelotons of yesteryear and for running a really tight ship in the TdF, but Sagan was a huge mistake. No question. Nice to see their riders come up in the game.

Chris Froome is not fun to watch but he's as tough as they come.

Agree, I enjoy watching it more these days when the riders seem human and can't just lay down attack after attack every day. You can see they're having to be much smarter about when they burn their matches.

Froome has been much more entertaining in previous years - putting in massive attacks on mountain finishes, attacking on descents, attacking with sprint groups in crosswinds, etc. He was pretty dull this year but that's partly down to a route which gave him very little opportunity to gain time, and partly down to him being less dominant or at least holding back because he's got the Vuelta at the back of his mind.

Edvald needs to time the sprint correctly.
I am afraid he will get exposed in the front too early.

But I really hope he will prove me wrong :-)

Looks like Sky are setting up a train for Landa right now :-)

Well Norway took it either way. I would say that is a win!!!

And you base this on what exactly?

Thanks for all the threads Dev!
See you in 3 weeks for the Vuelta thread, my favorite Grand Tour, but I am not sure it will beat the Giro this year.

I give the TDF a 6 out of 10. Everyone gave us shit for saying it boring, etc..

In the end it kind of was. Very predictable. Lame they kicked out Sagan. Too many GC favorites out in the first stage/week.

If you watch a highlight video of Cavendish, he crashes a lot in the final sprints, and since he is so popular, he makes other riders look like the bad ones. Too much politics/Sky being too dominant/changes need to be made.

I think Froome can go on & win possible 2-3 more TDF's.

I am going to enjoy watching Froome try & win the Vuelta. In recent years the classics have become my ultimate favorite, I am looking forward to San Sebastian this Saturday. This is all in my opinion. I love watching cycling, and will continue watching the TDF every year and pretty much every race in the year.

So I was thinking, what did they do to the route this year? I know it was shorter TT's but was it lack of hard consecutive mt stages? Not enough HC finishes?

Or is it simply these guys are actually pretty close and no one's juice is so over the top anymore, that it's just a matter of can't break each other?

I can't remember TT's being this short in recent memory.

I said yest I don't think there is enough GC guys who can actually sustain Froome. It was one of closest top 3 until final day in a long time but never felt Froome was in trouble did it? Hell there seemed to be more excitement in Sky vs Sky attacks than the other GC guys going off and attacking Froome.

Stages podcast talked a lot about how it almost turns into podium guys protecting their own position then going for the W because a podium for cannondale is huge for sponsorship. I also think there isn't enough time bonuses for stage wins. Id offer 20/12/6 time bonuses.

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Brooks Doughtie, M.S.
Exercise Physiology
-USAT Level II

Dumb moment in german TV right after the stage.

Reporter (I think you could even make out a little smile when asking):

"Now, how do you feel with second place Mr. Greipel?"

Greipel: " Well absolutely fantastic. I'm very happy coming second. No, silly question. Of course not!"

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10k - 30:48 / half - 1:06:40

They had that on the US telecast as well. I felt bad for The Gorilla. I saw him at Stage 6 and he was pounding the handlebars, and he was still pounding them on the last stage. He's generally an excellent interview, as is Kittel. Seems like Andrei was half a pedal turn behind in the sprints this year. It's a tough, short career as a sprinter. Seems like the only one who has been able to win for years is Cavendish.

It looks like Cavendish is up in the rarefied sprinter air of Zabel and Cippolini for winning over many years:

http://www.cyclist.co.uk/...ur-de-france-history

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Fast-Finishes.com
Triathlon and Running Race Timing
Athletic Event Management

The route didn't have a lot of TTing, and didn't have any big mountain finishes until Izoard. There were 5 high mountain days, but only 2 of them had a summit finish, and one of those (Peyragudes) was "only" a cat 2 climb. The other 3 had longish descents and bits of flat into the finish, so it wasn't worth throwing everything into an attack as the chasing group would likely claw most or all of it back on the descent. The other summit finish was Izoard, but by that point I think Uran and Bardet were hanging on and Froome knew he had it in the bag so saved himself for the TT. Especially when Barguil went up the road - if Froome had had a shot of a stage win I think he'd have gone harder for it, but it wasn't worth chasing Barguil down so after Froome's one attempt at an attack was hauled back he shut it down and rode tempo to the finish.

Froome has traditionally made big gains on the peloton in TTs and in big mountain finishes. Without those sort of stages (other than Izoard) Sky raced pretty conservatively. And it helped having Porte and Fuglsang crash out, Martin struggle a bit following his crash, and Quintana nowhere near peak form, so nobody was really able to pressure him. Froome having an eye on the Vuelta may also have been a factor.

In short, I think the organisers created a route which didn't allow Froome to take big chunks of time and win the race by the halfway stage, but equally therefore didn't give anybody else the chance to really put Froome on the ropes either. So we don't really know whether Froome was capable of more and holding back or whether he wasn't quite on top form and/or the others have closed the gap. Vuelta might tell us more!

Sorry for not weighing in yet post TdF. I actually blew off watching live to do a 5K swim and the outdoor pool hours exactly overlapped with most of the stage....and when I got home, Paris is actually the ONLY STAGE MY WIFE WATCHES WITH ME, because she's been there and recognizes all the spots (really this the moment when I should be plotting a family vacation to overlap with next year's finish and it's a slam dunk) and it's literally my only opportunity to watch the TdF with her and talk shop without her rolling her eyeballs about 200 guys in colorful suits riding 4000K around France only for Froome to win AGAIN.


Her only "analysis" comment to me as they recapped all the stage winners, " So did Froome even win any stages? What kind of a loser winner is that?"....and this is a person with barely an athletic bone in her body (anymore that is...we used to swim, ski, run, hike etc together many moons ago...both of our are 2.5 decades older and somewhat out of commission athletically, so I just watch endless sports and she watches HGTV). In any case, I figured it would be wiser to actually talk with the person who puts up with my monopolizing the rec room on 24x7 TdF PVR replays and rewinds while posting on ST, or being at work, or doing endless hours in the pool and pretty well not being useful to anyone at home.

As a part of the Monday morning QBing, for my professiona/technology network on LinkedIn, I wrote this article about Sky....it is clear from my posts on ST that I want Sky to lose, however, from a business and organizational angle, these guys are absolute rock stars...if you want to read in "layman's terms" what I think from a business angle here you go:

https://www.linkedin.com/...rance-devashish-paul