The Official 100th Tour de France thread, 2013.

[Stat Brother]

Man v Team.

It would be a shame to give all that effort and not have anything to show, at the end.

 

[martyn20]

Brilliant result, superb ride for Sky and Chris Froome

 

[Stat Brother]

Scary scary stuff.

I was expecting something, but not that.

I can't believe DB's plan was to attack from 6kms.
Assuming Froome comes back and is good enough tomorrow, him and Porte are going to win this by 10+ minutes.

 

[Statto]

Fantastic ride by Froome and sky today! Porte and Kennaugh Put in a fantastic shift and got Froome up those hills. I reckon this is the stage that will win him the tour! Movistar done well and they are having quite a good tour! Valverde could be the dark horse for me! lots of racing to go though Over the next 2 weeks! I'm surprised how bad Team Saxo were, when you think of some of the riders they have on that team, People like Rogers, Roche and Kreuziger, makes it even more of a remarkable achievement!

 

[Tyrone Biggums]

This is going to cause an explosion of interest for cycling in Africa. Who would have thought we'd be seeing the yellow jersey shifting from one African too another.

Fantastic for the profile of cycling.

 

[1066familyman]

Scary scary stuff.

I was expecting something, but not that.

I can't believe DB's plan was to attack from 6kms.
Assuming Froome comes back and is good enough tomorrow, him and Porte are going to win this by 10+ minutes.

Maybe I've been reading other forums too much, but I'm not sure I like what I've just seen there. Porte blowing up once he'd done his job would have perhaps made it more realistic but that was just a little bit silly. Not really floating my boat to be honest.

 

[Stat Brother]

Maybe I've been reading other forums too much, but I'm not sure I like what I've just seen there. Porte blowing up once he'd done his job would have perhaps made it more realistic but that was just a little bit silly. Not really floating my boat to be honest.

This ain't gonna help either!!

[tweet]353533085691817986[/tweet]


It was always on the cards, just not to that extent.

My initial take away was:-

'so that's what Bert and AVV ride like when they are clean'.

But then I haven't been reading Sky hating threads.

Haters gonna hate.

 

[1066familyman]

Wonder why the official site is showing Nieve as finishing 14th today when I clearly saw him finishing 6th ahead of Kreuziger? I hope some over enthusiastic Basque fan hasn't given him a long push up the climbs and caused the organisers to penalise him.

 

[Motogull]

Really enjoyed that stage. Schoolboy error not switching over to eurospurt to see the pass but hey ho.

 

[Indurain's Lungs]

Maybe I've been reading other forums too much, but I'm not sure I like what I've just seen there. Porte blowing up once he'd done his job would have perhaps made it more realistic but that was just a little bit silly. Not really floating my boat to be honest.

I know what you mean. Froome went up as fast as Armstrong did in '01 - that's a bit dodgy.

He could win this tour by 5 or 6 minutes on that showing.

 

[1066familyman]

I know what you mean. Froome went up as fast as Armstrong did in '01 - that's a bit dodgy.

He could win this tour by 5 or 6 minutes on that showing.

Yep

Sorry to sound so doom and gloom, but I'm struggling to be elated by today, even though I know there's still bags of excitement to be had elsewhere in this race yet. Perhaps the best thing to come out of today is that Movistar are clearly prepared to be inventive with Quintana rather than tie him to Valverde's side.

 

[Stat Brother]

Another thought was 'well that's over, then'.

But I'm not buying the talk of wrong doing.

We can judge CF on 366 days of form.
He was going to make the exact move last year, until stopped by team orders.
He was tired in the Vuelta, not to mention ganged up on, on stupidly difficult roads.
While this season he has hardly put a foot wrong, following the tried and tested team policy for victory.

I still say it looks 'bad' because his competition is clean, and that's where the story should be.

Contador spent all that time protesting his innocence, but where was his 3 stop-start attacks with a track stand in between?
Where has that been since his return?

This was only an 8km Cat 1 climb.
The only people to show any ability were Sky, young'uns, and the occasional Frenchie.
Says it all to me.

 

[Stat Brother]

July 7, Stage 9: Saint-Girons - Bagnères-de-Bigorre 168.5km

 

[Tyrone Biggums]

I know what you mean. Froome went up as fast as Armstrong did in '01 - that's a bit dodgy.

That's 12 years ago though. Natural progression in sport should see riders get close to those times.

Taking into consideration bike technology, sports diets, training methods etc

I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt for now as he's not up against that great a field in regards to opposition.

 

[teaboy]

That's 12 years ago though. Natural progression in sport should see riders get close to those times.

Taking into consideration bike technology, sports diets, training methods etc

I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt for now as he's not up against that great a field in regards to opposition.

Isn't that what everyone's always said though - "I train harder than the rest", etc? Enjoy the racing and enjoy the spectacle; just don't put all your hopes and dreams into the contents of a pro-cyclist's veins. Once (make that many times) bitten, twice shy.

 

[teaboy]

Depending on how tomorrow goes, what with the gloves coming off for the GC boys.

Sunday's watching could be tricky.

I'm not convinced the gloves will come off just yet - 2 weeks is a long time to defend the jersey, and there's plenty of climbing left. I see a break surviving today....

Will Cannondale's domestiques go home now? Why put yourself the suffering when the job's done? After yesterday Green's in the bag so there's not much left for them to do. Sagan can sit in wheels and sprint off the Lotto train.

I predict a Cofidis jersey in the break today (assuming there are any in the race at all!). I'm not often right about these things...

Like I said....

 

[1066familyman]

Another thought was 'well that's over, then'.

But I'm not buying the talk of wrong doing.

We can judge CF on 366 days of form.
He was going to make the exact move last year, until stopped by team orders.
He was tired in the Vuelta, not to mention ganged up on, on stupidly difficult roads.
While this season he has hardly put a foot wrong, following the tried and tested team policy for victory.

I still say it looks 'bad' because his competition is clean, and that's where the story should be.

Contador spent all that time protesting his innocence, but where was his 3 stop-start attacks with a track stand in between?
Where has that been since his return?

This was only an 8km Cat 1 climb.
The only people to show any ability were Sky, young'uns, and the occasional Frenchie.
Says it all to me.

That's 12 years ago though [Armstrong's time]. Natural progression in sport should see riders get close to those times.

Taking into consideration bike technology, sports diets, training methods etc

I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt for now as he's not up against that great a field in regards to opposition.

Both perfectly reasonable explanations and ones I'm quite willing to except. In fact, whilst I didn't think yesterday looked good for all sorts of reasons, I'm more talking about as a race spectacle, and I didn't find myself enjoying yesterday. Total dominance in anything is never much fun to witness.

So anyway, to today. Here's hoping for something more exciting and a breakaway finally succeeding. I suppose it's National Tommy V day in France or something today If not him then my tip out of many contenders is Thibaut Pinot - only reason he lost touch with the GC group yesterday was because of a mechanical apparently. He still looked strong and will be angry so motivated to take back the time he lost as he'll be targeting that white jersey I reckon. Also has enough of a time gap on GC now to be given a certain amount of rope. 28/1 isn't fantastic odds but whoever put Sagan up as 20/1 for today must be watching a different sport to the one I'm watching

 

[Stat Brother]

True domination like that isn't great to watch, as an attacking spectacle.
But there's no doubting the style and professionalism in which it was carried out.

Not to mention the Sky production line finally getting round to showing us what Peter K is all about.

 

[Stat Brother]

Both perfectly reasonable explanations and ones I'm quite willing to except. In fact, whilst I didn't think yesterday looked good for all sorts of reasons, I'm more talking about as a race spectacle, and I didn't find myself enjoying yesterday. Total dominance in anything is never much fun to witness.

So anyway, to today. Here's hoping for something more exciting and a breakaway finally succeeding. I suppose it's National Tommy V day in France or something today If not him then my tip out of many contenders is Thibaut Pinot - only reason he lost touch with the GC group yesterday was because of a mechanical apparently. He still looked strong and will be angry so motivated to take back the time he lost as he'll be targeting that white jersey I reckon. Also has enough of a time gap on GC now to be given a certain amount of rope. 28/1 isn't fantastic odds but whoever put Sagan up as 20/1 for today must be watching a different sport to the one I'm watching

You might want to review that, I think Le Tour is currently pointing out that as a spectacle there's none better.

Not to mention the fact that Sky suffering today speaks volumes.

 

[Triggaaar]

The only people to show any ability were Sky, young'uns, and the occasional Frenchie.
Says it all to me.

Excuse me being a dunce, what exactly does it say to you?

I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt for now as he's not up against that great a field in regards to opposition.

Only because you see him as an African