Tour de France 2021

Once he caught his breath!

yeah it kinda contained multitudes, exhaustion confusion joy nostalgia gratitude

lmao this is v good

pic.twitter.com/fORcphkVcF

— Cycling out of context (@OutOfCycling) July 9, 2021

Great ride by the winner today - very punchy aggressive stage

Touch of the Jens Voigt about that win, it was a gutsy one.

yes! def a “shut up legs” ride

call him by his name

https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5373c9c6e4b003ad465398f8/1401132836090-D3KBTPPQAWW48WVPWZOF/Bauke_Mollema-GregorServais.jpg?format=2500w
Bauke Mollema

lord that is a pigeon chest

anyway i watched early so was trying not to spoiler

ah sorry about that

<3

Lovely work by Mollena, Woods AND Martin. What changeups!

wild that Woods crashed & still got KOM

also v glad to see Tim declerq made it well within the time cut <3

What a win by Sepp Kuss! Lotto is going great guns with their core group of little dynamos, love watching them work their induvidual moves
Big chapeau to Valverde for a killer effort

Nairo attacking on the final climb & Valverde’s like sure go ahead nerd

(sidebar: Geraint Thomas has a “Cycling Club” podcast that started the beginning of the year, eack ep is a diff theme like Time Trials, Crashes (lol/sadface), Wind, Climbing, etc & they have v good interviews w Rohan Dennis, Lizzie Deignan, Steven Cummings, Froome, Rod Ellingworth, Sam Bennet, Tom Boonan, etc.. they interview G’s wife Sara for the crashes ep

highly recommend if you dont completely hate G or the Ineos/Sky guys

this is a nice mini-thread

Me hizo nervioso siendo perseguido por un campeón como tu! @alejanvalverde 🥵
Gracias por su deportividad y humildad! Buena batalla! https://t.co/EvvJG8GCwj

— Sepp Kuss (@seppkuss) July 11, 2021

What a crazy stage! But yeah, magnificent victory by Kuss, what a ride. Hadn’t realized it was the first US stage victory in ten years! Wonderful work.

Dare I say LOL at Ineos trying to break Pogacar and noooope.

it felt v clever until it all fell apart lol

I keep forgetting Kuss is American.

Weird to say a mountain stage is low key but it kinda was; still was nice to see Konrad win it. Bora happily picking up stage wins just because!

Yeah p chill stage all things considered.
Konrad rode like a king, lovely stuff

crosswinds predicted for tomorrow’s stage

:D

Well that was much more of a classic mountain stage. Pure physical effort and mind games over the last 10K in particular!

yes a cracking end to the stage
was out of my seat when Vingegaard came back and beat Carapaz to the line, can't wait to see those two go at it again on the Tourmalet

I’m late to finding out that Lachlan Morton already completed his self-supported tour/sideshow

what a bunch of psychos, that was awesome

lol at carrapaz lying in waiting thinking haha he has cracked them, pogacar is like lol ok sure mate byeee, vengaboy like i am herpes hear me roar

vingegaard is really fkn amazing with his tenacity

also from the quotes he had carapaz’s number early on & said as much to pogacar

https://www.velonews.com/events/tour-de-france/tour-de-france-what-the-stars-said-after-tadej-pogacar-soars-to-stage-win-in-yellow/

wow at Anthony Perez’s effort too, he dug so deep!

Not something you often see. Route of the Tour de France temporarily blocked by llamas in fog. Photo from TdF Race Radio. pic.twitter.com/RSC5abj6I0

— John O'Connell (@jdpoc) July 15, 2021

Apologies, people. Turns out the photo is on the current Tour de France route, but it’s actually from a few years ago when this happened. Frankly, it’s still marvellous. My misunderstanding of the colloquial French on Race Radio.

— John O'Connell (@jdpoc) July 15, 2021

Gotta love the llamas.

Well there ya go with that today — not surprised Ineos just went with the ‘let’s do the old reliable and have the squad grind it out’ and no. Now I’m pretty curious as to how Vingegaard and Carapaz are going to try and outsprint/psych each other over these last two stages.

Mind you…this happened

https://www.bicycling.com/tour-de-france/a37034833/bahrain-victorious-anti-doping-raid-tour-de-france/

i’d love to see vingegaard pwn carapaz

liked cav’s move on matthews in the early stage sprint too, very canny stuff going on between them these past few days

stick a fork in rigo too i guess , sad to see him lose so much time

Bit of a weird ‘are we going for it or not’ start today. And then nobody could figure out what to do with Mohoric with 25K to go!

And then of course Mohoric just going full asshole with the zipped lips thing, which I perversely appreciated.

that celebration was v snitches get stitches

great win tho

Cav chucked a wobbly at his mechanic this morning & issued a statement. I for once welcome the return of Flouncy Cav, all that smiling got a bit weird

“My mechanics have worked tirelessly to ensure I’ve always been safe and successful. Although they know how short I can be when I’m stressed, no one, especially those you care about, deserve to have a voice raised to them.”https://t.co/ITQ53d33oe

— VeloNews (@velonews) July 16, 2021

Bahrain prob hoped Mohoric’s win might provide a distraction from the tumult but he does that celebration & basically invites questions about the investigation 😬🤦🏻‍♂️

sorry for shitposting

Peloton at the finish >20 mins after Mohorič... makes the time cut with ~5 mins to spare

— the Inner Ring (@inrng) July 16, 2021

I seem to remember them making an ‘adjustment’ to the time cut in the past when a large number of riders missed it.

Killer ride by the winner today, he smoked em all

looking forward to Paris!

Indeed!

Kinda hope Wout wins the sprint now? That’d be a cool moment for the jumbo team, #2 podium & stage win in Paris

And tomorrow we farewell the gorilla 😢

André Greipel: the fifth biggest winner in cycling history. 163 victories including 11 Tour stages, 7 Giro stages, 4 Vuelta ones. A giant of sprinting https://t.co/ojOIRtoMHj

— Andy McGrath (@Andymcgra) July 17, 2021

And into the final day aka ‘wow this stage starts late enough that I can actually watch it live’

i love the happy smiley ride into Paris, always one of my fave parts of the tour

Yeah always fun. Endless photo ops!

And with the intermediate sprint done now to see what the stage ends with…

Okay this final lap is looking entertainingly chaotic

Kinda hope Wout wins the sprint now? That’d be a cool moment for the jumbo team, #2 podium & stage win in Paris