Best TdF in 20 years?

Wiggins is a hero, and seems a really sound bloke too... good to see deserved success going to someone who works hard and gets on with it rather than crying like a girl...

Speaking of tears and girlie behaviour, the whole Hincapie toys/pram thing seems really silly to me. Why should other teams just let him take yellow because he is a nice bloke? I am a nice bloke too but I'm not expecting people to send me free Ringle skewers. It's pro bike racing, working for sponsorship exposure etc, not a testamonial ride! If it mattered so much to Hincapie, he should have put more pain into the last few miles and got the jersey for himself.

I think Nocentini has done fantastic too, plenty of exposure for his sponsors, but it seems like nobody cares and just annuls his efforts. Fair play to him and he wasn't that far back today either.

Contador flew up that hill effortlessly... I feel like death heated up going up steep/long hills on the road bike with a 39/26 gear at 10mph and below. How fast do you reckon Contador was climbing?

And Armstrong deserves praise... the guy is drawing his pension, has been out for 3 years and is still contending, that is pretty amazing.

I think it's all pretty interesting. Bikes are a bit soulless though! Someone needs to ride a steely! :lol:
 
Voigt's fall looked a bad one :shock: always liked him as a rider, seems to give his all and normally for the team. The TT is going to be a belter :D
 
I'm not a roadie, closest I've ever been is a tourer, but I'm enjoying this TDF.
Only thing that gets me is the team politics strategy bit. I guy breaks away, and no one chases him down, he then wins points for himself but the rest are just playing the long game happy to slowly add up the points. I like rivalries, constant position jockeying, mavericks who don't follow team orders, a proper fight. Watched Lance do a great bit of sprinting to catch the leading group though and Wiggins is proving well tough, I hope he can ignore our press and its usual hype.

Maybe its the tourer in me but I wouldn't want to do those descents without at least 28mm wide slicks, slacker steering angle and good brakes :shock:
 
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I've just watched yesterdays stage on the ITV4 iplayer. I think Mr Wiggins has something up his sleeve. In the interview at the end he was so calm and confident. Possible big push today, gain a little bit. Take yellow in the time trial, then ride on Contadors wheel to Paris :D . Lets hope so.
 
Re: .

Grannygrinder":pw1vgt07 said:
Take yellow in the time trial, then ride on Contadors wheel to Paris.
Click to expand...

That'd be Contador's wheel up the Ventoux!!! Much as I'd love to see a Wiggo Tour win, that's not gonna happen. I reckon he could take Lance though....??
 
I'm not sure whether Armstrong is playing the loyal team mate and not chasing Contador because he knows he isn't good enough or because he is a loyal team mate.
The way Lance bridged the gap back to the yellow jersey group yesterday was very impressive though. It is a very good tour and I think Contador will be the man to beat for a while. He can accelarate on the H.C. climbs and is also his National TT Champion. The only real hole in Contador's armour is his race craft. To be caught out when Columbia attacked in the cross winds was careless. Where was Armstrong? Exactly where he needed to be.
 
Stage races leave me cold, and strangely Le Tour generally leaves me coldest of all. The individual stages can be interesting enough (although some of them are just a day's cycling) but I have little interest in the overall race. The one day classics are where it's at for me, there's no room for fannying about having a lazy day at the back of the peleton recovering from yesterday's hard work. Worse still is the fact that stage races can be won without winning a single stage. In the spring classics you're there to win.

Cav has the makings of a great classics rider. The only problem is that the British media more or less ignore the classics and give most of their meagre coverage to the big stage races, so there's less incentive from a sponsorship point of view for Cav to win them. The sponsors would rather they were won by riders from nations with large audiences for those races.
 
It was interesting article right up to the point Lemond entered the story. Lemond is not so much a critic of doping, but something of a bitter man who does everything he can to detract from modern pro cycling. And Kohl? Well anybody who gets caught is going to claim everybody else is doing it. Once you've accepted the guilty verdict all you have left it a plea in mitigation.

The funny thing is that while doping is still rife in pro cycling, the sport is getting cleaner simply because testing is getting better. Once upon a time doping was the norm because it was legal. When it became illegal it didn't go away it went underground and for years until the testing started to have an effect it didn't become any less common. If you happen to believe that (and I do) then it follows that in Lemond's day doping was at least as common as it is today.

Now that doesn't mean that I think Lemond used any performance enhancing substances beyong a bowl of pasta and a banana. What it does mean is that I think Lemond talks a lot of toot. He presents cycling today as riddled with drug abuse (and that may well be true) where his argument tumbles around his ears is that he presents cycling in his era as whiter than white. And that is clearly BS. The only "evidence" he has to support this argument is that cyclists weren't testing positive all over the place. Well of course they weren't, what testing there was back then was a joke.

Many sports today are in denial about doping and, while there is nominal testing, they would rather nobody was caught. You don't have to step back too far in history before you find cycling in the same situation.

Listen to a bygone pro's opinions on doping? Sure, but only if they start from the position of their own experience of doping.
 
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