Tour De France 2018

Yeah, I'd love a GoPro on Froom's helmet, I could spend hours staring at his stem too.

Froome becomes a vlogger, rides RHC and is sponsored by cold brew coffee.

^^ Well there’s your live power readings.

Tough crowd.

Vuelta will be lit

Viewer controlled motors.

"Don't back out of that corner, fucking take it full pelt!"

But seriously, I vaguely remember David milllars last tour where they all went from the start of one stage and dropped everyone.
That was fun. More of that sort of thinking from teams would be interesting.

I'm not sure what the problem is?
Is it because sky are dominant?
Movistar had landa. If they meant it they should have ditched Quintana or dropped him down the order.
Nibali dropped out because of crowd trouble.
Doumoulin was quite special.

Even if you took each of the sky domestics and made them leaders in a team, it wouldn't necessarily make it more exciting would it?

Thanks - so, when journos are telling us Sky have double the budgets of the second best funded team, they're pretty much just guessing.

Or writing for the Guardian. Same thing really.

De Gendt:

Only 65km stages, no trainingcamps allowed, no dinners, no feedzones, only 2 bottles per day, max 2000 calories per day. Cyclists can’t draft for longer than 20 seconds. Only 4 gears allowed. No brakes, F1 starts everyday and pepperspray before each start.

Kwiato:

Sagan dominance = exciting.
Quick Step classics dominance = exciting.
BMC ttt dominance = exciting.
Sky grand tours dominance = boring, so let's turn cycling upside down.

It is a knee-jerk, poorly thought out response from Lappartient which reacts purely to a Tour de France where the viewing figures were down in a few countries, as well as media hysteria from all quarters.

None of the technology is going to go away, none, professional cycling is basically an advert for all the latest bikes and innovations, hence why disc brakes got pushed through despite the riders and mechanics not really wanting them.

And rather than budget caps the UCI should be looking at ways to get the smaller teams more money rather than try to restrict the spending of the top teams.

Indeed, a few years back it was race radios that were ruining racing.

Oh they are talking about getting rid of them as well. Maybe the UCI should copy Japanese Keiren and make them all ride on steel fixed gear bikes, carry their own spares and make them fix their own bikes at the local blacksmith

Where is this from, please? It's not on their twitter

https://twitter.com/ammattipyoraily/status/1024366949973798912

I would be interested to see all riders on the same bikes, same kit etc to see how much difference it would make. Granted I know it'll never happen but it's a point I like of keiren that all other variables are reduced as much as possible and the major difference of the rider themselves.

If they're worried about viewing figures, maybe we could have night stages, so more viewers are at home and can watch?

so more viewers are in the pub and can watch?

(FTFY)
Finish at 7 or 8pm would be fine by me.

TdF should be run like TcR. With Hippy riding.

Just exchange the fellas for women and then we will see a far more exciting race.

I was disapppinted to see binary genders riding the trans-continental.

Perhaps the UCI should do a more positive move like teaching the French how to TT so that there's more natural competition.

Send Bardet up and down a few dual carriageways for a bit

Simpler for them to just leave the ITT out than for Bardet to actually train.

I had a mad idea that they should have a 40km ish mountain TT with a col, a descent, and another col with a mountain top finish. And then, to really mess things up run it as a pursuit with the leader sent off first and everyone subsequently at their GC intervals....

The Tour has featured stages like that before. The year Indurain was challenged by Piotr Ugromov (93 or 94) definitely had one, which Ugromov won.

They used to love ITTs when Bernard Hinault was in his pomp. Just the 4x ITTs in 1985.