Category: Tour de France
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Grand Tour contenders – who’s racing what in 2014
It’s a common misconception among casual followers of cycling that all the best riders compete in the Tour de France. This is, patently, bollocks. If the route doesn’t suit them, many riders will instead centre their efforts on the Giro or the Vuelta – often both (albeit with greater emphasis on the Italian race, which…
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My highlights of the 2013 pro cycling season
The 2014 season starts on Sunday with the Tour Down Under, so here’s a somewhat overdue list of my highlights from 2013. It absolutely isn’t that I saved this as a draft months ago and kind of thought that I’d published it, but hadn’t. In no particular order… Adam Hansen’s Giro stage win I’m a…
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The cobbled stage of the 2014 Tour de France
The 2014 Tour de France route was announced yesterday, but it’s too much information to tackle in one go. I’d therefore like to start with just one of the more eye-catching stages because it also fits with my other aim for the close season of getting people a bit more enthused about the Spring Classics.…
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How did Chris Froome win the 2013 Tour de France?
By cycling slightly more quickly than everyone else, you might answer, if for some unexplained reason you wanted to be profoundly irritating. Let’s not go down that route. Let’s instead review the race. Now we’ve got a complete picture, we can look back and identify the bits that matter. Artists and photographers will tell you…
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Best of the 2013 Tour de France
Ben: What’s your favourite Beatles album then? Alan Partridge: Tough one. I think I’d have to say The Best of The Beatles. Everyone likes a ‘best of’. Best moment – Sir Jan Bakelants The second yellow jersey of this year’s Tour tried to claim a knighthood for himself after his stage win. Personally, I think…
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Chris Froome’s position on the bike (and in cycling)
For much of this year’s Tour de France, I’ve been trying to work out whether Chris Froome looks more like a stick insect or a grasshopper when he’s on a bike. I was just settling on grasshopper when I saw this. Turns out he looks more like a praying mantis. A scuttling riding style It’s…
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Marcel Kittel proves himself the best sprinter at the 2013 Tour de France
The points competition is geared towards the sprinters, but it isn’t the sprint competition. If it were, Marcel Kittel would have been the one with the green beard, not Peter Sagan. Kittel won four stages in all, including the biggest sprint of all on the Champs Élysées, breaking Mark Cavendish’s winning run there. I’m a…
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Nairo Quintana wins stage, runner-up spot, mountains competition and white jersey
What an excellent finish to the general classification. The final climb of the 2013 Tour saw the peloton whittled down to pretty much the top 10 riders and this then became the eventual podium – Chris Froome, Nairo Quintana and the better-late-than-never Joaquim Rodriguez. It was almost as if the top three riders were leading…
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Rui Costa shows even more fight
Rui Costa took a second win of this year’s Tour on stage 19 in much the same style as he’d won his first. He got in the break and eventually left everyone behind, cycling alone for the final 60-odd kilometres. 38-year-old Andreas Kloden came second which is probably as close as we’ll get to a…
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Christophe Riblon triumphs on Alpe Twoez
There were two races on Alpe d’Huez (scaled twice – Alpe Twoez?). I’m therefore going to separate this update into the stage and the general classification, because each half was complicated enough in its own right without having to link the two together. The stage Quite a few riders broke from the pack, but the…