Pro-cycling thread

Also, Marianne Vos crashed out of the Women's Tour with a possible head injury.

I hope they don’t win it again. I think it would do the race good to have a French winner.

Pinot is going well this year? TTing marginally better than Bardet.
Would love to see Ineos pick up Pinot and drag him to a title. French fans wouldn't know if they should throw flowers or piss.

Doing it over three weeks seems to have been a problem for Pinot.

He’s 29 now so if he’s going to step up, it needs to happen soon.

I’d completely forgotten Kenny Elissonde was at Sky until I just looked at the start list. They don’t let him out if his box often do they?

It's nice they're giving Elissonde a start I also keep forgetting him; seems like he's not done much with Sky/Ineos over the last few years. I didn't realise he was relatively so young as he's been around for years. This is his 9th full season in the world tour and he's only 27.

Warren Barguil is a bit of a disappointment. Pissed off to Arkea Samsic because he wasn't allowed to freelance on Sunweb and had some sort of belief that he'd be romping to KoM jerseys or high GC placings all over the place. Then he had that shit-fit at Look which was rumoured to have been less about the bikes he was riding and more because he wanted his bike shop(s?) to be the only Look dealers in the area and they declined.

As for Bardet, it does seem he is doing a Schleck and refusing to learn to TT well enough to sustain a GC bid.

The interview with Brailsford on the BBC cycling podcast makes it sound pretty ominous.

I've put £1 on Bardet winning so expect him to crash out on the first stage.

Was watching the highlights and there were some technical descents with dry stonewall and structures with pretty much no buffer between the (narrow) carriageway.

54km/h to zero instantaneously hitting a house.

It's a long way back from Froome from here.

Barguill’s problems ran a bit deeper than him being a diva, I recall. He was homesick and isolated at Sunweb. I don’t think he’s ever learned to cope with the pressure.

I’ll try and find the article where I read this.

Didn't they even let him train close to home as well to help that?

Didn't he go to Sunweb in the first place because he didn't want the pressure of being on a French team ?

Froome wins 2011 Vuelta as Cobo DQ’d for drugs.

When you wear your helmet like that you don't serve to be a GT winner:

Has anyone said Wow Van Aert. Probably. Wow Van Aert.

Must be great to get wheeled out Intensive Care and told you might not be going to the Tour but you're being given another GT victory from 8 years prior! FML. Cycling is a weird sport...

He sprints like his bike is attached to a turbo trainer, but it seems to work

Rob Hatch did yesterday.

Eye rolling intensifies

De Gendt doesn't like him https://twitter.com/DeGendtThomas/status/1139183303221817345

Remco Evenepoel delivers too, his 1st pro victory today in Baloise Belgium Tour

Most people usually get flowers after an accident.

Chris Horner.

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Ethan Hayter wins the u23 Giro prologue.

I especially love that Chris published all his biopassport data to "clear the air" and everyone who looked at it said "shit, look at those 2013 Vuelta numbers"

https://www.outsideonline.com/1919196/chris-horners-bio-passport-problem

Most exciting thing happened to pro cycling this year

I just found out Sivtsov got popped for EPO in September.

Did that fly under the radar or was it just me?