Tour de France 2012

it would certainly be slower

Fark, the peloton was doing 70 km/h when that crash went down

'evenly distributed' is not how I would put it

I meant Sky got off relatively lightly. Garmin, Rabobank, N-R, Europcar all got rogered

Daniel Friebe tweet: At Garmin bus. Vansum, Hesjedal, Millar and VDV all in and bleeding

David Millar: Oh sweet jesus that was scary. Approx 70km/h pile up, like a tidal wave of debris smashing towards us, could do nothing but brake and pray. Knee caps smashed, chainring in chest, thigh + ankle bruised. Didn't even notice this scratch..

Cav: Lucky to just miss 2 flying bikes in todays massive crash, but punctured just to be part of the chaos

Renshaw: I hope everyone is ok, every rider in Rabobank crashed today at some point and most guys at least twice. It's a war zone on the bus.

Ned Boulting: At least three riders being taken off from the finish line in ambulances. This, I think, is Lieuwe Westra

The fur is starting to fly on Twitter:

Baden Cook: There are many teams out there who are just making up the numbers. They won't attack, won't chase but want to sit in the prime position.

Stuart O'Grady: "It's been a mad Tour, there are a lot of young kids out there who don’t know how to ride their bikes."

FFS, have they considered cycle training?

gold

I bet someone leant.

leaned?

leant the hard way?

#illgetmycoat

www.lfgss.com/newpostinthread50817.html >>>>>>>>>>>>

David Millar interview post crash

Sounds like Hesjedal may abandon

Ned Boulting: At least three riders being taken off from the finish line in ambulances. This, I think, is Lieuwe Westra

It's Wout Poels, abandonné...

Jonathan Vaughter's tweets,

Crashes: No one, No thing's fault; just the combination of high stakes racing for big contracts - and the risk taking that comes with that.

I bet someone leant.

leaned?

Both possible.

Rabobank 15 crashes Wynants with 2 broken ribs and a punctured lung, Freire and Poels also broken ribs.

One of the team DS claiming someone was trying to remove a shoe cover whilst they were on this little descent and lost it.

if that was the start of this carnage, removing a shoe cover at 70+ kph... wtf was he thinking

Was Rabo DS Van Houwelingen who gave that quote.

This is a bloody tour so far. Why so many crashes? What the hell's going on?

I wouldn't have thought there'd still be such over confident/inexperienced riders in the peloton

Cav wasn't in the crash, got a puncture and rode about 3k on it and was dropped by the lead group. Strange Sky didn't send anyone back at all, not even Eisel

I wouldn't have thought there'd still be such over confident/inexperienced riders in the peloton

Apparently there are lowest number of debutants in this Tour for 20 years, only 33 (lifted offa Twitter) so you can't put this down to inexperience. The irony is is everyone wants to be at the front to avoid the crashes and this creates the crashes. There are always bad crashes in the first week as well: everyone's fresh and the pace gets high, a lot of jerseys up for grabs

ITV says Andre Greipel's shoulder was dislocated in the sprint. Ouch. That man has huge balls.

Dislocated earlier, I mean, not in the actual sprint: he was sprinting with a dislocated shoulder...

every year (wholly anecdotal) there is talk about how many crashes there have been. The last pile up was particularly brutal, but it doesn't feel like there have been more crashes than usual in the opening week.

ITV says Andre Greipel's shoulder was dislocated in the sprint. Ouch. That man has huge balls.

He was ordered to sprint, had previously told the team he wasn't going to go for it

I take it all back, Sagan was world class today. The hulk was a nice touch too!