Posted on 06/30/2017 5:24:21 PM PDT by Baynative
On Saturday, 198 of the world's best cyclists will start the Tour de France. Only four have a realistic shot at winning.
That's according to the highest-ranked American bike racer at the Tour, Andrew Talansky, in a recent interview with Business Insider.
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
Offredo’s first TdF ride.
Some of the teams sure changed up their names for this year - and a couple of new ones.
The Tour set the course for a Bastille Day challenge and they got it. I don't think I'm alone is saying I didn't expect the GC to look like this at the halfway mark. Uran and Aru were anything but household words until last week. Contador and Quintana are falling away. Quintana may be able to pull off a break and get some time back but 4 minutes is a big task for getting on the podium.
1 ARU Fabio 51 ASTANA
2 FROOME Christopher 1 TEAM SKY +00' 06''
3 BARDET Romain 11 AG2R + 00' 25''
4 URAN Rigoberto 188 CANNONDALE + 00' 55''
5 MARTIN Daniel 105 QUICK - STEP + 01' 41''
6 YATES Simon 89 ORICA - SCOTT + 02' 13''
7 LANDA Mikel 6 TEAM SKY + 02' 55''
8 QUINTANA Nairo 21 MOVISTAR + 04' 01''
9 BENNETT George 162 TEAM LOTTO + 04' 24''
10 MEINTJES Louis 61 UAE TEAM EMIRATES 5+ 04' 51''
So here we are Landa and Froome have their work cut out for them.
From LeTour:
"Some observers might have felt 213.2 kilometres of boredom and 300 metres of excitement in stage 12 but it's set to be the opposite on stage 13. It's the shortest of the 104th Tour de France, time trials excluded but it's a brutal one with three category 1 climbs on the menu, one of them being the Mur de Péguère with sections at 18%. It's really steep. Fabio Aru and Romain Bardet have an occasion to distance Chris Froome because they might have unexpectedly dethroned the Brit, nothing is lost for the defending champion although it's something new to him to lose the yellow jersey in the mountains. Time cut is tight, attacks will take place from the beginning, the show must go on!"
So who has the legs today?
Bastille Day! A Frenchman?
Saw something about feeding penalties yesterday for three riders that was thrown out today. Something about the team cars were delayed by something race related.
You got the inside scoop?
I was going to tell you how beautiful your state of Washington is, but it looks like you've moved out of the state, and are now living in Idaho??
We are frantically trying to get up to speed with politics and - of course - the Tour de France! Thank you for this thread.
Sadly, I haven't been to Idaho yet... it's on my list. ;-)
Bookmark
Now today was a good day on the road.
Yellow under pressure and handled it well. Individuals going for it, teams going for it and team members doing their bit for the team,
Dan Martin is looking pretty good and there’s 2 more good mountain stages. Overall a great Tour so far with the exception of Sagan’s too harsh penalty and the contenders that crashed out. Now if NBC can just stop putting Indy Car racing on when the Tour should be on (grrrrrrr).
Amen to that! And NO Rest Day recap show tonight. As long as I can remember, NBC / Versus / OLN usually ran great recap shows on the two rest days of each Tour.
My husband and I were away for most of this year's Tour (saw the Cavendish/Sagan stage though), and I was really looking forward to catching up with all the stages. GRR!
Bad day for Martin today.
It’s all on the line for three individuals in today’s ITT.
I hope the weather stays the same for the day but at least the top three should be racing in the same weather.
And the ITT was great.
Thanks for hosting this years TgF thread.
The man in yellow is kinda’ like the old male lion of the pride. He looks regal but there’s always a young male lion looking to take his place - and in time it does happen.
If Froome is there next year I’ll be pulling for him - but be looking for the new young lion.
I thought the interview and comments from Froome were impressive. He is a true champion and a gentleman ambassador for the sport and his sponsors.
Where’s the 2018 TdF thread? Did everyone give up on it?
I gave it a shot last year, but didn’t find much interest. I got a new computer and windows 10 stole my ping lists. So I’m mostly a drive by lurker lately.
I hear ya. I enjoyed reading those threads and missed your pre-and-post stage posts.
Happy TdF 2018!
Stage 2 - Peter Sagan is a gunslinger, for sure.
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