Bike Ping
Here's a quick look at where those four men stand heading into Saturday's start in Düsseldorf.
Is there a ping list for this years tour?
I think we can forget Contador; anything he can do, Quintana can do better...between Froome and Porte, I’d take Porte; I say he wins it all...
Please add me to the ping list. This old masters class amateur still has fond memories...
Perhaps I'll give it a try this season again.
Is Lance Armstrong riding this year? :)
Like every Tour de Pharmacy from 1981 onward, it will be won by whichever rider dopes best without getting caught or killing himself in the process.
I give the edge to Froome over Porte because he has the slightly stronger team. There are 6 hours of coverage on NBCSN tomorrow to cover a mere 13.4 km TT. I’m not complaining.
I vote for Eddie Merckx...
The fact is the sport today is as dirty as it every was. The proof of that was the 2013 Vuelta a España when a domestique who had never once been in contention for GC in a Grand Tour suddenly, at the age of 41, finds his inner racehorse and wins the Vuelta.
Pharmstrong had a term for performances like that. He called them, “Not normal.”
The most bizarre part is that Horner’s miracle win hardly raised an eyebrow, despite the fact that it came AFTER Pharmstrong’s “Come to Oprah” performance, when everyone’s rose-colored glasses SHOULD HAVE BEEN off. Yet no one (publicly) connected his performance with his past association with Pharmstrong, whose lieutenant and confidant he had been for the two seasons of Pharmstrong’s “un-retirement.”
The truth is, not not just cycling, ALL professsional sports are awash in PEDs, and most amateur sports as well. Doping, particularly in professional sports, is a classic positive feedback loop. You spend money to dope. If you do it right, you win more prizemoney than before, so you have better funding for your future doping efforts.
1. Buy dope. 2. Win more money. 3. Repeat.
Anti-doping, OTOH, is a zero sum game. WADA has “X” amount of cash to spend on anti-doping. And it matters not one whit how many dopers they catch, the next season they still only get “X” dollars for combating the PEDs scourge. There is no rewards system, no positive reinforcement. Past successes contribute nothing to future efforts.
Plus, anti-doping has to play by the rules, and the dopers know exactly what those rules are. The dopers (obviously) DON”T have to play by the rules. They can do whatever they want (so long as they don’t get caught). They’re constantly testing, tweaking and amending, changing substances, administration strategies, masking agents and adulterants, because that’ the only way to #1) stay ahead of the competition and #2) stay ahead of anti-doping.
So WADA/USADA are shooting at a moving target. By the time they’ve figured out what it is the dopers are doing, the dopers are on to something else.
Ergo the axiom, “You can’t fail the drug test unless you first fail the I.Q. test.” Meaning as long as you follow the established regimen, as long as you don’t break the protocol, you won’t get caught. So they dope with impunity.
Which is why anti-doping will NEVER catch up unless there’s an internal change in the sport and the athletes themselves decide to give it up. Because right now, as a risk/reward proposition, ...doping is looking pretty damn good.
It’s here! My first of 2 TdF t-shirts arrived just in time today. Yes, I’m a dork. Thanks for the ping Baynative!
Well, NBCSN is starting the TV Marathon although with today’s Time Trial in Dusseldorf, nothing is real before 9:15am EDT as the first rider goes off at 1515 CEST (Central European SUMMER Time) [6 hour differential]. The final rider, Chris Froome (2016 TdF winner), goes at 1832 CEST which is our 12:32pm EDT.
My enthusiasm is enhanced by the fact that, for the 1st time in my life, I have actually ridden my bike for more annual miles, 3,400, than the Tour will OFFICIALLY do in the next 21 days! I do say OFFICIALLY because there are so many scouting miles done by these pros that I can see them doing those same miles. The idea of doing what has taken me 6 months in 23 days makes me know how hard this is, in all weather and in the Peloton, WOW!
1/2 hour into the prologue and it's starting to rain. - NOT GOOD
Since this thread started with semi strong interest, I'm thinking of staying with it for the LIVE TdF thread ...maybe I'll ask the mods to change the title. Any comments?
Of course that’s not the interesting part of the story. The interesting part is how many years will they have the title before one of their stored samples comes up dirty and the title is stripped.
Fortunately for them they’re Europeans and untouchable and can’t be hunted down by the USADA.......
I don't like seeing a raining greasy slick race course for a TT. But this was a dual to remember - USPS v. T-Mobile, Armstrong v. Ulrich ..'01
“Cymru am byth” - First Yellow Jersey for Wales - Geraint Thomas (Sky) wins the 1st stage of the Tour deFrance.
We Have a yellow jersey and now the race begins.
Liège in cycling means a lot of hills before coming to town as Liège-Bastogne-Liège is one of the hardest race on the international calendar but stage 2 is dedicated to the sprinters. Only two category 4 climbs are on the map: Grafenberg after only 6.5km and the côte d'Olne 20.5km before the end. There's something unprecedented on the route: 35 kilometres after leaving Düsseldorf, the riders will come back to the starting town after a visit to the Neanderthal man at the prehistoric site of the Neander valley.
Geraint Thomas will enjoy his first day ever in the yellow jersey ten years after he made his debut at the Tour de France in London. Moreover, Team Sky will savor their domination on stage 1 as they placed four riders in the top 8 of a Tour de France stage for the first time since the foundation of the team in 2010. Germany's Marcel Kittel of Quick-Step Floors was the highest ranked of the top sprinters in the inaugural time trial. It makes him the hot favourite in case of a bunch sprint in Liège but his deficit of sixteen seconds doesn't enable him to move into the yellow jersey throughout the time bonuses as only ten seconds are awarded to the stage winner. His compatriot Nikias Arndt of Team Sunweb rode the time trial just as fast as him. He'll be the local hero on German soil until Philippe Gilbert's fans will take over as the last 48.5km will be contested in Wallonia. Gilbert will race as Kittel's domestique though. The other top sprinters to watch are André Greipel (Lotto-Soudal), world champion Peter Sagan (Bora-Hansgrohe), French champion Arnaud Démare (FDJ), Mark Cavendish (Dimension Data), John Degenkolb (Trek-Segafredo), Michael Matthews (Sunweb) and Nacer Bouhanni (Cofidis).