Tag: Green
-
Greg Van Avermaet exploits curt climbs, cobbles and crash avoidance | The 2018 Tour de France week one recap
Yellow jersey contenders Green jersey contenders Week one recap Week two recap Final week recap Week one is best divided into the green story and the yellow story. Let’s deal with the green story first (because that’s the order I arbitrarily put them into in that previous sentence). The green story (the points classification) The…
-
Who will win the green jersey? A handful of points competition contenders for the 2018 Tour de France
Yellow jersey contenders Green jersey contenders Week one recap Week two recap Final week recap Peter Sagan failed to win the points competition (here’s what that is) at last year’s Tour de France because he got chucked off the race. The five years before that, he won it every time. It’s quite a challenge to…
-
Stage 17: Primoz Roglic unsurprisingly quick downhill
Last year Primoz Roglic was one hundredth of a second away from wearing the leader’s jersey in the Giro d’Italia. He went on to win the second time trial in that race, even though it was the first time he’d ever ridden one longer than 10km. He’s clearly a man who’s still exploring his potential…
-
Stage 16: Michael Matthews welcomes hills and crosswinds
Proof that the best way to beat Marcel Kittel in a sprint is to bin him long before the finishing straight. As I said before the race, the German tends to fade a bit as the days go by and he struggled on the first climb of the day. Seeing this, Michael Matthews’ Sunweb team…
-
Stage 14: Fabio Aru learns that the peloton is long
As cocky finishes go, Michael Matthews’ 50m long no-handed roll to the line was up there. Greg Van Avermaet couldn’t catch him even when he stopped pedalling – although the ghost of Peter Sagan had surely long since finished. The finish It’s worth watching the final kilometre, because bigger time gaps opened than on the…
-
Stage 11: Marcel Kittel superior to the point of it becoming a bit boring
There are various levels of dominance. When results seem so predictable that no-one’s really interested any more, you really are on top. Marcel Kittel has now won five of the 11 stages at this year’s Tour de France. Speaking after the stage, he said: “Sometimes when you’re on your top level in the sprints, it’s…
-
Stage 10: Marcel Kittel sticks with the obvious road to the green jersey
First up, a bit of green jersey housekeeping because I omitted a couple of pertinent developments from stage nine, what with focusing on the general classification and all. Most strikingly, Arnaud Demare, who was doing well in the points competition, is out of the race. He gave it everything to successfully make the time cut…
-
Stage seven: Photography is Marcel Kittel’s friend
Another win for Marcel Kittel, this time by somewhere around half a millimetre, but they all count. I presume the race judges ruled that Kittel had a crucial bit of grit affixed to his tyre or something. Pisser for Edvald Boasson Hagen though. “I tried to make myself three metres longer,” said Kittel afterwards. He…
-
Stage six: Marcel Kittel or Arnaud Démare?
A three-week race has to have a bit of ebb and flow. You wouldn’t be able to perceive peaks if there were no such thing as valleys. After a couple days of high drama, stage six therefore provided a much-needed lull. It didn’t even feature breakaways riders who anyone had heard of. Here’s the three…
-
Stage four: Cavendish finds more give in roadside barrier than Sagan’s elbow
It was a day of aqueducts, châteaux and sheep. The flat profile meant the break was always going to be caught and when that break turned out to be just one rider – Belgian Guillaume Van Keirsbulck – everyone was set for a loooong day of racing. This is what 99 per cent of the…