Pro-cycling thread

I'm watching live, from the tt grandstand.

It's good of British Cycling to let everyone experience the coverage women's cycling gets

"lads, we've been a bit elitist with the whole british cycling thing, and prejudice towards the disabled, oh and a bit sexist, we need to start by evening things up between the men and the women..."

A bloke in a flat cap with a practica camera will have pictures from today after the chemist opens on Tuesday! #bcluddites

Yes. Yes. Yes.

So happy.

Stevo - in the Tour then.

All great people hail from the wirral .

Great day out cheering Tao on.

Well impressed by Ian bibby with 3rd. Chris lawless in 2nd too at 21!

Just watched the nats TT highlights on eurosport, Steve Cummings got a bit emotional in the interview :')

I can't wait to watch the road race, I'm so happy for him. Maybe all the pros need to get on the turbo trainers for months on end like Cummings and Hayman.

So Direct Energie demonstrate once again the parochialism of French cycling. Their main chance of a stage win is through Brian Coquard, but they've decided not to select him as he's already told them he'll be leaving the team at the end of the season.

Where's he going?

He wants to ride for a World Tour team. Not sure which one will take him, the obvious choice would be Francaise de Jeux, but they've got Demare.

My guess is that he'll end up at Bahrain-Merida or Emirates-UAE, mainly because it'll give them good publicity in July.

The Belgium champs sounded fun:
http://www.cyclingnews.com/races/belgian-road-championships-2017/road-race-men/results/

Any highlights of it on Youtube yet? Would be really grateful if somebody could link to it on here. strangely I can view embedded YouTube videos at work, but not access the site directly...

is this not the dichotomy of the rider point system in action though?

Not sure I understand. As long as he has a sponsor, Bernardeau's team will get a ride at the Tour. It almost doesn't matter how good his riders are.

But Coquard is easily his best chance of a stage win, especially when it looks like the sprints will be fairly open this year.

I meant that maybe they are thinking more of their World Tour points for next season rather than taking Coquard and having him taking points won to his new team and leaving them struggling.

Apparently, this interview from Cycling Tips would appear to counter that as them being more focused on developing african cycling. https://cyclingtips.com/2016/09/why-dimension-datas-place-in-the-worldtour-is-under-threat/

Direct Energie aren't a WT team though, which is why Coquard wants to leave. He wants to race consistently at the top level, as he thinks it'll improve him as a rider, but with DE he rides a predominantly French calendar.

Don't know if this will work but this is the final 17km (borrowed from steep hill)

oops wrong link... that was the French race. I can't find anything more than the final 2km of the Belgian race.

Don't all teams and riders competing in WT races accrue WT points though? I assumed that DE were wanting to secure the maximum haul possible for themselves to help make their invites and participation in big WT races next year more likely, which means not including talent like Coquard if they are only going to take these with them.

Shit that the British RR wasn't on tv. Somehow they managed to get the Highlights from the French RR on Eurosport last night, but not the Brits. Le sigh.

Highlights on ITV4 and Eurosport this evening.

Well deserved Marcus Burghart is Deutscher Meister