Category: Tour de France

  • Simon Gerrans denies Peter Sagan

    If you thought the stage two finish was close, it wasn’t. The gap was a full second. The gap between Simon Gerrans and Peter Sagan on stage three was way less than that – more like 10cm. Only in snail racing is 10cm a big gap and at the time of writing there was no…

  • The mouse that roared away from the peloton

    Peter Sagan wins so often, he choreographs celebrations. Having never previously won a professional race, Jan Bakelants hasn’t spent as much time rehearsing. His celebration is a near-tearful head-grasp. It’s nice. The script Today was due to be what you might describe as a ‘whittled sprint,’ where the pure sprinters are kicked out of the…

  • Buses, gantries, crashes and survival

    The Tour de France isn’t just about racing; it’s about survival as well. It’s an achievement to cycle 3,400km in itself, but in that amount of time on the road, plenty of things can happen. You expect the odd crash, but a bus wedged under a finishing gantry is the kind of thing you have…

  • 2013 Tour de France – the important stages

    This year’s Tour route is far more climbing-y than last year’s, which was much more heavily weighted towards time trials. These promise to be the main stages: Stage 8 – Castres to Ax-3-Domaines, 194km, Saturday July 6 (stage profile) Summit finish It’s an odd feature of the Tour de France that the first week can…

  • Chris Froome’s Team Sky team-mates for the 2013 Tour de France

    Chris Froome is Team Sky’s leader at the Tour this year. Here are some good reasons to support him. Other than that, you might like to know that he used to sell avocados off the back of his bike when he was eight and that he has a degree in economics. His support riders feature…

  • 2013 yellow jersey contenders

    This year’s Tour seems set to boast an unusually strong field with Vincenzo Nibali and Bradley Wiggins about the only major stage racers missing. Here are the main contenders for the yellow jersey and a few dark horses as well. Alberto Contador – Saxo Bank Contador has won almost every Grand Tour he has entered.…

  • 2013 green jersey contenders

    Let’s keep this brief. I can see three main contenders for the green jersey which is awarded to the winner of the points classification. Mark Cavendish – Omega Pharma-Quick Step The best sprinter. He will be the favourite on every single flat stage. Andre Greipel – Lotto-Belisol The second best sprinter and one of the…

  • Next week on this website…

    Let’s mange baguettes, quaff vin rouge and have ourselves a bit of a Tour de France preview to get ourselves in the mood for the biggest race of the year which gets underway in Corsica on Saturday June the 29th. What kind of preview? You can expect the following: A look at the main contenders…

  • Bradley Wiggins’ knee problem

    The somewhat tiresome media-fuelled battle for Sky team leadership at the Tour de France might have been resolved. Bradley Wiggins is apparently suffering from knee-knack and can’t train properly. You need knees as a cyclist. They move quite a bit when you’re on the bike. I haven’t done the exact maths, but I think you…

  • Pro cycling in June

    So, the Giro’s done and dusted. What comes next in the cycling year? According to my unofficial list of the races that matter, it’s the big one – the Tour de France on June 29. With that in mind, the coming weeks constitute the build-up. On Sunday, the Critérium du Dauphiné begins. It’s an eight-stage…