2019 Tour de France: Spoilers!

Now we have something / quite-a-lot to discuss and celebrate.
tony_mm
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Re: 2019 Tour de France: Spoilers!

Post by tony_mm »

And sure it is good for the riders of the TdF to have a day off today but honestly couldn't make some videos of them riding on the home trainer, send their 2nd tier team out, show them drinking beer or whatever!......It is difficult after such a good 1st and 2nd week of the TdF to have nothing to watch today! :)
Brucey
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Re: 2019 Tour de France: Spoilers!

Post by Brucey »

good rest-day show on ITV4. Gary Imlach has said that he thinks this is the best TdF in years and thus far I agree. We are poised for an exciting last few days in the race.

With such a back-loaded race route, it is arguably the case that the best strategy is to 'keep your powder dry' in readiness for the last few days, even if it means running out of the yellow jersey; in recent TdFs it has better suited prospective winners to gain a lead and then defend it, but not this time. It is even possible that some teams have been 'sandbagging' as it were.

Potentially a rider on really good form could pull five minutes on the final big mountain climb on saturday. Or lose the same if they have a bad day. I don't think any one team is strong enough to control the race 100% in the mountains, so anything is possible.

cheers
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Cyril Haearn
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Re: 2019 Tour de France: Spoilers!

Post by Cyril Haearn »

Merckx used to go to pray in church on the rest day, that worked for him

I read about a top footballer, he was very lazy when not training or playing, slept as much as possible, tried to avoid using stairs, took the lift to save energy, etc :wink:
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Brucey
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Re: 2019 Tour de France: Spoilers!

Post by Brucey »

There are presently six riders within 2'-14" of the lead. I've just seen an interview with Luke Rowe and he said that "there are only five riders who can win the tour from here". It might just have been a slip of the tongue, but if not I wonder which of the six he is discounting?

cheers
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Debs
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Re: 2019 Tour de France: Spoilers!

Post by Debs »

Brucey wrote: ...It might just have been a slip of the tongue, but if not I wonder which of the six he is discounting?

cheers


Perhaps, Egan Bernal doesn't count as he's really a lavishly paid domestique of Geraint?
Brucey
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Re: 2019 Tour de France: Spoilers!

Post by Brucey »

just like G was for Froomy last year....?

cheers
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Brucey
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Re: 2019 Tour de France: Spoilers!

Post by Brucey »

Fuglsang is out; half an hour's ride from the finish today Fuglsang was involved in a crash on a tight corner in a village (with several other riders) and although he got up quickly, he didn't remount immediately. He looked a bit dazed, then took his helmet off and was taken away in the ambulance. Early reports are that he hurt his shoulder.

Too bad; he survived a horrific-looking prang in the early part of this year's TdF and he has been on good form leading into the race. Arguably he was out of contention for the GC (being about 5 mins off the lead) but all that could have changed in the alps. I wonder what the Astana team will do now? More wild cards in this race I expect.... Lutsenko is now their best placed rider on GC but he is half an hour off the lead. I don't think that the team have anything to ride for now apart from stage wins, but I'm not sure they have the riders for that either.

Nice sprint win for Caleb Ewen today; teams who worked hard to chase the break down and had longer, better lead-outs didn't profit. Second sprint win for Caleb, which makes him favourite for Paris, provided he makes it through the alps.

G crashed too, fortunately not too badly, and at a time when the race was quiescent. He said that he was riding one-handed when his gears jumped suddenly and jammed (for no good reason) and this spat him off. In the absence of any other information I'd be suspicious of a Di2 problem but perhaps I'm jumping to conclusions; maybe the chain just fell off or something.

cheers
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mjr
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Re: 2019 Tour de France: Spoilers!

Post by mjr »

Si wrote:
Bonefishblues wrote:
Si wrote:If disc brakes caused the outcome of crashes to be worse (e.g. rotors causing gashes) then one would suspect that we'd have seen a lot more of this in MTBing where both disc brakes and crashes are a lot more common.

But not the close echelons of large numbers of cyclists in a Peleton, perhaps.


ive had plenty of "full contact" racing in xc races . :wink:

Anyway, id have thought a chain ring could do as much damage as a disc rotor, if not more with its teeth, but there has been no call for chain ring guards.

Does anyone ride hard enough to make a chain ring hot like a disc rotor that's just been trying to slow a rider heading for a pile-up?
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Brucey
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Re: 2019 Tour de France: Spoilers!

Post by Brucey »

Apparently Simon Yates isn't going to ride the Vuelta after all. This kind of makes sense and may (despite race fatigue) whet his appetite for stage wins in the Alps.....

cheers
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mjr
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Re: 2019 Tour de France: Spoilers!

Post by mjr »

Extreme weather protocol today means riders can keep taking supplies from the car until 8.8km to go (usually banned in the last 20km) and the cut-off time will be calculated from the peloton not the winner, effectively giving the groupetto/autobus more time to finish the stage.
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Brucey
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Re: 2019 Tour de France: Spoilers!

Post by Brucey »

Brilliant win for Trentin today; he's really becoming a more versatile rider than he was expected to be a few years ago.

Tomorrow and the two days after will be the defining stages of the 2019 TdF. Nine big climbs, some reaching up to where the air is rather thin, higher than we have thus far seen in the race. The weather could be a factor too, with rain forecast; even in the middle of summer it can turn cold and nasty at 2700m so you can't take the weather for granted. Pinot likes it cool but doesn't much like descending anyway, less when it is wet presumably. Swings and roundabouts for him I suppose.

Alaphillipe is starting to look a bit tired and subdued; the maillot jaune is weighing heavy now and at the same time he and his team badly want to believe it is possible for him to hold it into Paris. Three more days.... But he has only one really good mountain domestique in Mas, and his form has been patchy in the last few days. He looked OK today though.

In a late development today both Tony Martin and Luke Rowe have been unexpectedly expelled from the race after a squabble over position in the peloton near the top of the final climb today. Rowe described it as 'something and nothing' when interviewed before the commissaires had their turn; the UCI commissaires took a dim view of it, despite what we were shown not looking that bad.

So G will be a man down and the rest of the Ineos team will most likely will have heads full of brooding injustice (or something) which probably won't do their racing abilities any good.

I expect the top six to mark one another closely for the first two days, and then if riders cracking under pressure hasn't already sorted things out, some really aggressive riding on Saturday's stage.

But anything could happen...

cheers
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Brucey
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Re: 2019 Tour de France: Spoilers!

Post by Brucey »

Image

Tony Martin is seen here running Luke Rowe into the gutter, thus endangering both Rowe and the spectators. Its not clear what (if anything) Rowe did to provoke this or by way of retaliation, but almost anything might be enough for the commissaires to come down on him as well as TM.

The crazy thing is that they had resolved their differences by the end of the stage; too late by then though, the damage had already been done.

Brailsford has described the penalty as 'harsh'; I tend to agree, it normally takes one rider trying to punch another's lights out (eg Gianni Moscon) to get chucked off the race; from what we saw of it this looked more like fairly routine argy bargy or handbags at five paces....

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mjr
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Re: 2019 Tour de France: Spoilers!

Post by mjr »

Dutch television showed more. Before Martin ran Rowe off the road, Rowe flicked across the Jumbo train and detached Kruijswijk. After being put in the gutter, Rowe rode up alongside Martin and then you can't quite see behind other riders but Martin's head suddenly moves sideways, possibly meaning a push or shove from Rowe.

So not as debatable as Sir Dave suggests IMO. Both were retaliating and putting other riders in danger, so both would have been lucky to stay.
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Brucey
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Re: 2019 Tour de France: Spoilers!

Post by Brucey »

Not ascribing blame (can't really, not having seen exactly what happened) but if that sort of thing went on every time someone took some else's wheel, there would be no riders left in most races, would there...?

cheers
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Postboxer
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Re: 2019 Tour de France: Spoilers!

Post by Postboxer »

And in no way was the jury swayed by the possibility to weaken the three riders in the top five who aren't French, it being 34 years since France have had a French winner at the Tour de France.

I think with the time several riders need to make up on Alaphilippe and how close the next five riders are together and the 'also rans' just behind them, classy riders, Landa, Valverde, Uran, Porte, I think it will kick off early on all three stages. Porte is 6 min 30 behind Alaphilippe, but people have kind of assumed Alaphilippe won't survive the next three stages, therefore if he makes up 4 min 55 on Geraint Thomas, he'll be in the lead, I know it's a lot but Landa is 3min 19 behind Thomas and has looked strong and has strong teammates. Therefore early attacks by Movistar, taking Uran and Porte with them, might be the catalyst to blow the whole race open.

If Movistar attack, who chases them down? Alaphilippe could just sit on the Ineos train. I think with so many different riders and teams going for it, they won't all leave it until the last stage.

In the words of Chris Boardman and then Jens Voigt. "If you try to win, you might lose, but if you don't try to win, you lose for sure!"
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