Tour De France 2018

Cav is 33, same age as Froome and no one's talking about him retiring. He's had a bad year with crashes but he'll be back.

https://twitter.com/mocycling/status/1023498527551508480?s=20

I thought there's a difference in how age effects types of muscle development/power and endurance though and that's why sprinters have a comparatively shorter shelf life.

That said, Petacchi/Greipel still snuck stages at older ages than him.

I think he'll have another crack next year then call it a day if he is well prepared and in good form but finds he can't compete.

Seems to have a clear motive for shit stirring self promotion bollocks.

The usual nothing interesting to say so make something up, there's always some dickhead willing to lap it up. The long tail of bullshit.

Mate in some minds everyone has motors and everyone is juiced to eyeballs. Then they decide whether they like the rider or not and then direct the appropriate levels of bile towards them. I honestly can't fathom how or why these people watch the sport.

They watch so the can post on forums/twitter about it. The racing is secondary.

I don't get the frothings over the purity of sport. It's entertainment, with Wrestling perhaps the purest sport as it's self aware.
Heck, perhaps the clinic et al are aware of that and Sky/Froome are their pantomine villians, the Nasty Nick's, the JR's of the Peloton.

Lappartient is calling to reduce team sizes to just six. Between that and salary cap the UCI's proposed solution is to severely hamper rider's prospects of being employed, and reduce the wage they can earn if and when they are.

Is this his way of getting back at Brailsford?

“We should go further with a reduction to six for the measure to be really effective,” Lappartient said. “At seven, Team Sky is still racing as a unit.”

wtf.

less riders per team, but more teams? you could lose half your squad in one stage if there is a mass pile up...

Stupidest of stupid ideas. It was already pointless to go down to 8.

There will always be one or two dominant teams. Take it down to fucking 1 man teams. Let Sagan win everything. Idiots.

I thought L'Equipe's take on Brailsford and Larppartient as a pair of dogs that meet in the street, smell each other arses and then start barking at each other. There does seem to be something personal between them.

But I think it is a more of a Sky thing. The UCI has got an F1 situation on their hands: dominant teams, less entertaining racing and declining television ratings, which has the knock of effect of less sponsor hip and so less money in the sport. So like F1 we may get endless weird tweaks to try to make the sport more egalitarian and help the French to win more.

Not being jingoistic, but if the dominant team was French sponsored, with a French leader, would this soul searching be going on?

We still have the Movistar conundrum, which is that their budget is comparable to Sky's but they do far less with it. Tinkoff, BMC, not short of a few bob either.

I think an experiment in removing race radio/powermeters would be interesting in terms of the spontaneity of racing, as would shorter, more technical courses that would prevent the kind of suffocation Sky are able to achieve. Or, ask why women's racing is so much more engaging to watch than mens competitions these days and how to replicate this.

Were there the same criticisms of USPS/Discovery? I certainly don't recall them.

What's the trufax on budgets anyway? I've seen reports that Sky has a budget of £30m, which is double the next biggest figure, but also seen reports which say the average is £15m. Are the figures out there or is it just anybody's guess?

The limited company that runs Team Sky publishes its accounts, so we know what the budget was for last season. As always, Inrng has a blog post on it.

Here;

http://inrng.com/2017/09/the-finances-of-team-sky-2016/

Most other teams don’t publish accounts so we don’t know for sure what their budgets are. But BMC and Katusha reportedly have similar budgets to Sky, most other teams are thought have a budget between £10-£15 million per annum.

I think it has more to do with panache. I saw a tweet wishing Pantani and Contador were still racing, that even though they were dopers they were entertaining, and scores of the anti-Sky twatterati agreeing. Froome is as ugly as all sin on the bike, Sky train it up the mountains, it doesn't make for great viewing. I mean no-one really asks questions of Sagan despite being a ridiculously dominant rider, super-human really. Quickstep are ferociously successful, no real questions asked if them. Alaphillipe went from puncheur to grimpeur and won KOM, no questions.

Why? Because the fans like then and like the way they ride so they get a pass. It is noticeable that a lot of the polemics have died down since Froome dropped out of contention since Thomas is more popular, acceptable rider from a small town in a small country, popular in the peloton and known as a strong, attacking rider. Had Froome won this would all be a lot worse.

I think banning power-meters would-be a game changer, BUT the sponsors and the industry want to sell power-meters so it could end up sell-defeating.

I think banning power-meters would-be a game changer

What reason would there be for this?

Wouldn’t any effect be pretty minor? The slickest, most rehearsed team trains will still be, the solo winner who did their homework will still be - with or without live figures.

Put GoPros on the riders if you want more exciting tv.

Most, if not all, pros are pretty dialled into their perceived effort levels. Banning powermeters would have zero impact.

Here's a thought, in a time where people think technology is cool, embrace it rather than rejecting it and make it part of the viewing experience.

Monkey Tennis!

Tour Monopoly the Alpe d’Huez card was go straight to Paris.

Do pass over the Tourmalet with Roglic winning.

Here's a thought, in a time where people think technology is cool, embrace it rather than rejecting it and make it part of the viewing experience.

So much this