Author: Alex
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Stage six: Marcel Kittel or Arnaud Démare?
A three-week race has to have a bit of ebb and flow. You wouldn’t be able to perceive peaks if there were no such thing as valleys. After a couple days of high drama, stage six therefore provided a much-needed lull. It didn’t even feature breakaways riders who anyone had heard of. Here’s the three…
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Stage five: Fabio Aru is no muppet
It was a day for the breakaway big hitters. When he’s not at the front of the break, trying to ride everyone off his wheel with a complete absence of subtlety, Thomas de Gendt is at the front of the peloton, chasing it down. Without him, you wonder where the Tour de France would actually…
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Stage four: Cavendish finds more give in roadside barrier than Sagan’s elbow
It was a day of aqueducts, châteaux and sheep. The flat profile meant the break was always going to be caught and when that break turned out to be just one rider – Belgian Guillaume Van Keirsbulck – everyone was set for a loooong day of racing. This is what 99 per cent of the…
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Stage three: Peter Sagan gets it wrong – but not wrong enough
It’s hard to explain why Peter Sagan’s win was so impressive. He only bested Michael Matthews by about half a metre – so why was it such a big deal? It boils down to this: Michael Matthews did everything perfectly. Peter Sagan made a right balls of things. And Sagan won. So what happened? With…
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Stage two: Marcel Kittel in no mood for upsets
If Marcel Kittel has a weakness as a sprinter, it’s ensuring he’s at the pointy end of the race when he has a couple of hills in his legs. There were no real hills today and no hills yesterday. There certainly weren’t any hills the day before because the race hadn’t even started. Kittel also…
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Stage one: Geraint Thomas has the power
The Tour de France is underway! Rumour has it they considered starting with a bang but instead decided to go with a time trial in Germany. It sort of makes sense. Frying some onions isn’t particularly exciting in itself, but it’s nevertheless the starting point for any number of delicious dishes. Similarly, a 14km time…
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Who will win the 2017 Tour de France? Yellow jersey contenders
The Tour de France starts on Saturday. Someone’s going to win the overall. Who? Let’s take a look at the runners and riders. Chris Froome – Team Sky The only runner in this list hasn’t been his usual dominant self of late, winning all of no-races-whatsoever so far this season. He’s still the man to…
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Who will win the green jersey? The points competition contender for the 2017 Tour de France
Peter Sagan. That’s about it really, isn’t it? He’s won the points competition (here’s what that is) in each of the last five years and it’s hard to see anyone beating him. However, working on the premise that you never know when a broken collarbone might strike, here are a few other names to watch…
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Richie Porte is stronger than everybody individually (but not everybody combined) | The 2017 Criterium du Dauphine wrap
It was a classic edition of the eight-stage race I like to call The Dolphin – but as ever, the main point of interest is what events told us about the form of the main contenders for the Tour de France, which starts in three weeks. The strongest rider An oddly worded subheading in that…
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Dumoulin v Quintana, time trialist v climber | The Giro d’Italia final week wrap
The idea with these round-ups is that I focus only on those stages that affected the general classification. This policy hasn’t proven especially time-saving on this occasion, as the numerate among you will realise upon reading the following subheadings. The race was so eventful, in fact, that this summary has ticked up towards being brewworthy…