Month: July 2014
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Rafal Majka having second thoughts about the Tour de France
Rafal Majka finished sixth in this year’s Giro. The Pole is 24, which is quite young for a Grand Tour contender because it literally takes years to build the endurance needed to properly tolerate three solid weeks of racing. Often, a rider around this sort of age will be put into a Grand Tour team…
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Richie Porte always has at least one bad day
After Chris Froome abandoned, the situation was presented by Sky as being an opportunity for Richie Porte to show what he can do. What Porte can do is have at least one really bad day during every Grand Tour. This seems to be a theme with Porte: un jour sans – a day without. Yesterday’s…
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Alexander Kristoff’s turn to aggravate the Slovak
Maybe they could bring in a bridesmaid’s jersey for the rider with most second-placed finishes. It could be a garish pink with stupid puffy sleeves. Peter Sagan would be delighted. Alexander Kristoff was the latest beneficiary of Sagan’s extraordinary run of near-misses. Kristoff won Milan-San Remo this year, you know. His usual thing is winning…
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Was Jonathan Tiernan-Locke doping while he was at Sky?
British rider, Jonathan Tiernan-Locke, has been banned for two years for irregularities with his blood passport. He’s been stripped of his Tour of Britain win and I doubt he’ll ride professionally again. Being as he rode for Sky, many see this as circumstantial evidence that the British-based team are engaged in some sort of sophisticated…
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Gallopin’ Tony the latest to deny Peter Sagan
It was indeed a stage suited to Peter Sagan. What this apparently means is that everyone in the peloton becomes so monomaniacal about him that they effectively gang up on him. It’s about 170 against one. They’re not good odds. Gallopin’ Tony was the man to benefit today but it would be disrespectful to say…
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A roadside race report from stage two of the 2014 Tour de France
One of the site’s readers, Bert, was there in person for stage two. He writes: First, a summary of the whole experience. We sat on someone’s garden wall alongside the route in Elland. A man came out to speak to us. “That’s my wall,” he said. “Oh, sorry,” we said. “Not at all,” he said,…
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Vincenzo Nibali cares not for gravity
If Richie Porte is ‘flying’ then Vincenzo Nibali’s in orbit, effortlessly circling the earth. Just as it did in 2012, La Planche des Belles Filles brought clarity to proceedings. Searing, searing clarity. What happened? One of the greatest aspects of the Tour de France is the sheer number of different stories unfolding simultaneously. Sometimes it…
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Tony Martin gets his revenge on the peloton
Here are three facts about Tony Martin. He would have finished sixth in the world team trial last year, competing on his own He once told Lance Armstrong to get fucked He raced the entire peloton over the full length of a stage of last year’s Vuelta a Espana and almost won On that Vuelta…
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Blel Kadri ushers in a general classification which makes sense
Simon Yates spent a long day in the break, but couldn’t salvage anything for the Brits, fading on the last couple of climbs. The only man to succeed in staying away was Blel Kadri, who won Roma Maxima last year. He pushed on for France to take the stage win. Behind him, the general classification…
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Peter Sagan is getting really rather annoyed
Matteo Trentin is a rider so anonymous that I’d actually forgotten that he won a stage of the Tour last year, even though I wrote about it at the time. If you watch a lot of cycling, you’ll know his name, but you’d never have him down for the win. He’s one of Mark Cavendish’s…