Pro-cycling thread

What will the tour line up be?

Rowe, Thomas, Kwiatkowski, Kennaugh, Kiryienka, Poels, König, Landa, Froome would be pretty ridiculous. Swap in Nieve, Intxausti, Henao, Stannard to suit your tastes.

Be interesting to see what Kwiatkowski's role is going to be. He posts all his training rides on Strava from the camp @ Tenerife = 4 days >3500m climbing a day, rest day repeat 3 times.

I would guess stanard goes. After all wasn't it echelons that did for quintana last year?

Yeah, you don't want to load it entirely with skinny climbers. No point getting to the mountains 2 minutes down after a disaster or two in the crosswinds of northern France.

Prologue looks mental!
I half expect to see chopped down handlebars and stripped saddles.

Days like today where I curse the 6.8kg limit - would love to see what could be done in terms of stiffness/weight in the carbon/di2 era.

Brad DGAF

https://www.instagram.com/p/BGRKN8ZTL9z/

So is there a lfgss fantasy league?

Dan Martin! Yes!

Makes it more interesting for the GC if Froome doesn't beat all his rivals in the TTs

Dimension Data rider Keagan Girdlestone has been killed in an accident at a race in Italy

http://www.tuttobiciweb.it/index.php?page=news&cod=91053&tp=n

Young lad with a bright future, desperately sad news.

He's still alive http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/keagan-girdlestone-hospitalised-in-a-critical-but-stable-condition-after-crash-at-coppa-della-pace/

Some conflicting reports about this. Chris Froome has tweeted that he is in stable but critical condition. Fingers crossed

https://twitter.com/chrisfroome/status/739509164330881024

Yeah his Dad has been tweeting he is critical but alive. How do you get a report like that wrong?

What a finish. Jesus.

talk about getting your head down and giving some beans - he didn't look ahead of him at all in the final 25m.

I thought they were going to get off their bikes and just fight around 500m. Bouhanni doing it on his own has made Katusha look a bit silly after all of that. Great win, as far as I can tell.

Froome nearly got taken out at 2.4 kms to go, due to another Katusha headbutt (on an Orica-GreenEdge rider this time). What did they feed the Katusha riders for breakfast?

What happened with Kristoff too? Did he unclip or did his own lead out man baulk him?

What was Froome still doing up front anyway when they were well within the 3km zone. Contador and his henchmen had already peeled off to allow the sprinters their day.

Hoping to gain time on Contador in case of a split.

Trying to hurt some other teams lead out trains with elbows to the ribs.

Was so intent on his stem, didn't notice where he was in relation to the rest of the peloton.

Kirby did say that Froome is a pretty good sprinter when "he wants to be", so maybe he was just having a go.

My three year old knows more about pro-cycling than Carlton Kirby. When has Froome ever contested a sprint?