I hear today will be one of a few mountain top finishes in this tour. Could not watch this morning but recording the races to watch in the evenings. NO SPOILERS!
Made you of Team Look won today.
Are you testing me?
I don’t know what you’re talking about. Look hasn’t been a title sponsor of a World Tour racing team for ages! Actually never, so far as I can tell, though they were a major sponsor of La Vie Claire back in the day and provide pedals for a half dozen current teams.
We will see about Ineos. i dont think they are as strong as Jumbo and I dont think they can drop Roglic and certainly cant touch him in the TT.
Alaphilippe might be in Yellow for a while, unless they allow a break to get away. Something like stage 9. He could last untill week 3 if that doesn’t happen.
I was a little surprised at how Ineos fell apart at the end (Stage 4). Kwiatkowski barely took a half dozen pedal turns before being crushed by the attacks. It’s as if he was taken by surprise.
Speaking of surprises: heroic effort from Sepp Kuss, and Quintana was in the top 5. .
Roglič does look fitter than the rest of the GC contenders. Still too soon to write anyone off.
I’ll watch today’s stage later, but the start seemed unusually calm - no one going for the break. I guess they are all anticipating the winds to play havoc in the second half of the stage.
A little off-topic, but I went for a run with my run group last night. There’s one particularly nasty hill I had to climb; when I got to the top, I noticed someone had painted a white stripe with red polka dots across the road. So there’s at least one TdF fan in the neighborhood.
Roglic does look great, but Im hoping his strong team doesn’t make for a boring tdf. Way to early to really tell riders fitness at this point - and that climb wasnt really steep.
Im on the Sepp Kuss bandwagon, if he doesnt bury himself for the team, Jumbo is a lock for team honours. He seems to be one of the strongest climbers in the race.
Still hoping for s wide open tour. If Pinot can stay out of trouble, Quintana is back, and Bernal is most of what he was, this could be good.
Dumoulin is my favorite, but his comments after the race yesterday either means he isn’t ready yet or he is shit talking.
Hey, there should be a bunch of folks tied for 23rd for KOM, because Simon Geschke is sitting at -2 (a penalty which I couldn’t immediately find). Anyone with 0 should be ahead of him 
Brian
This would be an interesting way to end up in the pro-cycling history books - other than actually winning the KOM - except that it does not appear to be all that uncommon to end up with negative KOM points at the end of a race due to penalties. Did not know that.
Yesterday was a snore-fest of a ride and an entirely forgettable day if not for the harsh penalty suffered by Ala. There was talk today of who is ultimately responsible for that error in judgement. I mean, the riders ought to know the rules, sure. Especially so the team managers who map out the daily race strategy. So wtf was Ala’s uncle doing at the 17km before the finish mark with that fucking water bottle?
Lance Armstrong on his WEDU cast made a comment, wrt Ala, about “ketones” and was immediately dismissed by George Hincapie. Wonder what he meant by that?
Stage 6 - Neilson Powless 4th place on his 1st tour, and on his 24th birthday (7th overall in the youth category). Of the Americans I was also impressed by Sepp Kuss.
Brian
An interesting read on ketone esters and it’s wide use in pro-cycling:
Sagan back in maillot vert but try as he might could not catch a break. You can see his frustration when he got beat to the line by Trentin and was nowhere to be seen at the finish sprint. Mechanical problems were blamed. That said, Stage 7 was more consequential than I ever expected. Brutal tactics by Bora.
Pogacar was a surprise. Better performance from Yates than I was expecting. Everyone in the GC group looked like they were at the limit but careful not to blow up with two weeks left to go.
What kind of pisses me off is the crowds behaving like the usual assholes that they are on the climbs. The riders are sucking in air like crazy and the spectators are yelling at them, inches from their faces. What happened to the regs that said they would try to prevent that sort of thing? Do these fans know that if anybody in the peleton tests positive, they’ll stop the race in its tracks? Is that what they want to happen? Fucking idiots. All the teams, including the support staff is getting tested on Monday. So tomorrow could very well be the last day of the tour.
NBC had live coverage of stage 8. Again Neilson Powless did well – 5th in the stage, 6th overall for KOM, and 5th overall in the youth category.
Brian
and, yes, a lot of the crowd were jerks. They banned vehicles in the mountains, and I have problem with folks cheering on on teh climb (probably what i would do), but stay behind the barriers (if none, off the road) most KIND OF moved after waving their flag, but WAY not enough room
that is I have NO problem cheering riders on as they climb
I’m really enjoying the maillot vert battle between Sagan and Bennett.
Got a question for you more experienced fans, since I’m still a newbie: I’ve twice heard Phil Liggett talk about a rider liking having the green, or yellow, jersey “on his shoulders”. I would have phrased that “on his back”. Is this just a quirk of Liggett’s, or is there a linguistic convention in bicycle racing that riders wear jerseys on their shoulders?
It’s a turn of phrase. I wouldn’t put too much into it. But if I had to guess, I think Phil means it in the sense of the jersey being a weight of responsibility on the rider’s shoulders because it makes them a target for attack by the rest of the field. So it’s an honor and a burden.
As it turns out, they were on the limit because they went Nuclear up the Peyresourde. Pogacar was the fastest ever by 45 seconds over Vino and Mayo in 2003. Considering that the next group of riders he started the climb with finished the stage 40 back. Everyone was super fast.
Before anyone says Pogacar cant win, he beat Roglic in the slovenian national TT championship and he certainly looks fast going up.