Tour De France 2018

How well did Tejay defend his solid podium place?

harsh :( I am not a fan but the man crashed pretty hard

Those are some nice Fizik shoes

Today's stage was too hard, caused too many crashes and will negatively impact the Tour overall. Discuss.

I reckon ppl saying that don't watch the early season classics. I mean it was 100k shorter than P-R, had less than half the pave, no Arenberg (sniff) and it produced one of the best stages of the TdF ever.

It's lush when you get an extra Roubaix in the season.

If they weren't all shitting it about losing time, they'd not have lost time..

What a stage! Delighted for Degenkolb obviously meant so much to him, hard to watch the post interview without choking up

One-day race vs a stage in a three week tour though, not really comparable in my opinion.

Agreed. Gimmick stage.

Evens out for the last 2 days.

I think it's great though, adds a depth to the tour. Definitely better to watch than some stages

Well I just did, the numbers anyway. Just pointing out it's nowhere near as hard as the classic itself.

I don't know how true it is, but the point was made (by Millar I think) that the majority of the field don't ride P-R.

Like throwing a rally stage into a GP, I suppose.

It was Sean O'Grady who said that, I think.

Yeah but I think of a Grand Tour as a sort of Olympics of cycling: it tests every skill and there are opportunities for every sort of rider. From time trialists to climbers to one-day specialists. And the stages should reflect that. There are crashes on every type of stage and arguably the mass crashes at the end of sprint stages are much more destructive. The stage itself was 100k shorter, featured less than half the amount of pave and didn't go through the most difficult sections. The difficulty cane more from the conditions: few crashes across the pave but most occuring at the turns, either into the section or during it, due to the looseness of the soil.

Plus they all know it is coming, have the chance recon the route, and use riders that are likely to make the tour squad ride the actual race, like Nibali did.

"Richie has been discharged by the hospital and the diagnosis is that he has a non-displaced right clavicle fracture," team physician Max Testa said in a press release. "He will need to rest for a week before he considers starting to ride on the home trainer.

http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/richie-porte-abandons-tour-de-france/

??

.

I stole that wholesale from Twitter, possibly FAKE NEWS #maga etc etc

I stand by nothing I say

Missed the whole stage (hospicle visit as per usual on Sundays) except literally the last 500m and Deg’s win at the end. Super happy for the guy. Onto the ES replay now so I can watch it in ‘full’.

Given how well so many of them did today, maybe they should ride it.

The skills a GC rider needs are often well suited to the classics. I appreciate it’s a different era, but it was normal for the top riders to ride all the major races 20 years ago.

Are you sure it wasn’t Stuart O’Grady?

Never heard of him.