Tour de France 2018

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dee ee

Mountain climber
Of THIS World (Planet Earth)
Topic Author's Original Post - Jul 6, 2018 - 07:10pm PT
Yep, this is it, Le Grande Boucle starts tomorrow!!!

The world champ and fan fave (Peter Sagan) is ready to tie Eric Zabel's record (6) for the points classification! Let's hope that Cavendish steers clear and races clean in his attempt to tie Eddy Merckx's record for most stage wins. Cav never came clean about the incident last year. What a punter!

It's all the best sprinters this year and they all seem to be on form. It will be wild in the sprints.

I'm not exactly happy about Chris Froome being allowed in at the last second after his unresolved salbutamol (double the allowable amount in the 2017 Vuelta) issue. It seems like bs political maneuvering behind the scenes. Proper protocol was not followed. I don't believe in Team Sky and especially Dave Brailsford anymore. The prerace press conference sounded like it was written by the White House press sec. Sarah Huckabee S.

The GC battle will be good with Froomey, Nibali, Porte, Quintana and others ready to duke it out. I'm surprised nobody is talking about Rigoberto Uran as a GC threat. But that's cool, it will work to his advantage.

I'm also hoping to see Tejay Vangarderen have a good ride with no GC pressure.


OK, enough said. The race will be spectacular as usual and this years course has some surprises in store.

HERE WE GO!

Gnome Ofthe Diabase

climber
Out Of Bed
Jul 6, 2018 - 07:15pm PT
HERE WE GO !- the grand loop
no "juice" or performance enhancing substances used & as worth while?
albeit, more dangerous, a pursuit as WATCHING any TV coverage of a baseball. . .
ho cycling?! same thing applies . . . [Click to View YouTube Video]1st of 4 lines,Left of center, following the vine (The Poison Ivy&Virginia Creeper, I pulled to the side, & that then tried to get revenge as I top'd out)



more sillynesshttps://youtu.be/JS81qoXJDKM


rottingjohnny

Sport climber
Sands Motel , Las Vegas
Jul 6, 2018 - 07:23pm PT
GDBase....Hollywood and Vine...? I thought you were back east...?
donini

Trad climber
Ouray, Colorado
Jul 6, 2018 - 07:29pm PT
I'll tune in for the mountain stages and time trials exclusively. Don't ever need to see a 100 meter sprint at the end of a 200 kilometer stage again...marketing trick to make the flat stages somewhat palatable.

On second thought the sprints can be interesting vis a vis the battle for posistioning prior to the sprint...just not for me.
BruceHildenbrand

Social climber
Mountain View/Boulder
Jul 6, 2018 - 10:37pm PT
The latest press release from the UCI about the Chris Froome affair just muddies the water even more than before. Froome is reporting that he had a chest infection so he had to increase his dose of Salbutamol. I am not a doctor, but is Salbutamol the best drug for a chest infection? And how do you increase the dose of Salbutamol? As per the WADA anti-doping code an athlete cannot take Salbutamol either by pill or injection so was he just taking more hits on his inhaler? Very fishy indeed!
Chaz

Trad climber
greater Boss Angeles area
Jul 7, 2018 - 09:16am PT
I'll tune in for the mountain stages and time trials exclusively

You may want to re-think that strategy, after today's race. GC was shaken up more today than in most mountain stages.
rottingjohnny

Sport climber
Sands Motel , Las Vegas
Jul 7, 2018 - 09:34am PT
Froome could have used the pigeon pie alibi or the penis enlargement alibi...
sean_barb

Trad climber
Suburb of Moore's Wall
Jul 7, 2018 - 10:00am PT
I love how froome repeatedly destroys the field while sick; winning elite endurance sport with a chest infection. Yeah that makes sense! I have seen this movie before
Brandon-

climber
The Granite State.
Jul 7, 2018 - 01:11pm PT
Eddy Merckx and the Prince of Monaco, driving with the peloton.
10b4me

Social climber
Lida Junction
Jul 7, 2018 - 03:50pm PT
Gaviria, and Sagan will battle for the Green Jersey.
10b4me

Social climber
Lida Junction
Jul 8, 2018 - 02:56pm PT
Sagan
Kalimon

Social climber
Ridgway, CO
Jul 8, 2018 - 07:19pm PT
Nice call! Great to see him off to a good start, he just needs to avoid Cavendish.
mooch

Trad climber
Tribal Base Camp (Riverkern Annex)
Jul 9, 2018 - 09:07am PT
....and time trials exclusively.

Agree to disagree Jim. ITT's are "YAWN-city". Coverage of each rider is usually the last 200m and its typically a clock watching-fest for the viewer. A shade less than the team time trial. Weirdly enough, I watch TT's only when its raining on the course. Good wipe-outs. NOOOOWW....It's the sprint finishes that are good nail biters! Of course, most of the drama starts around 15K with lead outs lining up to launch the sprinters. Yep, big fan of Sagan. But you all knew that.

Mountain stages: eyes are on Nibili, Quintana and Froome and the overall GC.
rockermike

Trad climber
Berkeley
Jul 9, 2018 - 11:27am PT
Interesting discussion of doping and test failure

[Click to View YouTube Video]
donini

Trad climber
Ouray, Colorado
Jul 9, 2018 - 11:42am PT
Mooch...I agree that ITT’s are not great viewing, but they are pretty significant in the overall results.
BruceHildenbrand

Social climber
Mountain View/Boulder
Jul 9, 2018 - 02:00pm PT
With new technologies you can certainly make an ITT very exciting as was the case with the 2015 Tour of Switzerland. What you need is real-time GPS data from the riders and then you can setup a "who's winning right now" as the riders all cross over the exact same point in the course.

To see this happening in real time is really exciting. At the aforementioned 2015 Tour de Suisse, Gerraint Thomas and Simon Spilak were separated by a handful of seconds going into the final stage ITT. They started off second to last and then last. With the real-time, GPS-based, time differences it was a nail-biter all the way to the finish with Spilak winning the overall by 5sec and Dumoulin 3rd at 19sec.

I asked Tour de France race director, Christain Prudhome, if they could implement this in the Tour and didn't get much of a response. I don't know why. It doesn't seem too difficult to implement. I have seen other races on TV use a variant of this.
Darwin

Trad climber
Seattle, WA
Jul 9, 2018 - 08:02pm PT

Y'all especially Bruce;


Why is Greg Van Avermaet in Yellow and not TJ (born in Tacoma y'all)?

I want to root for Colombians, but love Sagan. What's a person to do? Will that battle go all the way to Paris. Despite myself, heck I love this. OK, not a big Froome fan.
BruceHildenbrand

Social climber
Mountain View/Boulder
Jul 9, 2018 - 10:43pm PT
^^^^^
With respect to the TTT, the first rider of the team across the line gets the jersey assuming all riders are tied on time. If not, the rider with the lowest overall time who is closest to the first rider across the line gets the jersey.
BruceHildenbrand

Social climber
Mountain View/Boulder
Jul 9, 2018 - 11:46pm PT
I was sad to see Luis Leon Sanchez abandon the Tour de France after a bad crash on stage 2. He is an exciting racer to watch with his aggressive style which has earned him four stage wins at the Tour.

I was covering the Tour in 2009 when he won in St. Girons. At the finish, Luis rode about 100 feet past the line and stopped right in front of me! I managed to say something like "nice job, dude" before I was engulfed in a swarm of media all intent on getting an interview and photos. I was able to snap a few photos before the melee became a crushing force that is just part of being a journalist at the Tour.


Radish

Trad climber
SeKi, California
Jul 10, 2018 - 12:21pm PT
So, having changed our cable package early this year to save some money, I no longer get coverage of the Tour de France! Waaaaa!! Anybody got streaming ideas I could do? I haven't checked at all so this is the first place............
Messages 1 - 20 of total 216 in this topic << First  |  < Previous  |  Show All  |  Next >  |  Last >>
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