Pro-cycling thread

I can only presume that is where Alaphillipe shat the bed when he heard the news.

Ah, so Jimmy Fingers jinxed it when he started to watch. Typical. :)

Yea

Apparently so.

tbh Alap. should be happy-he was only going to lose more time. It's the rest of us that have been robbed. Although if they find a translation of Uran and Nibali arguing with each other it might take the sting off it.

"The riders are invited to gather in a tunnel in Val d'Isère to be protected from the bad weather conditions before proceeding to Tignes where they'll stay tonight. Confirmation: the race is over because of hail and pile of rubble in the downhill"

Was it a landslide too?

OK looks like it from those pics

My money's on a hailslide and a landstorm.

They should just do it on Zwift next year, and teams can get sponsored by Ikea and Habitat.

Haha.

Because those two wins have been bookended by a year of disappointment, nearlies and might have beens and the constant proffering of him as a GC prospect gets quite frustrating?

He won a stage, good for him, but he clearly had to burn all his matches to do it.

tbf, I think the cancellation probably did jajaphilippe a favour - Think he would have lost a lot more time to Bernal on the final ascent after going balls-out alone on the 30km descent preceding it.

how do they validate the times at the top of the Iseran without an official timer?

Pinot being comforted by his team mate as he climbs off the bike, is one of the most heartbreaking things I’ve seen in the tour.
Know he wasn’t certain of winning, or even being on the podium, but to be that close and then have some innocuous accident take it away.
Fuck!
Stage started shit with that news and ended shit with the abandonment of the stage.

Not sure if tomorrow will be a battle royale or Ineos-bernal procession up Val Thorens. has ruined my saturday/life

Alaphillipe sounds glum. Very very very glum. Pauvre garcon.

Honesty policy. Each rider tells them what their time was.

I presume they'll use the NTT (formerly Dimension) data.

All the bikes have their trackers on.

Although I like the honesty idea. They could buy some veg from a roadside box at the same time and put it in their jersey pockets.

Suppose I better find a cycle-friendly pub/wifi spot tomorrow and ignore everyone while out and about.

Timing was in place at the top of the Iseran for the bonus seconds. They’d have finished in Val d’Isere otherwise.

Ah shit. I'm going to channel my inner bananito and go comfort eat.

I've been looking forward to this stage since I was in Val D and Tignes in January snowboarding and saw the stage was heading through. Got a few mates who couldn't care about cycling excited for it too so we could do spotting of lifts and runs and stuff, made reference maps for them with the race route and the Piste Maps to show what was where. Did get to see the Glacier lifts at the top of the Iseran and the Fornet but that was all. Didn't even get to see the roof of the Petit Danois, gutting.

edit: have just been emailed to say we're finishing early in the office today though so I can go back and cry about my insignificant problem a little earlier which is nice

Well I just learnt the word Phlegmatic from Ned, so not a total waste of an afternoon

Oh well I'm off cycling this weekend and no access to TV/stream. Was gutted I'd be missing the stage. As far as I'm concerned TDF is finished. I'll be surprised if Bernal doesn't win overall.

Thomas to ride for bernal now?

I still watched an amazing stage - one of the best of this years too. the end didn't spoil it at all. epic fucking shit all round.

apart from Dowsett of course