Author: Alex
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Mark Cavendish elicits a strop from Marcel Kittel
The thing about headwinds is, they slow you down. If Marcel Kittel had been one of the four men who had ridden near enough 200km into one as part of the break, he’d have been acutely aware of this. As it was, he only popped himself into the wind for the final few hundred metres…
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Tom Dumoulin wins another thing (a time trial, specifically)
Wasn’t even close. Tom Dumoulin finished 1m03s ahead of Chris Froome in second and 1m31s ahead of Nelson Oliveira in third. The gaps stretched out from there. It was Dumoulin’s second stage of the race after that one in Andorra the other day. Adam Yates, Nairo Quintana and Richie Porte were all about three minutes…
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Chris Froome running towards the finish line halfway up Mont Ventoux
Crowd knobheads have given us many memorable moments in the Tour de France, but surely few can rival the sight of Chris Froome, in the yellow jersey, running up Mont Ventoux with no bike anywhere in shot. Someone – or more likely a great many people – got in the way of one of the…
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Sagan! Crosswinds! Echelons! Magic!
Echelons! Was ever there a finer spanner flung gleefully into the works of a predictable bike race? Crosswinds are always fun. When a race splits into pieces on flat roads, all bets are off. It happened in 2013 and it was magical. This year, the insanity wasn’t quite so prolonged, but it was every bit…
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Michael Matthews conserves his power – Peter Sagan doesn’t
What an odd stage. The hill near the end suggested that we might have the likes of Peter Sagan, Michael Matthews, Edvald Boasson-Hagen and Greg Van Avermaet contesting a bunch sprint rather than the out-and-out sprinters. In the end, all four got in the day’s break, which made for some intriguing racing. Maybe they should…
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Phil and Paul’s ITV4 absence revisited
A lot of people are really, really angry about Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwen being dumped as ITV4’s Tour de France commentators. I find this fascinating. I’ve mentioned Phil and Paul’s departure on three occasions. The piece linked above attracted any number of comments bemoaning their absence, as did my original piece about ITV4’s coverage.…
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Tom Dumoulin wins something other than a popularity contest
Anyone who watched Tom Dumoulin’s six second advantage over second-placed Fabio Aru transformed into a 4m36s deficit on the final meaningful stage of last year’s Vuelta a Espana will surely have celebrated this win. Dumoulin was the heart of that race and emerged with little from it. On stage nine of this year’s Tour de…
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Chris Froome’s descent in the 2016 Tour de France (+ video)
I daresay he’ll do a few more, but in years to come, this will be the descent that people remember. “If I finished the day lying on my face among the tomato plants and shards of glass, so be it,” said Sean Kelly about his descent of the Poggio en route to winning the 1992…
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Steve Cummings’ wins are better than everyone else’s
They are. They just are. I don’t need to justify that statement. It’s just manifestly true. Steve Cummings’ Tour de France stage win last year when he soared past Thibaut Pinot and Romain Bardet as if they were standing still is Exhibit A, but he’s ploughed through plenty more of the alphabet since then. He…
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Mark Cavendish has started beating Marcel Kittel (he’s more used to beating everyone else)
Before this race, Mark Cavendish had never actually beaten Marcel Kittel when the two have gone head-to-head in a sprint. That stat is old and irrelevant. He’s now beaten him three times in a week in the biggest race of all. Not bad for someone who’s habitually a slow starter. Where once Cavendish had a…