Tour de France on TV

Category: Giro d’Italia

  • Dan martin and Garmin-Sharp survive the team time trial

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    Alex
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    Garmin have crashed in three out of the last four Grand Tour team time trials. Dan Martin, whose season was built around the Giro d’Italia, saw about five minutes of that three-week race after slipping on a manhole cover and breaking his collarbone on the very first day. Here at the Vuelta, he at least…

  • Nairo Quintana can cycle up a mountain

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    Alex
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    I suppose we knew that anyway, but the fact has been driven home in the last two days with Quintana proving himself the strongest Grand Tour rider in the race by some margin. Stage 19 There’s something very satisfying about a cronoscalata – an uphill time trial. It’s the bare bones of road cycling laid…

  • The slide of Cadel Evans

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    Alex
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    Sadly, I’m not talking about a cool plastic chute affixed to the side of his houseboat. Cadel’s on the wane. Slowly, but perceptibly, he’s on the way out – in this race and from cycling. But first, stage 17, which I didn’t report on yesterday. King of the nutcases takes a proper win I’ve written…

  • Nairo Quintana definitely did something

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    Alex
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    Prepare yourselves for enthusiastic-yet-vague coverage because I totally missed this stage and YET IT SOUNDS AMAZING. Nairo Quintana has definitely recovered. He appears to have smashed the Giro to smithereens, finishing 4m11s ahead of previous race leader, Rigoberto Uran. That time gap again – 4m11s. It was snowy. It was dangerous. There was a suggestion…

  • Domenico Pozzovivo has a cold

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    Alex
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    The idiot. As if he’s not handicapped enough by his near-endless list of shortcomings, he’s only gone and got himself ill as well. This wasn’t the plan. The plan was to strike out in the mountains as if being chased by ravenous hounds who have a taste for the blood of short-arsed southern Italian economists…

  • Get down off that float Rigoberto

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    Alex
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    Rigoberto Uran can clamber down off his pink float because this Giro ain’t going to be no procession. We got a strong taste of mountains today and some enjoyed that flavour rather more than the race leader. He didn’t exactly make a lemon face and spit, but nor did he look too keen to dive…

  • The day the sprint teams couldn’t really be arsed

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    Alex
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    I said that stage 13 was likely to be a sprint finish and it should have been. The problem was that the teams with sprinters in them all dicked about. There was a break – there’s always a break – but this time it wasn’t chased down. Each of the sprint teams tried to leave…

  • Rigoberto’s hungry like the wolf

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    Alex
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    That’s a Duran Duran reference. You know, because his full name’s Rigoberto Uran Uran… Don’t scrutinise it. It doesn’t make sense. It’s enough to know that the Columbian rider won the time trial and therefore stripped Cadel Evans of his pink jersey, donning it himself instead (figuratively speaking). Where things stand Let’s simplify this. The…

  • Michael Rogers enjoys a decent warm-up

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    Alex
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    Australian rider, Michael Rogers, entered the Giro at the eleventh hour after visa problems for a team-mate. Short of racing, he’s aiming to build a bit of form so he can better help Alberto Contador during the Tour de France. I’m not sure how much more racing he needs though, because he can already hold…

  • Nacer Bouhanni chases back on

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    Alex
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    More crashing and another Nacer Bouhanni victory. In a sense, it seems like business as usual, but this was a fascinating finish where only the result fits the usual sprint script. Watch the last few hundred metres and you’ll see Tyler Farrar – the American sprinter who pretty much never wins a sprint – slide…