Tour de France 2021

Cav won all of his stages sprinting - of course he's not going to lead the race (did he ever win a prologue?).

Merckx was a cheat so his "wins" should have a fucking asterisk next to them anyway.

I agree with him, sprints are boring.

yeah it's just ludicrous comparing cavendish to merckx.

but want Cav to win today and/or Sunsday anyway. and is the greatest sprinter of all time.

LOL wait till you watch a modern mountain stage

But Merckx was only racing against Belgians, Italians and Frenchmen, cycling was a smaller sport then

Sprint stages are boring
Climbs were the GC guys mark each other are boring
Tours where the gap between riders is too big is boring
Maybe the "I only watch the TdF" lot should go back to watching tennis or football.

Merckx was caught with 3 different substances on 3 different occasions, I believe Cav is yet to be caught with anything.
Don't get me wrong, probably all of them were/are doping, and I do still think that what Merckx could achieve is absolutely incredible, but he's a bit of a bitter old cunt.

It’s rather graceless to point out your own successes, though the journalist’s questions were probably written to get a spicy response.

‘How do Cavendish’s wins compare against yours?’ ‘Do you think he is also the greatest cyclist ever?’ Etc.

In contrast, I think that Cavendish would be the first to congratulate and genuinely happy for whoever breaks the record in future.

Though the record will probably be safe for aeons.

(Unless Pogacar wins 3 every year for 10 years, which at this point looks likely)

At least they have nice scenery!

ha, fair!

2016 yellow jersey.
Led the tour for a day.

Was in Normandy for that stage, fucking epic.
2016 also had vibes of ‘Cavendish is finished’, but then he won 4 by the second rest day.

2016 yellow jersey.

Led the tour for a day.

Yeah, ta, I did have a feeling he was in lellow before, hence me adding the bracketed comment.

Who is presenting the GCN Breakaway show now, instead of Orla Chennoui? I don't recognise her.

Laura Winter. I know this because I asked the same question the other day.

crikey #froomewatch
https://www.cyclingweekly.com/news/chris-froome-and-philippe-gilbert-save-fan-who-fell-down-ravine-on-tour-de-france-stage-17

Pog giving it "the Patron" and calling Kwiato back from going in a break.

Touching.
https://twitter.com/LeTour/status/1415978848206925827?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1415978848206925827%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fracecenter.letour.fr%2Fen

I agree I think the saltiness about Merck’s comments is a bit OTT. If you imagine him saying these things as an old man with a wry smile they seem pretty reasonable.

It’s not like he’s had PR training FFS.

Pretty sure he had PR training, and LBL training too.

Zing!

Only because of all the stick he was getting for his pissy comments earlier in the Tour.

Go Cav!

It’s not like he’s had PR training

Pemoline Recipe?

The thing is, most of those quotes from Merckx miss off the following paragraph, which takes away some of the saltiness:-

“Naturally I’m not trying to play down what he’s achieved. Also because he’s been through a difficult time and has fallen in love with cycling again. That’s a great message for young people in the sport.”

The problem is he (and the media) are using a single metric (stage wins) to try and show how good he was, and Cav has equalled that and will hopefully surpass it.

Of course Cav doesn't have as many yellow jerseys, days in yellow, km in the lead, mountain stages, etc, but that's not the single metric that they're looking at.

Trying to qualify "better" based on a single (or a few) simple metrics is completely and utterly pointless, and entirely subjective.

On the Merckx doping thing, I don't think a few stimulants are comparable to oxygen vector doping.

Also I got a selfie with him outside LMNH during the 2012 Olympics and he was really nice, so there.

Who said anything about better?

This is a simple case of someone getting more Tour stage wins than someone else. That's fact.

Also fact is that one of these riders was busted for drug use 3x and one of these riders has no such doping history.

One of these riders should be at the top of the list. One of them should be removed.