C’est Le Tour!
Exciting finish and no-one seemed more surprised by the result than Peter Sagan. The look over his left shoulder was priceless. :dubious:
I miss Paul Sherwen. Don’t quite know what to make of Chris Horner. I’m sure he’ll get better as the tour goes on.
That 3D sprint finish model was stupid, IMO.
Anybody surprised or disappointed that Mark Cavendish was left off the team?
Pretty sure Cav is both surprised and disappointed. 
He’s had a rough couple of years, and it’s a bit sad that he can’t take a run at Merckx’s Tour stage victory record, but it’s quite likely that he would have done nothing of note anyways. His form in the races leading up to the Tour has been poor.
I’ve got no idea who to view as the favourite in this race with Froome and Dumoulin both out. G is defending champ, but it’s not at all clear he has any form coming in. Bernal is the heir apparent at Ineos/Sky, just won the Criterium Du Dauphine, and appears to be the man to beat in the mountains but this is only his second grand tour. Nibali is unlikely to have the form required after racing the Giro. Will Quintana finally live up to the hype? Can Porte make it through a grand tour as team leader without crashing out? Or will someone unexpected come through from a group of podium contenders no one thinks can actually win, like Fuglsang, Pinot, or Bardet?
Agreed. I hope that’s the thing that will make this year exciting. The unpredictability of the outcome. I’d like to drop Dan Martin’s name into the hat as well. He’s can always be counted on for heroic feats. Also pleased to see Alexandro Valverde still in it. I always root for him.
The problem for Valverde is Movistar’s three-headed strategy. I think Landa is more likely to become the leader of leaders on Movistar than Valverde is, and of course they’ll protect Quintana ahead of the other two so long as it looks like he has any chance at all. Dan Martin is a good call to add to my list of outside contenders.
Oh, I’m not thinking Valverde to win, place or show. Though that would certainly be nice. He is the consummate teammate willing to sacrifice himself for the leader. I’d just like to see him ride away on a flatter stage and stay away to win for a change. He can’t have many more years in him.
I heard the reason Cav wasn’t selected was because the team owner didn’t think he’d make it past stage 6. I assume they don’t think he’d make the time limit in a mountain stage.
Yellow gives you wings. Well done.
In the team time trial today, I kept hearing that the fourth rider stopped the clock for the whole team. Does that apply to the riders that have been dropped along the way, too? If the holder of the yellow jersey had eased up before the end, and four of his teammates had finished 30 seconds ahead of him, does he get the same time as the rest of his team? If not, why didn’t he (and the other GC contenders) ease up in the TTT and save their energy; is it one of those “you must defend the yellow jersey with honor” kind of things?
And I know that other stages have a cutoff time that riders must meet or be excluded from the rest of the Tour. Is that true in the team time trial as well; do riders who are dropped by their teams still have to finish the course, and within some percentage of the stage winners?
I would say rather, “Riding behind Tony Martin gives you wings.” 
From Wiki Team Time Trial
If your team drops you, you get your time not the team’s time. I would imagine that there’s a cutoff time for a TTT stage, but I’m not at all up on how they calculate those.
Stage 19 looks “fun” (I like MT stages). Stage 19 - Moirans-en-Montagne > Poligny - Tour de France 2023 I’ll have to study them all to see if it is the toughest.
Brian
My wife and I will be at stage 20, we’re staying in Val Thorens. We’ll actually be there the day of stage 19 as well but not sure if we can find our way over to the course, maybe via mountain bikes?
Please don’t embarrass us. Dress normal and don’t go running beside the riders. Just be 
Stage 4 was a bit of a snooze fest. However, it’s becoming a bit obvious that Sagan is losing his edge.
There are about 190 riders in the peleton who would just love to lose their edge if it would mean finishing positions of 2nd, 5th, 4th, and 1st in the first 4 road stages of the Tour de France.
Perhaps that merits a slightly less flippant response. I presume you’re referring to Sagan finishing 4th behind Viviani, Kristoff, and Ewan on Stage 4. It’s undeniable that Sagan has had a relatively crappy season thus far, producing absolutely nothing in the spring classics outside of Milan-San Remo (4th) and Paris-Roubaix (5th). However, the truth is that he’s almost never won over top sprinters, at the Tour or anywhere else, with a few notable exceptions I’ll get to in due course. Nearly all his Tour stage wins are from reduced sprints on stages where the top sprinters have been dropped on climbs before the line. Indeed, if we look at a list of the guys who’ve finished second to Sagan - Cancellara, Boasson Hagen, Greipel, Degenkolb, Alaphilippe, Froome, Kristoff (twice), Matthews, Colbrelli (twice) and now Van Aert, it’s mostly a who’s who of guys who win sprints on stages too tough for the real sprinters.
Froome doesn’t belong in that group of course - he’s there because of Stage 11 in 2016, when Sagan forced a break with Bodnar in the crosswinds, and Froome and Thomas joined them to make a foursome dashing to the line ahead of a very angry peleton in one of my favourite Tour finishes of all time.
The only time Sagan has won a stage over the dominant sprinters in a given tour was when he beat Griepel 2012 Stage 6, but even that was a reduced peleton after a crash held up half the peleton including Cavendish. The only other time I can think of where Sagan has beaten a top sprinter in a top level event was his second World Championship over Cavendish in Dubai, where Cav was briefly boxed in and still almost caught Sagan. I guess you could also count Kristoff and Colbrelli, but that only adds the the third Worlds in Bergen, 2016 Tour Stage 16, and his three wins last year. Last year was probably his best sprinting form ever, but he still didn’t beat Gaviria or Groenewegen, just Kristoff and Colbrelli.
I don’t think you can say Sagan’s lost his edge based on the Tour so far. You’d have to make your case based on the spring campaign, as his Tour results are on par with his previous Tour performances.
Good point on the follow up post. He still has the green jersey and ahead by a lot in points. But I doubt he’s saving it up for the mountain stages.
Interesting that they had Lance Armstrong on NBC Sports as a contributor. Anybody watching his WEDU channel on YouTube?
But I just had my Cthulhu suit cleaned and pressed!
You’ll fit right in, so long as you’re standing next to Didi. 
Looks like I should have had more faith in Peter. I’ll just shut up and watch the race.
Really looking forward to today.