Tag: Yellow
-
Vincenzo Nibali, Mr Popular, cheers up the peloton by losing a load of time
Vincenzo Nibali is, by many accounts, not the most popular rider in the peloton. It’s the general air of thinking he’s somehow better than everyone else that people seem to object to. Maybe he’s misunderstood. It’s rumoured that team-mate and fellow Italian Fabio Aru would be quite far back in the queue were the Sicilian…
-
Peter Sagan’s luxury wardrobe
Peter Sagan is some kind of deluxe onion. Peel back his layers and his appearance will barely diminish. His stage two victory has put him into the yellow jersey, but when someone overhauls his lead and pulls that off his back, he’ll still be wearing the green jersey as he’s also leading the points competition.…
-
Apparently Mark Cavendish can beat Marcel Kittel
It seems increasingly unfashionable to make a case for something using facts. I don’t quite know what it says that it took a Briton from outside the UK to remind everyone how persuasive such things can be. The Isle of Man’s status is not something to get into here. All that matters to a cycling…
-
Steve Cummings is coming… and now he’s gone past you
I tell you what you don’t see much of in cycling – overtaking. Riders will attack a group, but when they ride up to someone from behind, their first impulse is always to just tuck in behind and conserve a bit of energy. Not Steve Cummings. Just over the top of the steep final climb…
-
Joaquim Rodriguez is again the fastest while attacks rain down on Chris Froome further back
A second stage win for a popular rider following his victory atop the Mur de Huy. The question is, will it be enough to persuade Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwen to learn how to pronounce his name? That’s a trick question. Of course it won’t. Joaquim Rodriguez has been around for well over a decade…
-
Chris Froome is the fastest climber – how’s his endurance?
And how’s his ability to stay on the bike? Because those are surely the only things that can prevent him from winning this year’s Tour de France. Never mind stopping for a pee, Froome could take a crap (even a challenging, low fibre crap) and still conceivably retain the yellow jersey. If he falls, or…
-
Vincenzo Nibali loses a little more time ahead of The Big Mountain Sort-Out
The team time trial was an intriguing prospect, but it didn’t amount to an awful lot in the end. BMC won it and it increasingly seems like their leader – the American, Tejay Van Garderen – has become the fifth member of the big four. My maths is less-than-excellent, but there are only two ways…
-
Give Tony Martin an inch and he’ll cycle away from you very quickly indeed
Tony Martin, on his own, can almost beat the entire peloton over a distance of 175km. When he decided to have a go with 3.3km to go on stage four, the front group didn’t stand a chance. They’d maybe have stood half a chance if they’d chased him down instantly, but Geraint Thomas was on…
-
Who’s the fastest climber in the peloton?
If the long mountain passes later in the race will test climbing efficiency and the sustainable uphill speeds of the top riders, the Mur de Huy asks a rather simpler question. ‘How quickly can you cycle uphill?’ it says. ‘Go on. Give it everything. Let’s see how fast you can go.’ Chris Froome did indeed…
-
Andre Greipel rides like the wind – which on this stage meant in brutal, destructive fashion
Greipel wins! Take that pedals! At the finish, Mark Cavendish’s Etixx-Quick Step team made a bollocks of it. Starting his effort early, Cavendish seemed to be sprinting for an age with a great line of riders just chilling out behind him, biding their time. Other than Greipel, Peter Sagan and Fabian Cancellara also went past…