Pro-cycling thread

As we saw last year, you can build enough form to be competitive for three weeks with an interrupted training schedule, but you lack the endurance necessary to maintain that form every day. That’s the big risk that Vingegaard faces, it’ll only take one bad day for him to lose the race.

I know it’s stage three but some of the contenders being 21 seconds down already seems a lot.

Fuck this has been an interesting opening few days.

Given Jonas tends to get better as the Tour continues, you'd assume that UAE will try to put some time into him today and get him to burn team mates and energy to compromise the later stages. That said, the next few days aren't going to be as tough or do much for the GC (well, the TT could be) so it'd have to be a huge raid to do much damage to his recovery. The gravel-ish stage has Pog written all over it... going to to be a fun first week.

And no big pile ups

Jumbo had three riders on the ground and scuffed up on stage 2

I remember a time when we didn't have cycling on TV at all... then we had Tour highlights at night, then we started to get some of the bigger mountain stages live, then we got the whole Tour live and you could tell who was a cycling fan because they were all fucked during July having been up all night watching the racing. :)

Then I moved to the UK and could record that shit on a sky box avoid all you knobbers and twitter and watch it "live" after work.

Now I still don't have Disco+ so I just watched youtube highlights from yesterday like some kind of normie. I feel dirty.

Learn Dutch. Sporza best commentary <3

Is watching Gold Member enough?

Today is coming down to final 6km of climbing, sorry to everyone who think this will be a banger

Route profile for ease of reference later.

Some great personal memories here as the first mountain stage I ever attended was when me and my then teenage boys stayed in Montgenevre in 2011. Was totally astounded amongst the throng of people on the mountain to also see one of my commuting buddies casually riding by. We have since become firm friends and riding partners.
Also remember sheltering from the wind and rain behind parked cars at the top of the Lauteret.

Good times.

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Today is coming down to final 6km of climbing, sorry to everyone who think this will be a banger

Quoting for later

You could be right, although from the right turn at Lauteret to the top of the Galibier is more like 9k. This also ignores the 'interesting' descent to Plan Lachat, a possible banana skin. It is likely that at least one GC contender will lose out. The cumulative effects of the earlier climbs can't be ignored, much of which depends on how the GC teams ride from the start.

With so many variables, not watching from the start would be a massive own goal.

Did ITV ever do all the stages live or did I imagine that? They only seem to be doing a couple of live stages.

They always do all the stages live. Do you mean the whole stage? Quite often e.g. yesterday they only started broadcasting at 2pm circa 100k into the stage.

This was the first thing I saw and it seems to suggest only a few stages.
https://www.itv.com/itvcycling/articles/schedule-tour-de-france-on-itv

I guess I could walk over to the TV and look for it while I'm still TV licensed.

seems to suggest only a few stages.

ITV4 will air every stage live

Yep should be every day on ITV4. Coverage starts at 12 today. The highlights of the last stage are usually on the hour before the live starts. They don't show the full stage though so some days they might only have a couple of hours for the end of the stage like yesterday.

"Just talk me through....". Every fucking time.

"Full schedule for the first six stages below."

and then doesn't show today's date.

So, if you're a drugged up, multi-tasking, barely skim reader... you're fucked.

ITV - put the full schedule on your website you useless fucks.

Odd that on The Breakaway they were discussing who might enjoy the descent to Valloire today and no-one mentioned 'arr Pidders', who absolutely ripped it to pieces last time.

I just heard that GCN guy mention Pidders putting a minute into everyone in that descent?

edit: they were talking in the street, at the start, not the in studio show

May have done on the commentary - I switched to the French version as soon as Carlton Kirby said: "Just talk me through..." as mentioned above.

Haha, the Eurosport lady commentator, forgot her name, said the exact same thing. Annoying. And they don't even say 'please' either

EF Education crying in the team car at winning a yellow jersey everybody was trying to give them by finishing at least 20 places behind Carapaz LOL

Isn't Gary Imlach weeny?

I'm the same height as Jacopo and only about 7kg heavier and met Peter Kennaugh in Taninges last year after another great day in the alps and got a selfie with him and can't recall him being particularly short.

I also walked past Gary on a London street a few years ago and said hello to him but definitely don't recall him being that short.

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