Cycling thread 2015

Whistlin' Dixie · July 22, 2015

Bruce Wayne said:
Richie Porte was out in the break too and is back with Froome. Handy man to have around. Roche also up the road.

Remeber froome doing the same for wiggins on 1-2 occasions when wiggins won.

Contador crashed.............Sagan held up with him.....hmmmm

Bruce Wayne · July 22, 2015

Contador is off his bike!

Bruce Wayne · July 22, 2015

Gotta hand it to Froome here, he's glued to Nibali's wheel, and Nibali is a demon descender.

Bruce Wayne · July 22, 2015

Ouch, Contador losing big time here.

Black Belt Jones · July 22, 2015

Froome descended brilliantly there - he has that crazy style of riding with his head down, but it obviously works for him.

Shame for Tejay - I only had half an eye on that part of the race, but he seemed to be fighting through it for a time.

bluelife · July 22, 2015

Very disappointed about Contador, he was putting in some of the best attacks but is now out of it. Quintana and Froome seem pretty much equal

blueloon · July 22, 2015

Nice touch from Quintana with the handshake to Froome at the end. Not an unusual occurrence of course but a subtle message , particularly to the French, that we do our battles on the road and I have no problem shaking this guy's hand.

Eggs · July 22, 2015

.....that downhill stretch was scary, bit like going down Brownlow Hill on your bike as a kid.

blueloon · July 22, 2015

Black Belt Jones said:
Froome descended brilliantly there - he has that crazy style of riding with his head down, but it obviously works for him.

He's definitely improved his descending, which he has acknowledged is/was not great due to his lack of experience of European conditions growing up. I expected Nibali to have pushed harder over the top and downhill today, Valverde was constrained by probably not wanting to isolate Quintana on the downhill. Shame for Contrador but great to see Geraint Thomas in 4th place, rewarding his hard work.

Bruce Wayne · July 22, 2015

blueloon said:
He's definitely improved his descending, which he has acknowledged is/was not great due to his lack of experience of European conditions growing up. I expected Nibali to have pushed harder over the top and downhill today, Valverde was constrained by probably not wanting to isolate Quintana on the downhill. Shame for Contrador but great to see Geraint Thomas in 4th place, rewarding his hard work.

Thomas plugged away really well there. It wasn't quite a 'it's Stephen Roche' moment, but when he was dropped on the penultimate climb I thought he'd be a goner, but to actually gain two places on GC is a tremendous result for him (albeit through illness and accidents respectively).

Whistlin' Dixie · July 22, 2015

Bruce Wayne said:
Thomas plugged away really well there. It wasn't quite a 'it's Stephen Roche' moment, but when he was dropped on the penultimate climb I thought he'd be a goner, but to actually gain two places on GC is a tremendous result for him (albeit through illness and accidents respectively).

Them's the breaks.

blueloon · July 22, 2015

Bruce Wayne said:
Thomas plugged away really well there.

Sky are meticulous in their planning and I wouldn't be surprised if his late orders were " do enough to get ahead of Contador on GC, plug away but save something - you've got another hard day helping Chris tomorrow." Similarly , one of the commentators said he thought Sky had made a mistake with Porte dropping back too far to help in the descent but got dropped. I doubt if they made a mistake, probably cautious enough to think if Froome is descending at pace then having Porte behind him in case of a crash was a wise move. It's fascinating at this stage to try to think about the teams plans, particularly Movistar and Sky.

Bruce Wayne · July 22, 2015

blueloon said:
Sky are meticulous in their planning and I wouldn't be surprised if his late orders were " do enough to get ahead of Contador on GC, plug away but save something - you've got another hard day helping Chris tomorrow." Similarly , one of the commentators said he thought Sky had made a mistake with Porte dropping back too far to help in the descent but got dropped. I doubt if they made a mistake, probably cautious enough to think if Froome is descending at pace then having Porte behind him in case of a crash was a wise move. It's fascinating at this stage to try to think about the teams plans, particularly Movistar and Sky.

I presume Froome said he was feeling good otherwise Roche would have dropped back to lend a hand on the final climb.

blueloon · July 22, 2015

Yeah, I'd have thought that the best approach was that Roche would have dropped back to cover the descent and Porte to help out on final climb . So Froome must have been feeling ok.