Yep, Sagan looked fine today, although he was surprisingly a bit slow to react to Gaviria and Greipel's initial accelerations. If he reacted quicker, he wouldn't have had to spend so much energy just catching back up to them and likely wins (though helped by Gavaira being forced to go a little to early when his teammate pulled off)

Sagan is just so damned impressive with his feel and fluidity in traffic. (And that bike throw to completely rob Greipel of 2nd right at the last sliver of a second!)

(How do you embed a YouTube video player here?)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgKAaauiH5o

The flip side is that I Griepal had any kind of leadout today he might have won, glad to see the Gorilla back in business.

Sagan in 2nd again ;). Actually I was surprised he didn’t wreck trying to squeeze through on the barrier. And then the way he moved around from complete left to far right was wreckless and could have caused problems. Good thing for Cav that he didn’t/couldn’t hang on his wheel today (pink)

Yep, nice teamwork by EF. Super impressive lead out for Gaviria and then he holds off Sagan and le Gorilla into the head wind. Would be nice to see Cav grind it out and stay off the deck well into the tour, maybe get some. How far does he go? Has he said?

Tomorrow look like a rolleur day.

yea, good day for QS. good year really. they are an impressive squad. not much for us to grouse about this year.

on the other hand, I think the next few days should be more entertaining. at least have more entertainment.

2nd from being enveloped in a tight pack quite a few wheels back with no lead-out man to protect him, as usual. If you look again, Arnaud Demare pushed Sagan toward the barrier while trying to steal Gaviria's wheel, and he defended his position smoothly, staying on the gas and avoiding a crash. The move from left to right was done on the accelerator, clearing the wheels he was overtaking and avoiding problems, which he often does. It's these subtle, fluid moves modulating the throttle and surfing with feel that make him so deft at working traffic in the most frenetic moments coming to the line. Meanwhile, Cav got off the throttle and protested when someone seemingly came across him accelerating into the gap he'd left ahead of him by not committing to the sprint (he continues to erode his legacy with poor attitude, which I wish wasn't the case, as he's accomplished so much---he should be a class act with more than stats).

nothing dangerous about that move since there was a clear path.

Sagan's ability to float is starting to become numb to me, as I pretty much have come to expect it despite how difficult it is. He just makes it look so damn easy.

It's true. I was 30yds from the line at the '16 TdCA stage 1 finish, he made his move right in front of me and my son, just incredible to watch. Then we saw the heli view on the jumbotron, and the work through traffic to set up his sprint was simply dumbfounding. He makes it look easy, and it's still unreal when you look at what happened after the fact, and you see it happen again and again.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zB0b0rHSc6Q

Today was a pure a sprint stage as you get, with a high quality field. Second is pretty impressive for a "non-sprinter". Clearly he's not as quick as some of the others but like you noted, his ability to be in the right place + extraordinary handling skills + never backing off unmatched.

Did nobody read the “pink” part? I am typing on my phone so that is only way I can indicate the sarcasm.

Yes Sagan’s ability to find holes and float through traffic is amazing. I was being sarcastic as that’s what Cav and his fans are always complaining about - particularly last year when Cav tried the same move, wrecked, then Sagan got kicked out of the tour.

Carry on.

Oooops! :-O

I just went over to a thread about Tejay. I won’t do that again. I almost replied.
I just need to be held. It’s crazy out there.

I'm still thinking Froome wins this thing. He's doing that thing where he lays low for the first half of the tour and then he will pop up and blow the walls off.

His trainer mentioned a few weeks ago that they just wanted to take it day by day and see how his fitness goes. I am surprised he started, he clearly does not have the form, but in some ways this is a great training block with the added sponsor exposure bonus.

Edit: there is speculation on other forums that Cav is pissy because Cervelo is currently sitting on a new aero bike but not allowing him to ride it at the moment.

#ByeFernando

what was GvA doing there, leading out with 400m to go?

What exactly did you expect Froome, or any other GC guy to do in the first 5 stages? Other than the TTT, every stage so far has been a field sprint, so "laying low" is really the only option other than trying to chase back on after you crash.

Listening to The Move podcast, and Lance mentions that USPS paid for advertising during the NBC broadcast.

This sport man

i think GvA thought he had a real shot at the stage, but that was a long 350 meters.....
Cobrelli had him....then he didn't had him.....Sagan is....yeah.....
Carlton Kirby managed to give Froome a reacharound while calling the finish for Eurosport....skillz

http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/tour-de-france-miscalculation-costs-van-avermaet-in-quimper


Apparently GVA was told there was 250m to go instead of 350m which explains his perfect Sagan lead out.

I think there is a difference between being told something (Implying it was someone else outside their team like a race official who gave unreliable information)...and...

When asked about how that mistake was made, Van Avermaet referred to a GPX-file that was used to determine the distance. The GPS Exchange Format (GPX) sets out a track with multiple trackpoints that can then be used to measure the distance between those points.

"I don't know. We watched the gpx file," he said. "Maybe it's not up until 100m correct [laughs]. We have to check. We measured from the point in the corner and that showed 250 metres. That's how it is. In the end, it would be hard to beat Peter after the effort I did to catch Phil. That's how racing is. You make some decisions and only the guy who wins did the right thing.”


Seems like they used an unreliable form of measuring distance to determine their strategy rather than having someone actually go out on the course and measure it themselves. For such an important stage that not only could have resulted in a stage win, but also retaining yellow, you would think they would have done more homework.

I don't disagree, you think they would verify. I didn't mean to imply it came from outside the team, he was relayed incorrect information from somewhere... I just assumed it wasn't GVA himself doing the measuring.

Sagan winning was less surprising to me than Colbrelli challenging him that close again. Peto has a lot of swords to cross with him on punchy finales and #ByeFernando on straight up sprints.