Category: Tour de France
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Chris Froome is slightly further ahead
This is, increasingly, what the Tour de France amounts to. You should never, ever discount a twist in the mountains, but if there is a script, the final time trial stuck to it. I’ve not much to report really. Chris Froome won; Tom Dumoulin was a very respectable second; Fabio Aru and Richie Porte were…
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Everyone goes past Nairo Quintana
Many have wondered when we might finally get a devastating Nairo Quintana attack in the mountains. The answer, you’d assume on today’s evidence, is never. The not famously selfless Alejandro Valverde will be livid. Just 18 seconds behind his team-mate at the start of the day, he launched a ‘softening up’ attack on the final…
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Peter Sagan again after Tony Martin again
The peloton sustained an outrageous speed in the opening hours of racing. This was because it was pursuing Tony Martin. Martin does this fairly regularly, usually as a kind of unofficial training ride. The finest example was in the 2013 Vuelta when he rode alone all day and almost won. It seems to be how…
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Jarlinson Pantano – quite possibly the Tour de France’s greatest-ever Jarlinson
If you’re wondering what makes an appropriate day for a breakaway, it’s on stages where drafting is of least benefit. On the flat, air resistance is the main thing slowing you down, whereas on a mountain day, gravity and self-preservation come to the fore. When that’s the case, drafting plays less of a part. On…
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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…