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!

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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!

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!

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.

Because baseball and football players have never taken performance enhancing drugs

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!

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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.

Epic stage, brilliant ride from G!

Alpe d'Huez and hopefully more fireworks tomorrow