Tour de France 2016

GC is so dull

Today agreed, suggests no-one has the fight to take it to Froome.

Shit stage

Fucking worse on Eurosport and more annoying when I paid.

The Eurosport ads are so dodgy. Do they take TV ads from the advertisers others won't or what?

Qatar - We only got the world championships because we handed a $16 million brown envelope to the UCI (and that's the money you know about!). Visit and experience our
dodgy human rights record in person.

Turkish Airlines - You too can experience a coup first hand as the military understandably try to overthrow our despot leader Erdogan.

Visit Israel - Just don't worry about the Palestinians.

Yea. Was a bit....shit. Shame.

How do you attack a team as strong as Sky though? You'd need some kind of rebel alliance of Astana, Movistar and Orica and that aint gonna happen...

I mean, it seemed Astana were really just riding to defend Aru's 10th place today? In week two? Such ambition...

Zakarin stopping because his contact lens popped out kind of sums up the way the GC battle is going.

bit harsh calling it a shit stage just cos the so-called GC battle failed to deliver anything.

epic riding from alaphillipe and pantano's win was awesome. was brilliant seeing the view from moto that seemed to slow as if keeping with majka on the descent was too sketchy only to realise it was making way for the Colombian who was flying through

It's more shit in that it was an admission from the other teams that they got nothing. We've had a fun few weeks, but it's over. There's not likely to be any sort of shake-up for anything other than minor placings from here on in.

Ian Stannard can keep the GC group in check and drop Movistar domestiques and then Poels just ethers anything else.

That shot of Pantano zooming through the sweeping lefthander in a clean line (and continuing to close in on Majka) was great

[insert footage]

exactly. loved this

Froome is being quoted as saying this is the strongest team sky have ever put into the tour.

Certainly looks like that at the moment.

What will we see tomorrow? A category 4 climb in the last 30km's.. Hoping for a mass sprint but somehow I doubt that will happen. More like a Sagan-in-the-breakaway kind of stage.

Kennaugh and Kwia get to ride TDP.

Pride comes before a fall (quite literally in the case of the giro)

Maybe we all have to admit that froome's rivals aren't strong enough. Chris basically did when he said half his team are better than other team leaders! I'm inclined to agree

Contador and nibs are in only multi tour winners and they are either out or knackered.
Quintana is more timid than a 12 year old boy at a school disco
Aru, Yates and tom windmills are too young
Richie seems to have forgotten that he doesn't ride for sky any more

http://www.letour.com/le-tour/2016/us/stage-16.html

Last few KMs:

Cancellara will want this, but will the peloton let him... or Bern his chances? #inb4schick

Looks like another GC dull day.

And Konig.

For sure. Rest day tomorrow, Froome's rivals will be saving their legs for that.

Yup, that was fucking awesome... Watching the rerun now, dozed off last night...

Don't right of Bauke Mollema. He's going very well, and seems to be getting better.

With a decent team, he could challenge.

When your mountain domestiques are Haimar Zubeldia and Frank Schleck, you're going to have difficulty troubling Sky.

Exactly.

It's a shame, I think he's got the legs right now. The only person in the race.

I was surprised when I looked up Haimar Zubeldia to see he was 39 and not, as I had initially thought, 4000 years old.

Let's put it into some context though. At the start of the Tour only three teams genuinely believed they had a chance of overall victory, Sky, Movistar and Tinkoff. Everyone else with GC aspirations were aiming at the podium, i.e. BMC, FDJ, AG2R, Trek-Segafredo et al.

Tinkoff's challenge barely lasted the opening weekend, which left Sky and Movistar. The latter are a conservative team, one of the longest running teams in the peloton, but one which has modernised in the last few years. However, their strategy has been clear from the off, they believe Froome will weaken in the final week based on his previous two Tour wins. Last year he was definitely weakening, mainly due to illness, but I'd still dispute this was the case in 2013. He lost time to Quintana and Rodriguez at both Alpe d'Huez and Semnoz, but at the former it was a case of hunger knock and at the latter he sat up in the final kilometre knowing the race was won.

After the Pyrenees, Movistar would've been content, Quintana was a handful of seconds behind Froome and Valverde was still up there to act as a foil should he be needed. However, the second week hasn't gone to plan and gradually Froome has eked out a three minute advantage over Quintana. Today, with four key GC stages remaining, Quintana is going to have to improve enormously, or more correctly, hold his form, whilst Froome's wanes. It might happen, but Sky's strength in depth, which is far superior to any other team, means they can put the race in a virtual headlock and control it to the end. They'll be aided by the likes of BMC, Trek-Segafredo, AG2R and Orica trying to ensure their leaders maintain or improve their GC positions.