Tour de France 2015

Legion d'Honoure

'Légion d'honneur'

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A9gion_d%E2%80%99Honneur

The French actually put up a 'arc de triomphe' for Thevenet on the climb to Pra-Loup this year, honouring 'the one that stopped the cannibal'... questionable at best.

When Porte lead them into Dutch Corner yesterday I think he deliberately put a couple of wiggles on to make the crowd step back a bit

Starts 4:15pm local time, so 3:15pm UK time.
Due to arrive Champs Elysées around 7pm local time, 6pm UK time.

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For the record, I'm quite with J here. I think it's as dull as a 3 stage race (with that route, with all main players intact) could reasonably be IMO.

There's been a few highlights - Early textbook echelon drama on day 2 (even if it killed perhaps the rest of it), G's riding, Cummings belting it past the remonstrating Frenchies, Cavs win when he needed it the most, Pinot's redemption from his earlier strop atop Huez...But Giro had better duelling, and the Classics (ok, a vintage year this year s0 maybe unfair) were all better days in front of the TV. The Ruta Del Sol was far more engrossing.

It's always a good few weeks affixed to the screen, though the shouting at screen moments have been very subdued relative to previous tours/races :)

I really don't understand why other fans don't pull the dickheads out of the way. Every prick who runs next to riders shaking a fist or flag in their face should be yanked out the way, roughly

It happens. It's a bad idea though, as the idiots can fall or flail in front of riders.

I enjoyed this year's Tour. Plenty of drama and show, especially for and by Sagan. Team Sky and ('Hey) Froome(y!') played it superbly, they never had a moment of real weakness in the mountains and their paying attention in the first couple of tricky stages really paid off.

No wins, not a lot of glory but the Dutchies have been proving themselves to be tough, solid and consistent all the way to week 3 of this Tour. Pretty nice seeing Poels, Kruijswijk, Mollema and the resurrected Gesink all together up front with the elite. Like the latter mentioned in an interview yesterday, I think we'll just have to be happy to be 'best of the rest'.

Two years ago on the alp a guy dresses as gene symonds regularily ran up the hill in front of us. Come the race someone stuck a foot out and he went flying and he missed riblon and and the guy who won from europcar.

Just started raining here in Paris, could be interesting on the slippery cobbles.

There's a great gif of this somewhere...

edit: quite easy to find in the end:

https://cbsjackseattle.files.wordpress.com/2014/07/tour-de-france-trip-o.gif?w=480

http://www.standard.co.uk/news/world/paris-police-open-fire-on-car-after-it-tried-to-smash-through-tour-de-france-barricade-10416511.html

Shit, has the clinic mobilised?

My money's on Jimmy Fingers.

Riders going down like skittles in La Course, greasy greasy cobbles...

Pouring rain, will be very interesting later on...

If it stays like this for Stage 21 the stewards will take the GC times the first time the riders cross the finish line so crashes won't effect the result at all unless you fail to finish completely.

That looks like such a small peloton--have lots of people already crashed out?

Is there no Sky womens team?

Apparently so, I only started watching at 30k to go but there's been a lot of abandons. It's only 89km long but completely limited to the circuit, so lots of passes over the same sections. I guess the increasing pace negates the increasing familiarity of the course for them, plus it's still raining pretty hard.

Reckon it'll be carnage if it's this wet later. Riders that bit more tired, the speeds a few kph faster, and - though this is debatable - riders could well be a bit more reckless in their desire to win.

Sags is my pick for this evening.

Nice attack by Rabobank,

Amazing finish, such a strong move by Van der Breggen.

Great break from the Rabo rider! Panache.

Awesome to see a break stick there. Great finish.