Tour de France 2017

Just caught up, brutal day. Someone ban Lemond from doing his live analysis sections on Eurosport, I swear every time they cut to one there has been a heavy crash.

Hfs how old is renshaw, did his scooter run outta juice? His og lead out cred is unfuckablewith imo.

I dint know he was still racin

yeah i knew he was in bc they namechecked him once or twice in a couple of early stages

rough trot for a truckload of lads

lol: aru says he didnt know froome even had a mechanical! froome says he didnt know aru was behind him! welp i guess no-one knows anything *shrug*

that whole flap was a storm in a teacup anyway

Andy Samberg fake doc "Tour de Pharmacy" was predictably kinda lazy, but it had its funny moments and was really short. And special secret (but not secret) cameo making the most of his disgrace by further humiliating himself, with some good gags.

i didnt know charly wegelius is the poohbah of cannondale team

i just ordered his book to read

Official medical report is now in: Porte has a fractured clavicle & a fractured pelvis :(

Yech.

so brutal, cannot imagine the pain of that :/

thing is when i was young i used to love it. and now when i'm even close to touching 35/40 i worry that the slightest bit of eye watering or momentary confusion and boom. and so i start padding my brakes in a rather elderly fashion. need more mozart.

― Fizzles, Monday, 10 July 2017 3:03 AM (fourteen hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I hear you. Just learnt this weekend that a friend I had lost touch with came off his bike on a descent because he hit a pheasant. He recovering but has paralysed vocal chords to can't speak or swallow. The pros at least have people clearing the road and the organisers and local authorities to fix potholes - still terrifying though, when I Ali was descending at his best I had to watch from Behring my fingers.

At least G still has his sense of humor

Jersey for sale... Only worn once. Not in 100% condition, slight signs of use. Might need a wash… https://t.co/eHpshwDVTT

— Geraint Thomas (@GeraintThomas86) July 10, 2017

And a video message from Porte
poor fella

📹 #TDF2017 @richie_porte speaks about his condition, the crash and his supporters around the world. 📝 👉 https://t.co/tmaSTiZ0RZ pic.twitter.com/sS8lYJVRQS

— BMC Racing Team (@BMCProTeam) July 10, 2017

And back we go. Classic lazy stage aside from the sprint and end, and I never mind those. Kittel is looking more like a lock for green, I'd say. (Not the way I wanted to see Sagan's streak broken but there we are.) Best thing about today was all the insane architecture in the Dordogne, all of which I want to visit.

May not get a chance to watch today so caught up via recaps & Cycling podcast

boy Kittel is a beast now huh

watching a bit of replay now omgggg those rock formation mansions <3

I need them all.

Bob Roll on NBC was high-pitched incredulous that Lotto & Katusha only put one guy each up front for their lead-out. He was like, you're just handing the race to Kittel by towing him to the line

Velo news had a story that Contador might try to disrupt an upcoming stage now that his GC contention is done with. Idk that he's physically up to it but if it happens I'm not saying I'm NOT here for it
then again shit in one hand wish in the other, etc

Bouhanni is nothing but a thug, and got off too easy.

Poor Bodnar :(

Ready to race in the upside down #strangerthings #netflix pic.twitter.com/JtWBO6pv1O

— Peter Sagan (@petosagan) July 12, 2017

Hero.

And yeah, Bodnar *almost* had it. Amazing performance.

Big blow for Astana, and the GC tbh: Cataldo is out after his crash, and Fuglsang is wounded:

Jakob Fuglsang was diagnosed with two very small fractures: in the left scaphoid and in the head of the radius of the left elbow. Despite these injures, tomorrow Jakob is going to start at stage 12 of the Tour de France.

xxpost he's so weird, I love it

Bodnar full gas to the end: sad that he didnt get the win but what a hero for trying

Contador basically made of crashes now, yikes

Bouhanni is such a fkn tool

Well well well :D

post-race meeting done @TeamSky pic.twitter.com/ty21z6KsM4

— Landa Meana (@MikelLandaMeana) July 13, 2017

Landa rode up that final brutal hill in a relentless pace, did everything right for Froome, the latter just couldn't hack it. Was great to see Aru waiting for that insane last 300 meters and then dealing a blow. Bardet's third stage in three years. GC finally wide open.

Just heard the context of Landa's tweet: he got shouted down by the Sky bosses for not sticking with Froome when he cracked. Landa dgaf, he's joining Movistar next season.

I heard he was going to some Middle Eastern team?

he's definetely leaving.

Edwin Winkels on Dutch telly says Movistar all but announced him, but formally won't make it known until the Tour is over.

Hahah here we go. Just caught up with the day -- actual drama, love it!

Yeah I think we've all been dying for some drama like today's. Wonder if Branwell is still on dis ting? She's been absent from the thread after the first week.

Tomorrow looks promising. Just 101km. Shortest ever stage in the post-two-stages-a-day era! Wish more stages were shorter, we've had some exceptionally dull stages this week. Bring on the fireworks imho.

Last climb tomorrow - I love how the French don't call it a 'col' anymore when it is in fact a wall, 'mur' - again is brutal:

http://www.letour.fr/PHOTOS/TDF/2017/1300/PROFILCOLSCOTES_2.png

Aru, Martin, Bardet and outsider Uran will have to attack there. Wonder if they can, after today. But Froome is looking more vulnerable as ever. Aru's 6 secs advantage isn't nearly enough with the time trial on the last day ahead, but I'm hoping they'll crack this wide open tomorrow.

Spare a thought for the great Contador btw; battered and bruised paddling to the finish line, always folding and losing minutes in the final km's. But Quintana? I've no idea why he is so bad. Must be the Giro.

think Uran is less a gc outsider than Martin, but if that climb had a (much) shorter run-in, maybe an Ardennes style M80 like Martin could do it tomorrow. I Think that run in is too much tho.

You're probably right. And let's not forget there's a long descent after this climb, too, to the finish line, which will probably narrow any margins made on the slope. Nevertheless it's a tough one, this. And Froome cracks when it goes up really steep and has no time to undo it. I hope ppl like Barguil/Cummings/Bennett can finish ahead of the main group and win it tomorrow, possibly also Calmejane or the likes.

woooweee what a payoff! fun times on the mountain! Landa was solid as a rock all the way, sky can fuck off.

cool to see Rigo Uran up there again

so Uran, Bennett and Bardet all took bottles inside the last 10km. Only two of them got a 20 second penalty. Can you guess which one didn't?
http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/vaughters-tour-shouldnt-come-down-to-water-bottles-and-incompetence/

god what a bunch of cunts

pardon my french

but seriously.

in other news, Andre Greipel has a song about himself ... think 2 Unlimited & yr basically there

.@AndreGreipel has his own theme song and it's pretty awesome. 🎶Go Gorilla 🦍🎶 #TDF2017 pic.twitter.com/l2pVoKxdBY

— NBCSN Cycling (@NBCSNCycling) July 12, 2017

No no no-no
No no no-NO
NO NO NO-NO
NO NO THERE'S NO GREIPEL!

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/M7QFV0pyNgI/hqdefault.jpg

looool yes

Dan Martin said he was in a pretty bad way today, still carrying some injuries from prev crashes (he looked shellshocked in the post-race interview) ... fkn amazing effort to push through like that, jfc

Hope he can heal up

in other news: Cycling Podcast has had 2 great Kilometer 0 episodes this week

1) fascinating interview with Michael Rasmussen about doping
https://soundcloud.com/the-cycling-podcast/kilometre-0-ten-years-after

2) The ambush of Jean Francois Bernard in 1987
https://soundcloud.com/the-cycling-podcast/kilometre-0-the-ambush

they also did one on the first Aussie Tour rider, Phil Anderson <3

Branwell, who prefers the pronoun "they", is still following Le Tour! I have a guest this week, so I've not been able to be quite as glued to it as I would have liked to be. (She is from the former DDR, so we have become convinced that Kittel, Greipel and T. Martin are all the result of a special East German programme to genetically engineer cyclists with perfectly aero cheekbones. It worries me that she can't tell them apart, but by this point, I can? I'm not sure when I started having favourite cyclists but it seems to be a thing now.)

I am just so in awe of Kittel. I obviously don't know a lot about cycle racing, but I used to follow horse racing when I was younger, so I am used to seeing finishes where you get all of the fast riders bunched over on the inside, jostling for position and trying to pull in front of one another. But in many of these finishes, Kittel just seems to pull out from behind, then massively accelerate and go AROUND the bunch at the front. That doesn't seem like it should be physically possible?

I was very pleased when Kittel won his fourth stage. When he won the fifth, I was jumping up and down and shouting, to the embarrassment of my reserved German friend. At this point, am I correct in thinking it is now almost mathematically impossible for any other cyclist to surpass him in points?

I had already decided that I liked Aru due to his Macarena video. And I was feeling very "Anyone But England" about Froome already. (This is not his fault, but there is a Froome yellow jersey in the Bad Conference Room, and I dislike having meetings in that room so much that I hate having to look at his clothes.) But Froome was riding very badly yesterday? What was that about when he and Aru decided to take a shortcut through some caravans? When I left work, I had just posted that I was rooting for Aru. Then when I got off the train, I saw that he had beaten Froome to the Yellow Jersey, and I was so happy. Because I had been enjoying the race, but it would have been very boring had Froome been a shoe-in. I am rooting for Aru for the Yellow and Kittel for the Green. I astonishes me that I know what this means now, and such things come out of my mouth.

I don't understand why the race organisers make such bizarre decisions about who to penalise and who not to penalise. It seems very strange and randomly distributed. But I also do not understand why the other cyclists themselves have been acting so deferentially towards Froome, and not attacking when they get the chance. It's like they're showing him some misplaced kind of respect when they're supposed to be competing with him? It's these kinds of conventions I don't understand. Will they show Macarena-Boy the same respect now he's in yellow, or was that special Froome-age?

<3 the Greipel video. He's adorable. But those guys who are battered and covered in injuries, and still make it to the finish, I have so much respect.

Oh, and here's another stupid newbie question: with the team scores. When people drop out of the team, due to injury or whatever, how does that affect the overall team? I don't really understand how teams work. Why some riders get to take it easy and then go for the end sprint, and others get stuck carrying water bottles back and forth all day?

That doesn't seem like it should be physically possible?

I have no idea if this is the case in horse riding, but a HUGE part of cycling is the aerodynamic effect of riding right behind someone else to save effort, so it's quite normal for sprinters to try to leave it very late before nipping out and overtaking people. Obviously to do it from as far back as Kittel does and round so many people, you have to be incredibly strong.

it is now almost mathematically impossible for any other cyclist to surpass him in points?

Definitely not mathematically impossible, but very unlikely to happen unless he crashes out of the race or inexplicably decides never to contest another sprint.

But I also do not understand why the other cyclists themselves have been acting so deferentially towards Froome, and not attacking when they get the chance. It's like they're showing him some misplaced kind of respect when they're supposed to be competing with him?

It would be 'ungentlemanly' to attack the yellow jersey if he stopped for a piss or if his chain came off or he had a puncture (but all of these things have happened in the past, it's just frowned upon). But attacking him when he's showing signs of weakness is totally acceptable (that's what it's all about) - some will have been holding off on attacking because they fear he will crush them (as he frequently has in the past), but after what happened yesterday he's lost that aura of invincibility and I think he'll be attacked left, right and centre.

Will they show Macarena-Boy the same respect now he's in yellow, or was that special Froome-age?

It's a yellow jersey thing. If any of the GC contenders has a mishap it's considered Just Not Cricket for their competitors to find a sudden burst of speed. This has been abused in the past, with team mates insisting on a mass go-slow for tenuous reasons, but it's usually done about right. It's one of tge arguments I put forward when somebody tells me road cycling is all about the machines, like F1. If that were the case, mechanical failure would be pounced upon by rivals. Obviously, a mechanical has lost plenty of riders a race, but less often because it's been exploited by other riders and more usually because that's the way the cookie crumbled on that particular day.

When it comes to teams, they all have jobs. Some of them are there to bust a gut in the mountains and/or fetch bottles so the team leader doesn't have to, and that's what they're paid for.

Oh, and here's another stupid newbie question: with the team scores. When people drop out of the team, due to injury or whatever, how does that affect the overall team? I don't really understand how teams work. Why some riders get to take it easy and then go for the end sprint, and others get stuck carrying water bottles back and forth all day?

All the teams want to get as much recognition for their sponsors as possible. The most obvious way to do that is to win the yellow jersey, so teams with a genuine GC contender (someone who is very good at climbing, and very consistent, and can also time trial not too badly) will usually build the team around this person - that means many of the other riders that get selected for the team are not really riding for themselves, they're there to do a job for the team leader. That might mean going back to the cars to get drinks / gels, it might mean pacing them back to the bunch if they've stopped for a wheel change, it might mean riding alongside them to protect them in the bunch, it might mean riding at the front of the bunch to try to chase down a break, etc. Other teams might not have anyone with a chance of winning the race overall, but they might have a sprinter who is a good bet for a stage win, so again the team would be largely built around them with several domestiques basically there to assist the leader (all the things above plus forming a lead-out train for the sprint finish).

So what happens when someone has to drop out? It depends who it is. If it's a domestique, everyone carries on as before, there are just fewer helpers. If it's the team leader, then the team needs to decide how to change their focus: this might mean chasing stage wins instead of going for the overall, or it might mean 'promoting' someone (e.g. when Cavendish dropped out, his team started trying to set up Edvald Boasson Hagen for sprint wins instead).

Uran & Bennett's time penalties have been rescinded thankfully, new times are
1 Aru
2 Froome +06
3 Bardet +25
4 Uran +35