Tour de France 2012

[ravo]

Cav's up and running, he usually messes up the first sprint. Well done lad.

Yep, good ride by Cav the other day, but how bloody strong is Sagan? Freak!

Sky have also lost a rider to support Wiggo. Couple of bad crashes yesterday. Gerrans ended up in a barbed-wire fence.

 

[ravo]

Wednesday's stage. Definitely another for the sprinters.

Being the 4th of July, you can expect to see some Americans in the breakaway. My money is on Cav for today, followed by Goss. Although, I would love to see Gossy win one.

 

[Super Tottenham]

Yep, good ride by Cav the other day, but how bloody strong is Sagan? Freak!

Sky have also lost a rider to support Wiggo. Couple of bad crashes yesterday. Gerrans ended up in a barbed-wire fence.

Sagan is immense, I think he will win more stages this tour.

 

[ravo]

Sagan is immense, I think he will win more stages this tour.

Agree. Anything with a slight incline, he will blow even Cav away.

He doesn't yet have the organisation and experience to get himself in the right place on the pan-flat stages to compete with the Sky train. That will come with time.

 

[ravo]

Thursday's stage. Yet another for the fast men.

 

[ravo]

Another big crash before the finish affected a lot of people's surge to the line. Gossy had it won, but had to go alone 50m too early and Griepel got a tow and passed him. Cav misjudged the distance to the line and was too far back. He needed another 100m.

Check out this GreenEdge vid. I'll post them everyday - they're brilliant.

 

[ravo]

Friday's stage. Guess what, another fopr the sprinters! C'mon Gossy!

 

[al_pacino]

I think there are a couple of people clearly quicker than Goss so he'll need a bit of luck/misjudgement to get better than second. I wouldn't mind seeing a clean sprint though.

 

[Max_Junglie]

Griepel hatrick!

Excellent vid Ravo, good find!

 

[ravo]

I think there are a couple of people clearly quicker than Goss so he'll need a bit of luck/misjudgement to get better than second. I wouldn't mind seeing a clean sprint though.

Absolutely. Cav and Griepel are quicker, but I'm biased towards Gossy!

 

[al_pacino]

Absolutely. Cav and Griepel are quicker, but I'm biased towards Gossy!

Now I've gone against him I wouldn't bet against him today

 

[ravo]

Sagan again! Massive crash. Will post a vid in the morning when sober.

 

[Max_Junglie]

Apparently the crash was caused by a rider taking off a shoecover & swerving whilst the peloton was doing 70kph. Looked like a really bad one. Twitter says Oscar Freire suffered a broken rib & a punctured lung. Millar took a chainring to the chest. Eurosport showed Garmin's van Summeren (I think) riding in on his own dressed in rags.

Good day for Wiggins though, Schleck & Hysedal both well out of GC contention.

 

[Marty]

Apparently the crash was caused by a rider taking off a shoecover & swerving whilst the peloton was doing 70kph. Looked like a really bad one. Twitter says Oscar Freire suffered a broken rib & a punctured lung. Millar took a chainring to the chest. Eurosport showed Garmin's van Summeren (I think) riding in on his own dressed in rags.

Good day for Wiggins though, Schleck & Hysedal both well out of GC contention.

What a douche, almost deserves to be kicked out for that.

 

[ravo]

Highlights of the stage:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/video/2012/jul/06/tour-de-france-2012-stage-six-video

Backstage pass:

 

[ravo]

The previous backstage passes:

Pre-race


Prologue


Stage 1


Stage 2


Stage 3


Stage 4

 

[ravo]

Stage 7 - Saturday: Finally a lumpy race!

Expect some of the non-GC climbers to attack on the final climb. You can almost guarantee Sandy Casar, Tommy Voekler and perhaps Jens will be in the break today. Perhaps Ryder and Frank Schleck will even have a go, considering they lost so much time yesterday.

 

[Max_Junglie]

L'Equipe says yesterday's crash was caused by Davide Vigano. He was putting Petacchi's shoe covers into his back pocket and riding one-handed (at 70 kph, downhill) when riders in front slowed down - because he was one-handed he couldn't brake properly, hit someone's back wheel and took the peloton down.

Quite a few starting today with broken bones. Millar has posted a horrible picture on twitter of what looks like some deep chainring gouges.

Hesjedal has abandoned. Can't see Voekler doing much unfortunately, his knee is bad and he's having trouble riding out of the saddle apparently. But might be a day for an escapee to win.

Sammy Sanchez for the win today!

 

[BrightEyes]

this is the first time I've followed the Tour and I'm confused. Could someone explain how the classification works - Wiggo has been 7 secs off the lead from the first day (?)

 

[llamafarmer]

Yep. The flat stages generally mean group finishes. If you arrive in a big group everyone in that group gets given the same finish time (at the referee's discretion).

The classification is based on aggregate time for the whole tour, so the initial leader board was set by the prologue time trial and since then most of the contenders have finished in the lead group and been given +0 split times - until the crashes broke things up yesterday!

Generally the big gains and losses will be made in the mountains and the 2 remaining time trials. So if you want to win overall you need to be able to climb and time trial very well and have a good team to look after you on the flat stages.