2018 Tour De France (Spoilers)

Now we have something / quite-a-lot to discuss and celebrate.
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NATURAL ANKLING
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Re: 2018 Tour De France (Spoilers)

Post by NATURAL ANKLING »

Hi,
Uphill and over 1K out rules out all the sprinters.

You need a climbers physique.
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Richard Fairhurst
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Re: 2018 Tour De France (Spoilers)

Post by Richard Fairhurst »

I've said this in previous years but... I do wish ITV would buy themselves a new computer so they can upload the highlights show to the website at a decent time.

On Fridays we can't watch the highlights live because I'm otherwise engaged (I'm the church organist here in Charlbury and choir practice is 7-8 on Fridays). So we watch them on catch-up.

Except... it's 11pm now and they're still not up. Eurosport upload them basically instantly - their highlights show is 7-8.30 and it's available for catch-up viewing straight afterwards. So we watched Eurosport tonight. But it was such a, well, boring stage that I'd have appreciated Ned and David's dry humour rather than Carlton's perpetual excitement.

Come on ITV - if Eurosport can do it, why can't you?
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Brucey
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Re: 2018 Tour De France (Spoilers)

Post by Brucey »

with 'freeview play' there is no problem. Nor indeed is there with my 15 year old PVR (examples of which can now be purchased from £25 on gumtree BTW).

'Twas a mighty dull stage though, apart from the last few km when there was *gasp* some actual racing.... I reckon they were all knackered from the past few days.... the race isn't 1/3 done yet....

cheers
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NATURAL ANKLING
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Re: 2018 Tour De France (Spoilers)

Post by NATURAL ANKLING »

Hi,
Cobbles...........................Chaos...............................too many down to count....................Don't miss the highlights tonite :!:
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Spinners
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Re: 2018 Tour De France (Spoilers)

Post by Spinners »

Fair play. Cracking stage today.
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thirdcrank
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Re: 2018 Tour De France (Spoilers)

Post by thirdcrank »

Bearing in mind the potential for some significant crashes, particularly if it had been raining, it doesn't look as though the stage is going to have a huge effect on the result. Several crashes but only one GC rider obliged to abandon: all the others have finished more or less together in the bunch, even after some punctures. The Yellow Jersey has extended his lead a bit more and the Green Jersey ditto.
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Re: 2018 Tour De France (Spoilers)

Post by cycleruk »

I would have thought that dust masks should have been issued for today's stage. :shock:
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Postboxer
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Re: 2018 Tour De France (Spoilers)

Post by Postboxer »

The delay in putting highlights online may be due to whatever contract they have, they may not be allowed to until later.

Not much mention of Tejay Van Garderen today after whatever incident he had early on, given he was only 9 seconds off the lead in third place. He's now 30th place, 6:09 down. Nice to see Mark Cavendish congratulating John Degenkolb right at the very end of the ITV highlights show.
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Re: 2018 Tour De France (Spoilers)

Post by Brucey »

pretty epic stage yesterday. Shame about Richie Porte breaking his collar bone (again). Dunno quite what happened to TJvG but the one good thing about this is that BMC don't have to struggle to think how to deploy their riders any more; TJ is over six minutes down on GC now and that is probably too far.


Dylan Groenegewen has a very nasty crash indeed and it looked like the forks on his Bianchi broke off in the impact, or maybe their breakage caused the crash. [ edit; blurry photo shows how a Bianchi can be instantly converted to kit form
Image ]

Did any one else notice the 'miraculous ride' of Bardet (and Mikel Landa) from the Uran group to within 7s of the leader's group, all in the last 10km? They (and only they) mysteriously made up ~1'-30" despite the fact that the same group had been trying (and failing) to do exactly that for the previous 50km. My suspicions were aroused when, during the 'miracle ride', the (presumably French) director showed some close-ups of Bardet, and a shot wide enough to show another AG2R rider in front of him, but no shots wide enough to show if they were tailgating a team car or perhaps even getting a tow off one... I wasn't the only one to suspect some jiggery pokery:

http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/tour-shorts-moscon-questions-rapid-returns-after-cobbled-crashes-groenewegen-hopes-to-continue/


In the past we have seen one rule applied to the latest Great French Hope (GFH) and another applied to riders from other countries. Ok Bardet and Landa were unlucky to be where they were but Bardet punctured three or four times (which suggests poor tyres and/or poor riding) and Landa crashed by himself whilst taking a drink, on tarmac; do they deserve a tow up to the bunch when good GC riders like Uran took no such advantage? Lets hope that suspicions of this sort of thing are unfounded; but I'm not holding my breath....

cheers
Last edited by Brucey on 17 Jul 2018, 7:53pm, edited 1 time in total.
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NATURAL ANKLING
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Re: 2018 Tour De France (Spoilers)

Post by NATURAL ANKLING »

Hi,
If Froome mentions "I used To Do MTB Racing" again............ :roll:
And Quintana might just of been a clever rider.
I suppose Bardet is French..................that was so comeback from four stops............
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Re: 2018 Tour De France (Spoilers)

Post by mjr »

Brucey wrote:pretty epic stage yesterday. Shame about Richie Porte breaking his collar bone (again). Dunno quite what happened to TJvG but the one good thing about this is that BMC don't have to struggle to think how to deploy their riders any more; TJ is over six minutes down on GC now and that is probably too far.

It was on TV: Tejay went straight on into the dirt at a left turn for some reason. I think it was The Cycling Podcast that speculated that he seemed to grow heavy/weary as soon as Porte abandoned, maybe not looking forward to another ride as BMC General Classification hope.

Brucey wrote: Ok Bardet and Landa were unlucky to be where they were but Bardet punctured three or four times (which suggests poor tyres and/or poor riding) and Landa crashed by himself whilst taking a drink, on tarmac; do they deserve a tow up to the bunch when good GC riders like Uran took no such advantage? Lets hope that suspicions of this sort of thing are unfounded; but I'm not holding my breath....

I suspect Bardet and Landa were getting the usual sort of advantage ducking in and out of cars but Landa's group was catching the peloton and Bardet's final problem at about 7km was too close to the finish for a barrage (a gap between groups that the cars have to stay out of) to be implemented in time. The officials probably had problems all day with where the barrages should be set because the race had split into so many pieces but Uran crashed a bit more than 25km out - too far out to get the same sort of advantage because they probably could put a barrage in front of him.
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Re: 2018 Tour De France (Spoilers)

Post by thirdcrank »

Watching the riders finishing after the first three, they hardly arrived as a compact bunch. Obviously impossible to judge distances from a head-on shot with a telephoto lens but I was assuming there would be some gaps and those further down the bunch would lose time. For anybody unfamiliar with this, all riders finishing together get the time of the of the leader in their bunch but a gap of 1 second means that that a new time is taken on the first rider to finish after that gap, so riders a finishing a couple of seconds apart can have a big difference in their finish time. I've a sneaky feeling that Bardet may have benefited from a decision to credit a big bunch with the same time, ignoring the gaps.

Perhaps mysteries like this will be clarified in tonight's highlights programme.

Otherwise, I'm amazed that Bardet got back on so quickly, not least because he'd had to get back on a couple of times earlier in the day.
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Re: 2018 Tour De France (Spoilers)

Post by Brucey »

Uran (and most of the others in that group) lost about what I expected him to lose bearing in mind where he was with 10km to go, so either he was suddenly unable to ride as quickly as those around him or (more likely perhaps) unwilling to ride in the same way as Bardet and Landa.

BTW at 25mph a 1s gap is about 12m.

cheers
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Re: 2018 Tour De France (Spoilers)

Post by thirdcrank »

Last week, ITV4 had an interview with Dumoulin after he had been penalised 20 seconds and he was frank about what he had done but complained about inconsistent application of the rules about taking pace from race vehicles. I was hoping that if there was any controversy here, they might pick it up and continue the theme in the highlights programme, but they didn't, so perhaps there was nothing to write home about. OTOH, once the ad breaks and the highlights clips were out of the way, there was little of the allocated 30 minutes left for any detailed analysis.
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Re: 2018 Tour De France (Spoilers)

Post by Si »

Was it Bardet who kept fussing over his bar end plug? One of the French riders who crashed or p*nct*red a couple of times anyway.

Why all the fuss about the plug in the end of the handlebars???????? Did anyone else have a fleeting thought about there being a hidden boost control in there for the electric motor built into his frame :twisted: :lol: :twisted: :lol: Well, he did seem to make up a lot of ground right at the end !!!!!!!

<note for those easily offended - this is a joke, not a serious accusation>
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