The Cycling Thread

[pierrelm]

What a wonderful tour Warren Barguil is riding. What is really heartening is that after the doping, team dominated tedium of the USPS years, we seem to have come out of the other side into a much cleaner sport with some fantastic prospects for the GC in the future.
Dear me, how popular will Barguil, Bardet or any other French rider be if they win the thing? It might just be next year?? Is that too soon? Wonderful entertainment, just a pity that Cav and Kittel couldn't contest the Champs.

[mizlaplan]

That's the end of the mountain stages.
Froome continues to be strong, with great support form his team, especially Landa.
Froome will miss him next season when he has to ride against him.
It looked like Kwiatkowski might have retired, a great shame, he filled in for Geraint Thomas's Froome bodyguard job effortlessly.
French fortunes are definitely on the rise with Barguil taking the King of the Mountains title.
Bardet appears to be a genuine threat to the Yellow Jersey and next year might well take it.
Assuming no great changes on the straightforward stage 19 I think the only threat to Froome may well be Uran in the Marseille time trials.

[vinceprince]

Originally Posted by mizlaplan

That's the end of the mountain stages.
Froome continues to be strong, with great support form his team, especially Landa.
Froome will miss him next season when he has to ride against him.
It looked like Kwiatkowski might have retired, a great shame, he filled in for Geraint Thomas's Froome bodyguard job effortlessly.
French fortunes are definitely on the rise with Barguil taking the King of the Mountains title.
Bardet appears to be a genuine threat to the Yellow Jersey and next year might well take it.
Assuming no great changes on the straightforward stage 19 I think the only threat to Froome may well be Uran in the Marseille time trials.

Kwiatkowski didn't retire he just stopped for a well earned rest. Sky need him to finish to win the team prize.

French winner? Well only if you get rid of the TTs completely. If you want someone to beat Froome and Sky then you need Dumoulin to compete with the traditional 2 TTs.

What are the French going to try next to engineer a win? Just lots of dangerous downhill finishes until someone gets killed?
A couple of long TTs and the French will be 5 mins+ down on the likes of Dumoulin. Is this a race for the world or just for the French?

[countjimmoriarty]

Originally Posted by mizlaplan

It looked like Kwiatkowski might have retired, a great shame, he filled in for Geraint Thomas's Froome bodyguard job effortlessly.

Not sure where you got that impression. Kwiato did grind to a halt for a short time when he pulled off from the front of the group, but made his way to the finish in his own time as usual. He has been man of the match just about every climbing day as far as domestique duties go.

Hugely impressed by Warren Barguil. Overall contender in future years.

Bardet probably out of the GC now, unless his team can pull off another one of their tactical surprises tomorrow, given his relative weakness in the ITT. Uran will be more of a threat - I just wish he'd done a bit more than wheelsuck his way around France for 3 weeks though.

[footstep]

Great Barguill today.
Froome the best this year again.

[mizlaplan]

Nice quiet "Day Off" for the main riders today but great stuff in the breakaway group.
Brilliant win, finally, for Edvald Boasson Hagen.
So much frustration on Ben Swift's face in a post-race interview.
He knew this was a chance to do something special but he couldn't capitalise on it.
Hopefully, there'll be other opportunities.

[footstep]

Problem with modern "tour' (I will say since 1985 and money), are those day off.
Question my friends: watching from 1910 to 1960 what has changed so much after?
We get bored, and more and more.

[rewbear]

I've just finished watching "La Course" and think it might have been a better spectacle, with a less predictable result, if the two days had been swapped. Having the ITT first, with that time going forward to La Isoard, and the winner decided on aggregate time would have meant more attacking from riders needing to make up time. Thoughts?

In addition, I think the organisers must have asked the velodrome's caretaker to present the medals. The chap had scruffy jeans on with a shirt that looked as though it hadn't been pressed. Lizzie did say in interview that the 'behind the scenes' organisation could have been improved and that just stuck out as being so obviously disrespectful to both the race and the medal winners.

[Motorboater]

I'm enjoying Matt Keenan and Robbie McEwen's commentary. Ive had enough of Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwin in particular.

[vinceprince]

French twits booing Froome didn't have much time as he almost got to them before Bardet.

How can you claim to be a champion cyclist if you can't ride fast on your own? It is the type of cycling that every cyclist does 95% of the time.
When they had Fignon & Hinault riding they put in 100 km + of TT. Going on today's performance Bardet would be about 10 minutes down in such a race - not even a podium contender.

So what next year? Just downhill finishes and no TTs? Dangerous downill TTs?
Give up France and let a proper cyclist like Dumoulin have a crack.