another hot day of active racing....seems like the Vuelta, especially this year is about free range stage hunting and less GC stuff, for many anyway........my biggest concern is that Carlton Kirby bursts into tears if things don't go well for Sky...........

i think deMarchi is sandbagging...no he's cramping Clarke should get it anyway

Loving watching trackie Clarke here.

Edit: Yeah, that was predictable.

Dimension, EF... now Katusha needs to get one at last chance saloon.

Finally caught up with the first 4 stages last night. Sucks to see Porte and Nibali already out of it and Sagan not looking like himself...but not all that surprised either. Must be hard to be on form in terms of fitness, injury, and health (sickness) this late in the season when this GT wasn't your focus.

In any case, Yates picks up 25 seconds yesterday. Seemed like a great move considering most of his time gains were because the group behind were dicking around...not that Yates burned 5 matches. Had I not seen the Giro, I would have said it was brilliant...but I did see the Giro...so now I kind of wonder.

I love Kirby!!! Really, for some reason he is soothing to me personally.

Just watched the first 5 stages, this might be Kiwato's race.

Kirby does a great job keeping many boring kilometers interesting. I enjoy him. Not easy to do what he does, keeping up the banter.

going with Mr. Peto today.........he says he's beginning to feel better and he hasn't "fly through forest and ass heet big rock" lately so he pips Viviani

I'd be astonished if it was. At his freshest and with a strong Sky team backing him I still think Kwiatkowski loses significant time at some point to a climber like Yates or Quintana. With the Tour in his legs, a relatively weak Sky team, and having apparently also trained for the Worlds, I think he'll have greatly enjoyed his time in red but has no chance of being in the running in week 3. Would love to be proved wrong, would be an amazing reward for his super-domestique services over the last few years. It would also give Brailsford the mother of all headaches in terms of balancing GC aspirations if he had 3 different reigning GT champions plus Bernal on the team!

I don't feel too bad for Brailsford. You can go at least to 5 or 6 on their depth chart before you run out of guys who are legitimate Tour top-10 riders. Lots of teams have only one rider with a snowball's chance in hell of a top 10. Consider Poels. He barely makes the Tour team in any year yet I would pick him over Loius Menke from Dimension Data or anyone other than Uran at EF or anyone at Quick Step.

lordy, it hadn't occurred to me until you said it. winning all three GTs, but with three different riders? nucking futs.

I don't feel in the slightest bit bad for Brailsford, other directors would kill to have that problem! I do think though that the super-domestique role can gloss over weaknesses which are exposed when riders become team leaders. Both physiological and psychological. Not sure Poels would thrive as a bigger fish in a smaller pool for example. And Landa, Porte and to a lesser extent Uran haven't been as successful (yet) since leaving as you might have expected.

If Yates wins, which is much more likely than Sky winning, that's 3 different British GT winners in the same year which is also pretty nuts for a country that only had its first GT win in 2012.

Some good shit going on right now. Split. AT least Pinot and Kelderman on the wrong side. Not sure who else.

When the camera showed the lead moto going past that piece of traffic furniture and the head of the peloton avoiding it, I was thinking to myself...how the fuck do they not crash? Well...1 second later...

It's crazy how stressful bike racing at that level must be.

Yeah, when I wrote the above, I'd missed the crash and was hoping it'd been a crosswind or something.

I'm sticking with Uran to bag this one. He's due.

That was basically negligent. Surprised that so few people fell victim, in the replays you could see riders locking up their brakes trying to avoid it.

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welcome to the welta..........inexcusable that they didn't get a flag guy at least or remove the bollards but bike racing is sketchy at all levels......sucks for Wilco, great rider, great band

Bouhanni may be the biggest tool in the peloton but he did get him some today. It'll only encourage him.

The team car and DS came through the stage unscathed.

You are definitely right about the mental side. I am sure the paycheck is great, but you have to question if someone like Poels even has the ambition to be a leader on a lesser team. Landa obviously wants the leadership role, but either the paycheck or mental problems seem to land him on a team where he is number 2 on the depth chart. It is a rare combination of the mental toughness, ambition, and physical gifts that makes great GT riders IMHO.

You put Bouhanni as bigger tool than Moscon?

can Woods bag a stage, 3k to top

damn, not to be thought he had a chance to get over the top alone

kuss 10th on stage, hope sunday is good for him