Tour de France 2016

Any thoughts on who has a realistic chance of taking the top step of the podium (without relying on major mishaps on the part of Team Sky)? I thought Froome's winning margin could have been much greater if they'd ridden less defensively during the latter part of the race suggesting pointing to Sky's lead being greater than indicated.
Quintana could simply be having an off year as many riders do but don't see Movistar having the riders or the strategy to really take it to Sky.
We could similarly see a revitalised Aru next year but figure Astana will look to split their strengths between the Giro and Tour
Alberto Contador could be an interesting proposition particularly with the support of Pantano but see his strength on the wane.
Richie Porte is strong but can't see BMC putting all their eggs in one basket and getting behind him like Froome has (by that I am talking the whole season and not just TdF).
Bardet is a challenger but don't see him hitting the top step next year and the same could be said for Mollema and Yates
Also next year is the Giro 100th and I can see a lot of talent choosing to race in Italy rather than France.
Thoughts?

We were talking about hats, Gus.

Lol

Sorry to break the flow...

Well, not really...

I'll have a tilt at this. Sky went into the Tour with a plan and executed perfectly, even managing to finish with nine men for the first time. No sprinter and no puncheur looking for stage wins, no climbers getting into breaks trying to win the polka-dot, and one defined leader. On every stage each rider knew what he had to do and when. Numbers were looked at and riders given a day off if they were fatigued. It was a single-minded tactic that none of the other teams had considered. It wasn't pretty, but it was effective.

That said other teams will learn, as they have done in the past. Movistar, Katusha, BMC and a few others should get organised, look at what Sky did and how and look to replicate it.

That said I do think it was a little serendipitous, all the stars aligning for them perfectly, and Quintana having a really off Tour, his numbers below the levels he is capable of for whatever reason. I don't think they'll have it as easy again.

I wonder if OBE can put something together? In Chaves and the Yates brothers they have riders capable of challenging, and they nare building a strong GC team around them slowly. In twelve months who knows.

Problem with OBE is who plays leader and who plays domestique - something that's generally been clear at Sky with the exception of Froome/Wiggins conflict. Would suggest that the Yates and Chaves are pretty evenly matched leaving lots of potential for a bun fight

I think until we know the route of next year's Tour, any talk of who could beat Froome is moot.

It is impossible to look beyond Froome, unless he loses his appetite, suffers injury, or naturally declines with age. You would need to somehow combine the strongest aspects of an on form Dumoulin and Quintana to compete with him.

Can Quintana regain his climbing form and improve his TT to limit the losses? Probably not.

Can Dumoulin extend his TT gains and win the tour a la Wiggo by defending in the mountains? Probably not.

Having said all that, it would have been great to see Froome versus Nibali in 2014. That could have been a real battle.

Yes and no...i think the Tour de France organisers are keen to see a competitive race and are likely to design a course that helps Froome's competitors. Only problem is that Froome now looks like he's got less weak points than in years previously (although I'd argue that it's possibly descents despite his run on the Col de Peyresourde)

Froome is 31, so talk of him winning for the next 3,4 years is a little premature and optimistic. Obviously, you can win the tour into your mid-30s, but not that many riders have the discipline to do so, especially with a young family to miss out on. On the other hand, maybe weeks away from his wife helps keep things fresh. And let's be honest, babies are annoying.

I think that passage is out of "Sex, Lies and Handlebar Tape", worth a read

I agree - still think he is a mediocre descender and only picked up that win because no-one else wanted to commit to the chase.

If I was setting a route to test Froome I would probably limit it to one shorter TT, throw in a cobbled stage, add loads of technical descending and have more of those short, mountain packed stages where the race is tougher to control.

If you stack up enough risk you'll probably get him - no one can be lucky all the time.

So next year's TdF stages can include wet descending, climbs without barriers for spectators, more motorbikes, and a prologue commute from Dorking to the City (with the roads open to traffic) :-D

If I was setting a route to test Froome I would probably limit it to one shorter TT, throw in a cobbled stage, add loads of technical descending and have more of those short, mountain packed stages where the race is tougher to control.

Add a Tro Bro Leon stage too!

Bonsoir bonsoir.

Quelqu'un as vu mon chapeau favorit par ici, par hazard?

So basically, he's shit because he's not French, and it was fairer when riders lost races through no fault of their own. What a load of bollocks.

So basically, he's shit because he's not French

Nail, head, direct strike.

Anyone follow Ross Tucker (@scienceofsport) on twitter? He's a very vocal sceptic of, well, everything, pretty much. He makes good arguments but does seem to have a habit of saying because x=y, then y must =z. In other words, taking big leaps into accusations without evidence.
It was very interesting hearing him debate with Jerone Swart - the chap who helped with the Froome VO2 max test - basically the two of them were taking the exact same evidence and coming to polar opposite conclusions.
Anyway - I was going to make the point that Tucker comes across pretty well most of the time, and then goes and retweets Antoine Vayer or @diggerforum or one of those mentals, and then I'm left wondering where his lack of bias has gone.

As someone who makes a lot of his credibility as a scientist, he suffers an awful lot from confirmation bias.

"I know British journalism isn't always of the highest quality."

That's an understatement: I bought a copy of Cycle Sport a month or so ago, for the low down on the stages in the TdF, and the standard of writing was just awful - the use of punctuation seemed almost arbitrary. (By contrast, a preview magazine of the European Championship was very well written.)

That's exactly what I thought. The Froome tests were the biggest example I thought - when the results said he's either a top, top level athlete, or someone getting the benefits of blood doping, he came to the conclusion that he was blood doping rather than the slightly more obvious answer of the richest team hiring the best cyclist to ride fastest*

*I could be wrong, in which case I'll eat my words one day if it all comes out

I've not watched any tour coverage except for Cyclocosm's "How The Week Was Won".

http://cyclocosm.com/category/htrww/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missy_Giove

He's a dickhead. In 2012 he basically endorsed Sky as a clean team, then has steadily back-pedaled. He was challenged about this on Twitter recently, and threw up some guff about speeds increasing. I think he enjoys the attention on Twitter criticising Sky gets him, and so has thrown his lot in with the clinic trolls like digger, and also professional troll Antoine Vayer.

He also made some claim that his scepticism was due to talking to 'insiders' but ignored my request to elaborate on who they may be.

The evidence against Lance was there early on, he just spent his time using the courts to suppress it, but Kimmage and Walsh were investigating and there were a lot of people willing to talk. Is there the same about Sky? There is nada. There's Leinders and that is about it. No-one that has left the team has made any insinuations, and the one 'positive' they have had in JTL wasn't when he was racing for the team, and you would have thought he might have said something considering how bitter he was. But silence, just a brief association with the Rabobank doping doctor and the fact they win races, that is all the accusers have.

And the reason Sky get shouted about loudest is because people don't like them, they don't like them because they are British, rich, sponsored by Murdoch and they win races. So even though many believe all cyclists are doping, you get good dopers and bad dopers. The good dopers are teams like Astana, because apparently they don't pretend they are clean. Bad dopers are any anglos, i.e. from non-traditional cycling countries, and ones that maintain they are clean, so Sky with its ZTP and marginal gains really pisses them off.

There is a thread in the clinic titled 'More lame Russia bashing' with perfectly illustrates this, supposedly anti-doping people bemoaning Russia's current treatment by the IOC and others. Because Russia are good dopers, while the Brits and Aussies are bad dopers.