Pro-cycling thread

Love this race. 50km to go and it's all small groups and gaps. And so many genuine contenders too

Wonder if any of this lead trio will try and chip off solo. Fuglsang probably the least punchy on paper.

But has fresher legs perhaps?

(Wishful thinking)

I’d like Alaphilippe to win. Bit sick of QS winning but he has bags of panache.

Fuglsang for me

Van Aert!!!

Foster dog decided to vom halfway through, paused the race to clean it up, got to about 5k out and another dog stood on the remote and changed the channel and when I changed it back it was about 200m to go, bloody dogs!

Like the rider, just a shame about the team. Who can break their stranglehold on the classics? Someone please soon

Sagan is the hero we need. Would gladly see him win Flanders and Roubaix.

Betancur finished!

In last place.

As much as I like Van Avermaet, I am somewhat enjoying him suffer from Sagan-syndrome, where he's quite clearly the strongest non-DQS rider in the race, so everyone just looks at him, and small QS dominant groups go up the road.

Sagan missing these opening classics might be good for morale as much as anything - he'll go into San Remo, E3 and Ghent Wevelgem before the big ones, and be less worn down from watching groups go up the road because everyone's either too fucked, or looking at him or both.

I don’t think GvA is on top form yet. Expect to see him at his best at Flanders and Roubaix.

His team isn’t massively strong though, whereas Sagan has Drucker and Oss pulling for him.

Strong winds from West on todays flat stage

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Am I the only person in the world who finds Sagan devoid of personality?

In pro-cycling terms he's "interesting" but that's like saying he's the most interesting amongst F1 drivers.

When he tries to sound deep (i.e. saying he hopes his Richmond champs win would help unify people), he sounds like a 14-year old trying to sound deep.

Then you've got Guillaume Martin who just wrote a book sort of half fiction half philosophy book where he turns a load of philosophers into riders in the Tour. Only in French so far but I'm going to pick up a copy next time I'm there.

Quite often it's lost in translation. English as a second language you lose the emotion / no filter so it come across way different than in their native language

For sure. I just think popping the odd wheelie and wearing stupid glasses shouldn't make a rider popular. Guess it shows the low standard as @atz says.

I've not seen a more interesting rider for the past 6 years or so. Talking about bike racing, not side show. Maybe that's what makes him popular?

So much this.

The comparison between him and just about any GT contender should speak for itself.

His riding speaks volumes, his speaking isn’t that interesting. It’s a low bar to be more interesting in a press conference than his peers though.

Echelons bitches!

Echelons in paris nice

RIP Kelly Catlin.

Horrible.

Too young sad news

Ah shit.

So sad.

True, except I start getting annoyed by Sagan winning everything as well pretty quickly. I basically don't want anyone to win apart from Stannard, but he seems to have peaked in 2014/2015.