I love watching it. It's a great event for the endurance and the scenery. I always laugh because one year my girlfriend and I spent time bicycling in France - what we covered in a few weeks was done is a single day stage of the TdF. To be fair we consumed a lot more vino and pastries!

Alpe D’Huez is in this year. Very cool. Been There for the race. Awesome spectacle in person.

Le Tour de France, it is nice to watch...for the landscapes.

My wife absolutely loves cycling, and I've come to appreciate it as well. She'll be in her glory for the next 3 weeks as The Tour rolls on, and I'm sure hoping Peter Sagan sticks around for the whole race this time, he is truly the rock star of cycling!!

Yeah, I really like TdF as well. Wouldn't be a good theme for a pinball though
I don't really like the stages of the first week. The Giro was far better imo, for it had far less flat stages. Like yesterday: until the end, it was quite boring from what I've heard (I didn't watch until the last 50 km).
Today probably not much to do either. Tomorrow afternoon I'm in meetings, but I hope to see some updates during meeting-breaks

Great post.

They run the Tour Down Under down here in South Australia in the middle of January (peak summer) every year and one of the stages goes right past my front gate.

Hats off to those guys who fly down here in the middle of a Northern Hemisphere winter to cycle at top speed on baking hot bitumen in 40C (104F) heat.

I used to be an avid fan, but the way they have handled the doping ruins it for me. The doping is still happening (e.g. see Froome and Contador) but they selectively punish the riders. The sport has always had some form of doping even in the beginning when the riders were abusing ether, alcohol, caffeine, and even strychnine. I now look at cycling as a competition between the individual and the terrain rather than between other individuals. I have similar views when I ride myself including the possibility of having an accident or a bike problem.

It s a pure nonsense.
« Most all of the elite riders are doing something outside of the rules »..and those who are not? Where is the equity? Do they need doping too? What message you send to all the amateur categories that aspire to become professional? You wanna succeed to be a pro? then let’s doping!
money is killing cyclism and other sports.
Even the shame to be a cheater to the world eyes does not prevent riders from doping. Because it is worth it. Does Lance live in the streets? Nanh..

I love cycling, being less than an hour away by boat from Brittany and Normandy helps going to watch Le Tour.

Most looking forward to the cobbles of Roubaix and the short, punchy 65km stage 17 this year.

For some strange reason I decided to compete in the L'Étape du Tour last year where mere mortals are allowed to complete a stage of the Tour de France on closed roads. It took me nearly 11 hours and was one of the hardest thing I've ever done in my life. Including cycling to and from the start I came to a grand total of 202 kilometers and 3664 meters of vertical elevation gain (125.5 miles & 12,021 feet) Definitely worth it though!

5ab943d2d0700 (resized).jpg

sportograf-104352481 (resized).jpg

For cycling personalities I like Cavendish as much for his direct, open, honest speech to the media compared to the normal sanitised say nothing approach that is trained into sports stars as for his sprinting capabilities.

Anyone got a Criterium 2000 pin? https://www.ipdb.org/machine.cgi?id=5946

The team time trials are really boring and don’t fit in with the regular stages imho.

I'm riding in Tour De Donut in Staunton, Il on Saturday. Expecting over 1000 riders in a mass start. Closest I'll ever get to the real thing.

Seriously though, I do love watching them ride through the mountains with climbing speeds equal or greater than my cruising speed. Makes me humble.

Yeah, the TTT was pretty boring. Totally agree with DCFAN, (plenty of doping in amateur ranks too) though I'll probably still watch because I love the scenery and have great memories from France. And because watching the news is just too depressing.
Ride more, watch less.

Hopefully BMC find a new sponsor for next year, would be a shame to lose another team.

I'm a Porte fan but there's no chance of him mounting a proper GC attack with BMC and I can't see it happening with Trek next year either, same as what happened to Contador.

You would need a team of GC contenders to get one over on Sky and Froome which no one has the budget for.

Mur de Bretange tomorrow which always makes for a great stage finish. I cycled up it after sharing six bottles of Rose between three of us the night before, not a pretty site!

I had my calendar remind me the race had started....

8F749144-7D4E-4371-B32E-D710B1756577 (resized).jpeg

It is an argument I hear a lot mainly from our American cousins across the pond: “everyone was doing it so why single out Lance?”
It is fair to say that most of the peloton was on something during those years but when you factor the doctors into it it becomes more of a medical arms race than anything else. The team that can afford the most expensive doctor would have the best results which is what happened with Dr. Ferrari and US Postal.
The main reason they (the French - read into that what you will) stripped Lance imho is that he is undoubtedly a complete narcissist who lied constantly and ruined the lives of many people, some of whome were his friends, to keep the mystique of being this miracle rider who had come back from cancer to win 7 TDF completely clean. This is why (in Europe at least) Pantaini is still reveared as one of the best cyclists of his generation even though he was caught up in the whole EPO generation and in the end he paid the ultimate price.

If you guys haven’t seen the documentary Icarus on nextflix I can highly recommend it.

Agreed re TUEs, it’s a mine field but apparently there are “adverse analytical findings” all the time it’s just the Chris Froome’s was leaked to the press - definitely the French and probably Hinault himself!

There is not a single rider who won the TDF without doping and also the pursuers in the rankings, whatever the nationality.
Anyway I don’t care of this sports of cheaters and junkies. But as long as people would watch this race to money, cyclisme could not be reclaimed.

Feel bad for Dan Martin today. It’s a shame the crash didn’t come a bit further out so he had time to get back to the peloton. It couldn’t have come at a worse point in the stage!

Nice bit of contact in the sprint at the end, Gaviria should have had a DQ imo.

Cobbles tomorrow.

Zzzzzz buncha cheaters

Because baseball and football players have never taken performance enhancing drugs

Real things are starting soon. No one is going to win the tour de France today, but some will probably lose it. Weather is good and it has not been raining for a while, so you won't see "l'enfer du Nord" - North Hell.

Unknown (resized).jpeg

Really looking forward to today, there’s going to be a lot of pushing for position on the road going into the cobbled sections. Going to be dusty!

F6355D2A-FA18-4094-B746-57C5CBEDC6D1 (resized).jpeg

Well that definitely lived up to expectation, I was on the edge of my seat the whole stage! Poor Ritchie, Le Tour and BMC don’t mix with him unfortunately. Quite glad it is a rest day tomorrow after all that.

Wow, Stage 9 was crazy. A lot of carnage out there.

Epic stage, brilliant ride from G!

Alpe d'Huez and hopefully more fireworks tomorrow