Le Tour De France 2012

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He was already here when he was 4th in last year's Vuelta or Giro. He has been evolving steadily and is breaking through now.

Froome is already a way better climber than Wiggins. I think he will ride for a different team next year in order to have a shot at winning the Tour. It's pretty obvious Froome is way too good to be a helper. Watch out for this guy next year. His sprint today was insane.
 
I know he did well last season, I looked it up, but compared to Wiggins* who has faced accusations he really has come out of nowhere.


*Who has been accused of a "increase in performance" despite being an Olympic, World Champion and previous 4th place finish.
 
People who accuse Wiggins of doping are ignorant people that don't even know Wiggins went from trackcycling to roadcycling only 4 years ago. Neither do they know Wiggins was as strong last year, but he crashed out early.
 
Cadel had a bad stage yesterday.

They did have a plan, a young BMC rider (sorry forgotten his name) did a break from the leader's pack on the 2nd last climb. Then a few minutes later Cadel broke away to join him. But Cadel just couldn't hold with him. The plan would have been to build on that lead during the decent, but Cadel just didn't have the legs for the climb anymore.

The young rider was a little surprised to be looking back to see Cadel falling back. It was a real shame. The Wiggins' pack caught back up to them and after that Cadel was spent, he had a pained expression on his face and then wasn't able to keep with Wiggins in the final climb. Loosing a bunch of time.

Which is a turn around on last year when Cadel effectively won the Tour in the mountain stages. Will be very difficult for him to win from here.
 
Bram Turismo
People who accuse Wiggins of doping are ignorant people that don't even know Wiggins went from trackcycling to roadcycling only 4 years ago. Neither do they know Wiggins was as strong last year, but he crashed out early.
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The trouble is, people can't accept that their can be a dominating rider who is clean, after all that's happened in cycling, plus with Floyd Landis in '06 being stripped of his title, and Contador losing his title, their first thought is doping. Why do you think Lance Armstrong is still under investigation? Because people are sceptical and can't accept someone may be able to win without drugs.
 
Mic_Col
Cadel had a bad stage yesterday.

They did have a plan, a young BMC rider (sorry forgotten his name) did a break from the leader's pack on the 2nd last climb. Then a few minutes later Cadel broke away to join him. But Cadel just couldn't hold with him. The plan would have been to build on that lead during the decent, but Cadel just didn't have the legs for the climb anymore.

The young rider was a little surprised to be looking back to see Cadel falling back. It was a real shame. The Wiggins' pack caught back up to them and after that Cadel was spent, he had a pained expression on his face and then wasn't able to keep with Wiggins in the final climb. Loosing a bunch of time.

Which is a turn around on last year when Cadel effectively won the Tour in the mountain stages. Will be very difficult for him to win from here.
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That rider is Van Garderen, who is a real youthful American talent. As an idea it was good, but not on the Col de la Fer, which is HC and monstrous. Van Garderen just looked better than Evans, and if he hadn't dragged his team leader to the finish, could have stayed with Wiggjns. They should have gone near the top so they could extend the lead on the downhill. Nibali tried something similar with Sagan on stage 10, which failed as well. Evans needs people to help him. Wiggins has four to his one. Doubtless he'll try again, or at least Nibali will today.
 
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David Millar becomes the fourth British rider to win a stage this year... looking good for the Olympic team...
 
Touring Mars
David Millar becomes the fourth British rider to win a stage this year... looking good for the Olympic team...
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Fourth stage win for him too, he dealt really well with the attentions of Peraud in the final km. No change in the GC classifications, and maybe tomorrow's flatness will lend itself to Cavendish, though he'll have to go it alone as Sky care about Wiggins principally. Maybe that would make him happier, as it's the pyrenees next.
 
I caught a glimpse of Cav' with a jersey full of supplies coming up the back of the peloton. Great to see him taking to the domestique business well :)
 
It's probably because he knows he has no chance of winning the green jersey, so he's trying to help out as much as possible to the overall cause. I can't see him staying at Sky for very long TBH, he's a sprinter, he wants to win stages, and Sky can't really give him that opportunity.
 
You people are missing the point. Cavendish can battle for the green jersey as he doesn't need the best train. He is merely not battling for the jersey because there is a 200% focus on Cavendish for the Olympics. Wiggins wins the Tour de France and Cavendish the Olympics, how much better can it get for UK cycling? And don't forget that there is a World Championship after the Olympics as well.

He already won a stage this Tour were he proved he still is the fastest man in a straight line and by smartly picking a wheel. But right now the jersey is not his main focus and instead helping Wiggins.

There is one point I do have to bring to attention, though. Cavendish has lost weight in order to better digest climbs. But what I currently have seen this Tour is that he is the first sprinter to let the peloton go when the climbs arrive.

On that, I am really happy Greipel has three victories so far. He is a pure breed of a sprinter. Without any doubt this man has the most impressive leg build of all sprinters. No wonder why they call him the Gorilla.
 
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Yikes!!

Drama today as someone has thrown tacks onto the track. Wiggins and Cadel Evans both had punctures.

Evans lost a lot of time as he jumped off the bike and then had a long wait for the team car to catch up.

From that Wiggins did the right thing, he had control of the main pelaton and got everyone to close-down the race, they all just coasted in, allowing Evans and all other affected to catch up. They just showed an interview with him, he said that no-one wants to benefit from something like this.

An Astana rider (sorry if I can't recall the name) went down badly and might be out of the race as a result of this tack throwing incident.

On TV post race they showed a close up of one of the motorbike's wheels with a tack in it.
 
Terrible thing to happen in the Tour, ruined the end of the stage. Wiggins did a really good thing there, he could've easily taken a few minutes out of Evans, but he sat up and nobody lost time because of a few idiots.
 
Some of those fans are just stupid, wrecks the tour in my opinion. It was good to see Sky shut it down out of respect for BMC. Like the guys with the flares aswell, right in the riders faces :yuck:
 
TwistedMetal
Some of those fans are just stupid, wrecks the tour in my opinion. It was good to see Sky shut it down out of respect for BMC. Like the guys with the flares aswell, right in the riders faces :yuck:
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It was mentioned in last night's commentary that some riders had suffered some type of injury from the flares being held up near them.

I just checked the 'net. It was Wiggins . . .

His statement:
"Quite a few guys let flares off; it was pretty dangerous and my arm was burnt a bit but I'm pretty sure those guys are nursing a few wounds – we [the riders in the peloton] threw water bottles back in their direction,"
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It's getting kinda stupid what some fans are doing. The coverage here - Australia was saying that some of the NEW Australian fans ( who've only taken an interest since Cadel's win ) are getting to passionate about the new Australian team Orica Green Edge and are yelling abuse at Australian riders who are riding for other teams.
 
I'd hazard to say, the person who threw the tacks wasn't a 'fan'.

By definition, a fan, would respect the sport and would never do such a thing.
 
I call them hooligans. It's the same with those idiots running alongside the riders half-naked. They aren't fans either, they're just drunk halfwits that want their fat ass on TV.

And the same with all the crowd on the climbs, giving enough space for just 1 rider to pass at a time. Give these men some room to breath for heaven's sake!
 
Something similar happened at the 2009 Etape Caledonia. A local councillor was protesting at the fact the race closed the roads for a few hours, so he spread tacks over the road and caused a whole load of punctures.
 
Just seen a post by someone on a cycling forum I frequent who has rode a little bit of todays stage. He rode the wrong way up one of the descents and said someone had poured proper thick black dirty oil all over the racing line at one point. He spoke to a Gendarme who didn't seem interested but then found a council worker who went and covered it with sand. Hopefully this sabotage is not going to happen on every stage but it's a bit worrying that it seems it happened on two stages in a row.
 
^^^ Not good. A worry that there might be more places that weren't found.

At the start of today's coverage they were saying that one of the motorbike riders had also crashed as a result of yesterday's sabotage.

The motorbike rider has a broken arm and leg.
 
Good to see the riders were forewarned of oil on the road, and slowed down to avoid incident.
 
Could this increase the security cost of the Tour de France to extreme levels?

I mean, with this it would seem that the organisers would have to get police or volunteers to patrol ALL the stage length and have some form of crowd control. Which would be frankly impossible to do, consider most are over 100 km in length. Is there a legal reason to arrest the wrongdoers?
 
So looks like Sagan has the Green jersey already locked down as nobody even contested the intermediate sprint with him, plus he won the bunch sprint for 8th or whatever it was.

Should be an interesting stage tomorrow with the climbs and I think we certainly will see them attack Wiggins tomorrow. He will be attacked from all side with Evans, Nibali and Van der brooek?
 
TwistedMetal
I think we certainly will see them attack Wiggins tomorrow. He will be attacked from all side with Evans, Nibali and Van der brooek?
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Come on man, these puns are dreadful... :p [/pot]

Thankfully no-one was badly affected by that tack stunt, and infact it only served to allow the riders an opportunity to demonstrate their fairness and sportsmanship in the face of utter stupidity.

edit: ooh, 14,000 posts :dopey:
 

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