Tour De France 2018

Katusha - a match made in heaven.

Yeah, but the Cavendish of old didn't do a full somersault over a barrier as part of his preparation. Also, another year older is never good news for sprinters. At which point does he start going for breakaway wins?

Every day should be a queen stage classic with a Belgian flavour so that every one get hot and sweaty about racers going out the back, blowing up, and finishing hard.
Otherwise it's just chat about what people are wearing and leadership rivalry. Forgetting that it's a 17stage race over time and it's not worth busting a nut over every fucking detail.

Anyway. Where's froome? Top 15? Is he replicating giro form and tactics, with more gains to be had from him in week 2 and 3?

hot and sweaty ... racers going out the back, blowing up, and finishing hard.

There used to be a thread on here called "naked sailor chat", intended to keep this sort of talk contained to one specific thread.

EDIT: still here

I bet will was involved.
He was!!

Good times.

Back on topic; big cocks! Sorry, I mean, Froome: he's fine, all the main rivals have ended up within a few seconds of each other, bad luck and the TTT evening things out. Except, though, for Thomas, who has a minute on him. Which is, interesting...

Speaking of Katusha, L'Equipe interviewed one of their DS who errrr isn't a Kittel fan

"I would not have chosen Kittel, he is an egoist", L'Equipe quotes the former Russian rider Dimitri Konyshev. "He is well paid, but he is only interested in himself. Before the team time trial in Cholet, he was playing with his phone during the briefing, to make it clear that he was not interested. "

Fun? fact for today's stage. Johan Bruyneel won a very similar (but shorter) stage in 1993 at an average speed of 49.417km/h, which stood for six years as the fastest stage ever and has only been beaten twice since.

This is so boring

Noticing lots of riders using out front Garmin mounts like Spinaci bars. Do not want.

Don’t think he’s going to succeed in breakaways, he is pretty much guaranteed to beat them at a sprint, so his companions will drop him in the hills or put the power down on the flats.

Booooo was hoping for Greips

I didn't realise kittel was at the tour, what's happened!

New kids on the block happened I guess. Although I imagine the atmosphere in the Katusha team isn’t all that great atm

I really didn’t like Gaviria’s wanky attempt to bully in from the barrier. On the one hand, he’s fast enough and a bit of barging is normal...but to headbutt out of frustration to knock someone off their line is dick move.

Probably pushes to the front of the crowd at the traffic lights and takes ages to clip in again when it turns green, too.

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He joined a team with GC ambitions, so he only gets a couple of riders to help him. Unfortunately, he's a power sprinter so he needs a good leadout to put him on the front with 250 metres to go. That's hard with just two helpers.

Yeah, a shame missing him being up there. He's not even 8th or so, but absolutely nowhere.

Not sure how greipel was relegated, gavira was out of order and should be going home - if he were sagan in 2017 - UCI comms are a joke.

Taylor Phinney outsprinted Kittel

What’s with the relegation business??

Greipel was separate incident.

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Burghardt tried to get a break going early on but no-one came with him

https://twitter.com/LeTour/status/1018074096284979200

ha!

Looks to be two types of yellow bikes at today’s stage

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Fit