Pro-cycling thread

Viviani Dq'd!

Awkward after the thank you victory tweets already been posted...

My fantasy team is also raging.

Mine is extremely pleased!

yes, wtfigo?

Shame Tao lost time.

http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/a-day-of-two-crashes-sees-geoghegan-hart-lose-ground-at-giro-ditalia/

Hope he can get back up the GC somehow.

Early days.. he'll make time up.

Cavendish struggled to keep pace with the peloton at ToC yesterday and rolled home with Eisel over 30 mins down.

Hope this is symptomatic of a guy just finding his feet again. You do wonder how long DD will want to carry him as a passenger.

He’s cleared the Epstein Barr threshold apparently (whatever that means).

Apparently the threshold is only to do with the number of antibodies in his system, and could well mean that he actually "defeated" the illness several months before going below threshold.

IANAD

Solid win for Asgreen. To win a mountain stage at Lake Tahoe after finishing second at Flanders is impressive and shows huge versatility.

Even without Cav, DD seem to be a team having to carry each other.
If you look at their roster i can't see where a win is coming from. Nizzolo maybe but only if other sprinters don't turn up.

They are a shit shower. Can’t buy a win and all their riders seem to regress after joining the team. They changed their coaching setup last winter, but incredibly they seem to have been even worse this year in performance terms.

I do wonder how they will get their sponsors to continue if Cav leaves. My guess is if they can get Cav to the tour the coverage he brings will be value for money but if he doesn't ride you wonder what the value is. They're ranked 19th in the world at the moment with only Katusha from the world tour even remotely close to them on points. CCC who are the third worst WT team have 25% more points than DD.

Their team is really old too. No GC contender. Meintjes could go for the KOM jersey at the Tour, I suppose.

Clutching at straws.

Have they got a WT win this year?

I couldn’t find one.

Meintjes has twice finished in the top ten at the Tour. Surely that makes him a GC contender?

CCC at least have GVA who will get results and from reports they will build the team going forward. If Katusha sign Sam Bennett the same for them.
DD signed Valgren and has so far been a complete flop. The days of Renshaw leading out Cav seem a thing of the past. They need a long term plan.

Ben O'Connor had some decent form last year and is still young. And Ben King won a stage at the Vuelta?

Still, can't disagree that they look a bit lost.

CCC at least have GVA who will get results

Yeah, he did quite well at the Greg Van Avermaet gran fondo this year

Otherwise know as the Tour De Yorkshire

Thriller of a stage today 😴😴😴

Stay on yer fucking bikes for once damn it

Dumoulin looks the biggest loser out of the contenders there...

Tuned in for the last 800m, pretty exciting watch.

Should I even bother with the 10 min youtube highlights?

Molano was pulled from the Giro by UAE for “unusual” physiological results.

You got the best of it.