Tour de France time

Theatregirl1122

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First day was so nervy! Especially on those wet roads! Hopefully none of the guys who got banged up are in too bad of shape.

By my calculations, although Kristoff owns the green jersey, he’ll be wearing yellow. Normally that means green would be warn by the person who is second in that competition, which is Mads, but he is the owner of the white Jersey and should therefore be wearing white, which lets green fall to number 3 in that competition... Peter Sagan.
 

Theatregirl1122

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I think I might be rooting for drama in the GC? It’s hard to say. I do like Bernal a lot, but I also wouldn’t hate to see a Jimbo Visma rider take it. I’ve been rooting for Porte for years, but I don’t think it’s going to fall his way at this point.

Definitely rooting for Julian Alaphilppe, though! I scared my cats shouting for the line to come up today when he was sprinting! I know he says he’s not targeting yellow for the race, which I believe, but he said he wanted it today and everyone knew he’d try for it and they still couldn’t stop him.
 

Kathryn2001

Active Member
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233
Happy to see the Tour get going again.
Not a whole lot of USA guys but I hear the USA guy Kuss Sepp is very talented with a good future. I'm rooting for him on team Jumbo-Visma as he supports Roglic and even Bennett.
 

Aceon6

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I’m rooting for Roglic to get the overall and for Jumbo to win the team prize. It would be awesome for US cycling if Sepp Kuss can get some major TV time. I don’t dislike Bernal, but I’m a bit tired of Ineos. I hope EF gets a stage or two after the bad luck the last two years.
 

NinjaTurtles

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I like Tom Dumoulin, but he's riding for Primož Roglič this year (fine with me as well, Primož Roglič is great). Have a soft spot for Thibaut Pinot, so hopeful for a stage win for him on one of the upcoming cols.

I'm a sucker for Sagan and the flatlanding. :lol:
 

Garden Kitty

Tranquillo
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29,723
Tour Day Schamalz's 2020 preview of the race:


Normally, when it comes to the Tour, the phrase “unusual circumstances” denotes some sort of route change or a shortened stage, but in 2020 unusual circumstances could range anywhere from “YKW stops the race on stage 3 and a sprinter finally wins the Tour” to “a thunderstorm that spews fire instead of rain scorches the Alps to smoldering ash”. If 2020 has taught us anything, it’s that what we cannot predict how things will turn into a poop show, we just have to come to grips that things will be a poop show and move on from there.
 

4rkidz

plotting, planning and travelling
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14,675
I miss not having the Tour on the tv, luckily I’m sharing the streaming website with my daughter. Been pleased with Yates, he has progressed nicely. Love the scenery
 

Theatregirl1122

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Would that be the French countryside or the cute boys in Lycra shorts?

Eh, I feel like you gotta work for a cute one. They’re all so skinny! Well, the climbers are at least.

I got very behind with school starting Tuesday. I’m supposed to have the summer OFF during Le Tour, but I finally caught up by watching 2.5 stages today. Still not totally sure who I’m rooting for to win the overall, but I was definitely rooting for Yates to get one day where he’d definitively earned that yellow jersey over Alaphilippe, and he ended up with exactly one. I don’t have strong feelings about Yates either way, but that was a crappy situation for both him and Julian and I’d have hated for Adam to have it hanging over him that all of his days in yellow were because of Julian’s time penalty.

So many exciting stages this year! I wonder if next week can keep it up! I can see Roglič and Bernal firing at each other the whole way like Schleck and Contador did back in the day (hopefully not with the same long term outcome).

Always hate to see a guy put in all the work and get caught a few KM before the finish. I would have loved to see Hirshi hold on today.

Quintana looks the best he has in a long time, too!
 

Aceon6

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I miss not having the Tour on the tv, luckily I’m sharing the streaming website with my daughter. Been pleased with Yates, he has progressed nicely. Love the scenery
It’s on NBCSN most of the time. It’ll be on CNBC this weekend. That doesn’t help anyone who can’t get those channels without a cable upgrade, though.
 

Theatregirl1122

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I have to say, with the situation as it is, I think the commentators speculating that anyone thinking it is "too early" to get the yellow jersey are silly. I'm sure teams are thinking that, on day 10, you want that jersey in case the tour stops. This is not a normal year where there could be a strategic advantage to waiting. Whatever you are waiting for may never happen. And I think Jumbo Visma had that in mind when they were attacking this week.

That being said, Sky/Ineos has kind of thrown bothering to wait to get the yellow jersey out the window anyways, even in a normal year.
 

Aceon6

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@Theatregirl1122 Agree. I expect to see a big podium pushes on the mountain stages this Friday, then again on Sunday going into the next rest/test day. Sunday should be a doozy. Two Cat 1s then a finish on Grand Colombier!

For those setting DVRs in the US, Le Tour is on CNBC this weekend. This includes the pre-show.
 

Aceon6

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Wow, what a stage! Powless did a great break and descent then Danny Martinez brought it home for EF to win AND regain the team lead. GO pink! Then Roglic and Pogacar dump Bernal on the final climb! Methinks Ineos might not have it against Bora.
 

Aceon6

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I've been wondering how much effect leaving Thomas and Froome off the tour team has affected their ability to attack.
They don’t seem to have a horse to haul Bernal around like Bora has in Kuss.
 

emason

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4,652
They also need the elder statesman experience of a Froome or a Thomas. All those crashes and chaos on Stage 1? A Froome or a Thomas would have been a steadying hand. I listened to a podcast that Jens Voight did for Velonews and good old Jensie called out Ineos, saying that maybe it was OK to leave Froome at home, but not Thomas, and that between Froome and Thomas it was $10 million dollars of payroll left at home and what were they thinking.
 
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Aceon6

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The US pre-show today is focused on the Ineos situation. I had forgotten that their team director passed away last year. They also think that they needed Thomas as road captain, but blame the tactics more than the team composition.

Bardet is out with a concussion.
 

Aceon6

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Big loss for EF at the start of today’s stage. Jungels cut across the line just as Higuita was looking the other way. Higuita crashed again in the chase back, then had to abandon due to a hand injury.

And MORE crashes in the peloton. Ineos’ Carapaz (Bernal’s hauler) and Guillaume Martin involved.

Both incidents on wide, flat roads in perfect weather.
 
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NinjaTurtles

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Froome is still in pretty bad riding form post his big crash and he’s leaving INEOS, so it’s not shocking to me at all that they left him off the TdF team. He likely would struggle to keep up and his loyalties potentially lie outside supporting Bernal.

Thomas is in the sunset of his career on INEOS and has been coasting along performance wise the past year. With comments like “I’ve done so much for other people”, I sort of wonder if he just wasn’t amenable to doing domestique duties this year. Getting to be the leader in the Giro probably soothed his ego and better matched his current professional goals.
 

Aceon6

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Bernal is done. I don’t even see Ineos pulling off a stage win. It’s down to the rematch of the Slovenian championships.
 

Theatregirl1122

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Roglic is on great form, for sure, but if I were him, I’d be blessing those cross winds from week 1!

I wish there weren’t a relegation involved, but it’s exciting to see a real fight for the green jersey. In other years, other green jersey contenders would have just let Sagan go off on the attack, but Sam Bennett is scrapping for every point. He’s on Sagan like glue. I bet no one likes Bora right now, though. They’re making the easy stages hard!
 

Aceon6

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ZERO positive tests yesterday! I half expected at least one team to get silly, but it seems that everyone took it seriously.
 

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