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Anyone been watching this? Crashes galore, what disastrous scenes on Saturday when a stupid woman stepped in front of the peloton with a cardboard sign and brought virtually the whole lot down. She did a runner. Another big pile-up near the end.
More today, Geraint Thomas having a dislocated shoulder popped back in (ouch), and more crashes towards the finish.
The Grand Depart being in Brittany is a significant factor, lots of relatively narrow and twisting roads. Though Caleb Ewan losing it on the final run-in was rather surprising.
I used to watch it regularly and have seen it a number of times in France: TV has the advantage in that you do see a lot of the race. Otherwise you get half-an-hour of having things thrown at you by the advertising vehicles preceding the race. (Unless you are sitting on your own, in which case you will only get a packet of liquorice sweets and an unidentifiable plastic kitchen implement.) Then along comes the peloton and that’s it: on a downhill stretch near the start all you will see is a few seconds of a multi-coloured blur.
Yep, having seen the TdF "live" in England in both 1994 and 2014, it's very much a case of "blink and you've missed it", and that was despite watching the race alongside uphill sections!
No crashes reported today, the stage was an individual time-trial, as usual Tadej Pogocar of Slovenia won, but he did not quite take The Jersey.
Cycling has its own language too, would an outsider understand the following paragraph from the Guardian?
'At the front of the peloton, Deceuninck-QuickStep domestique Tim 'The Tractor' Declerq is barking orders'
For those saying there have been more crashes this year, I am not sure there have. With the exception of the one caused by the lady with the cardboard sign, they have been very much the kind of crashes you expect. A touch of wheels here, a tangle of handlebars there. It is to a large extent part part of bunch cycle racing.
As for the course design on stage 3 that lead to the big day of crashes, and the very brief rider protest the following day, Yes it was a tight technical course profile at the end. But if every stage finished on a 3 lane wide duel carriageway it wouldn't be the Tour d'France, it would be the tour of Dubai. If that stage had been in the last week, or a 'transition' stage between the mountains, no one would have batted an eye at it. The problem was that it was the first oppurtunity for the Sprinters, and they all want that first win on the board.
Congratulations to Cav, for stage 4, he should be licking his lips with Ewan out. If Deceuninck-QuickStep are willing to focus on getting him stage wins, then there is a chance of him getting rally close to that record of Merckx. Today will certainly give us an indication if it is possible. The irony of a Belgian team helping a Manxsman beat Belgium's national cycling hero, is not lost on me.
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He is the best the Isle of Mann has had that is for sure.
However if you are claiming him for Britain, he is the best (probably the best ever) at one specific job. In a similar way to Gordon Banks or Peter Shilton could be classed as being the best ever, but I am not sure you could stretch that to being the best road cyclist.
The difference v's the likes of Merckx, who's record he is chasing, is that Merckx could win anywhere. Time trials, Mountain tops, breakaways, even the odd sprint. Cycling has changed since those days, however with the likes of Pogačar, Roglic, Van-Aert, Allaphillipe and to a differnet degree Van-de-Poel; coming to the fore, we are tending back towards the days of Merckx where you could genuinely see one rider winning anything and everything.
Britain has never really had a Merckx like rider, (we are not alone, very few countries have) So how do you class the best, is it the one who can undoubtably ride the last 200-300 metres of a flat course faster than anyone else? Or is it the one who can repeatedly put in efforts at the most oppurtune moments and win multiple grand tours?
It is one of the pleasures of cycling that we don't have an answer to that question, and we probably never will.
Must admit that while the win over Germany was very satisfying I was much more moved emotionally by Cav's achievement. How many more can he get this year? With Ewan out I think he has a really good chance of multiple victories.
However if you are claiming him for Britain, he is the best (probably the best ever) at one specific job. In a similar way to Gordon Banks or Peter Shilton could be classed as being the best ever, but I am not sure you could stretch that to being the best road cyclist.
Did you watch it live? It was a particularly long stage (longest for many years) so maintaining interest for the whole day could have been difficult. OTOH I only watched the highlights and wondered if prioritising the tennis had been the right decision (and the tennis was excellent). Today's stage is the first proper hilly day so should generate decent interest (he says typing while watching the tennis again!)
Because they pretty much know that them winning it relys more on Pogacar making mistakes than them applying pressure. They are mainly riding for 2nd so are trying to hurt the other GC riders. In this they were somewhat successful in pulling Carapaz up from 6th to 5th. Van Aert fell out of the running as kind of expected, but Ben O'Conner has slightly unexpectedly appeared (we will see if he can stay there). The big looser was Lutsenko who Carapaz replaced in the top 5. That (current) 3rd to 8th battle is where we can expect to see the action on Ventoux.
The second reason was alluded to by the commentators. UAE might have been quite content for AG2R to take over the race lead for a bit at this stage. So Ineos keeping the focus and pressure on the team might be seen as a possible tactic. Personally I think too much is made of this these days but then cycling always offer surprises.
The good news for Ineos is that it looks like G is back to feeling more like himself. He has lost 40 minutes, so I wonder if he or Richie will be allowed a bit of freedom to go hunt a stage win, like Kwiato did last year.
Along the route today was an annotated shot of La Rotonde Ferroviaire in Chambéry. I had no idea of its continued existence.
A photo found on tripadvisor:
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