Tour de France 2022

The Game Room
1

Didn’t see a thread for 2022, which is odd because we have (or had) some hardcore fans. I’m more of a casual fan myself. What I’ve found interesting so far (I’m a bit behind). Is M. Cort Nielsen’s record number of mountain stage wins (9 in a row?) (the announcers just say Magnus Cort) Granted they are molehills compared to later stages, but I still find it interesting. (for whatever reason I like the Polka Dot competition more interesting than the Yellow Jersey)
Will Pogacar run away and win everything but Green again? I wouldn’t bet against it. Eventually he will age out of White…

Brian

2

He has been wearing the polka dot jersey as current leader of the overall competition for 7 stages. This is quite different from winning stages - he has not won any stage this year. You get points that count toward the overall best climber competition for being one of the first few riders to reach the top of classified climbs when they occur during each stage, with more points for higher category climbs, and double points if a stage finishes at the top of a climb.

Early in the race before the major climbs, it is not really a major achievement to hold the jersey as the current leader of this competition, although it’s always fun to hold any jersey and riders will compete for it if they see the opportunity. Cort picked it up by virtue of being in a break on stage 2 (in Denmark) with Bystrom, and picking up a few points while out ahead of the peloton on minor climbs during the stage. He has successfully defended it so far, but he’s not a good enough climber to hold on to it when we hit the big mountains and many more points are up for grabs.

3

Taking maximum points on 9 consecutive classified climbs is apparently a record, but since they were mostly 4th Cat with a couple 3rd Cats mixed in, this will just be the answer to a TdF trivia question. It’s not something anyone actually cares about. Cort will probably lose the polka dots tomorrow, as his haul of points is just barely more than 1st place over a single 1st Cat climb, and there are two of those on offer tomorrow. Still, he got to play to the Danish crowds last weekend (he’s Danish himself) and got a bunch of exposure for the sponsors. Since EF doesn’t have very good prospects for any of the major prizes in the Tour his stint in polka dots lets the team take something from the first week.

It’s looking like it’s Pog’s race to lose, but we shouldn’t write Jumbo Visma off just yet. UAE as a team is looking very weak once you get past Pogacar himself. They just lost Laengen (positive Covid test if I’m not mistaken), Hirshi has looked very bad (just getting over Covid himself), which only leaves Bjerg in the rouleur domestique group. If the team ever needs to pace hard on the flat they’ll have to use their climbing domestiques. But the news isn’t much better there. Majka, McNulty, Bennett, and Soler are a decent group of riders, but on Planche des Belles Filles and again today they were trying to drive hard on the climbs to thin the group out with very underwhelming results. In both cases Majka was the last domestique, and in both cases he didn’t drop anyone of note. Especially today. On 7-8% he didn’t drop Michael Matthews or Alberto Bettiol.

On the other hand, JV have devastating power to roll on the flat with Benoot, van Hooydonck, Laporte, and Wout van Aert who is in godlike form, as seen in the rescue of the shambles on Stage 5. Benoot and van Aert can help a fair way into climbs as well. And Kuss and Kruijswijk haven’t done much work yet, aside from the aforementioned mad scramble. Big downside of course is that Roglic dislocated his shoulder hitting that freak haybale that got popped onto the road by one of the motorcycles.

Can JV break Pog? Quite possibly not. But given the state of the two teams, they should absolutely be able to isolate him and roll alternating attacks with Roglic and Vingegaard to put him under pressure. I really hope that’s enough to make things interesting.

Now just watch, Pog will be isolated in a big mountain stage, Roglic will attack, and Ineos will close it down for Pog to protect Thomas’s podium position, and there’ll be no true drama. Wout’s already got green sewn up. Polka dots are up for grabs, I guess, but that’s rarely an entertaining contest.

4

Stage 11 was my favorite so far. Some real hills, and lots of attacks. Pogacar loses Yellow for now but I’m still not betting against him. I also would not bet against Van Aert for Green which barring disaster seems almost certain. Polka Dot is the hardest to predict IMHO.

Brian

5

That was the best stage of the Tour in the last decade. There’s a handful of stages of the Vuelta and Giro that come close, but the Tour’s been boring since the early days of Team Sky. I couldn’t stop laughing when Laporte showed up at the top of the Col du Telegraphe, and then when Roglic and Vingegaard rolled attack after attack after attack.

It’s a long way to Paris, but Vingegaard has a significant lead, the strongest team, and apparently the best climbing legs in the peleton. Pogi only put something like 10s into him in the opening tt, so I wouldn’t bet on a huge swing in the closing one. He’ll have to make up some time in he Pyrenees I think, because he’ll be doing well just to avoid losing more time tomorrow on the Alpe d’Huez.

6

Van Aert has 260 or so points already, which is often the winning total at the end of the tour, it’s also about double second place. I think he’d have to quit the race to lose the green.

So yes, barring disaster it’s his.

7

Van Aert has enough points that he could come in dead last (as long as he comes in earlier than the max allowed time) on every stage and he still wins the green.
Stage 17 - impressive effort by Brandon McNulty – he helped his teammate Pogacar but also the leader Vingegaard. Not sure Pogacar can make up the 2+ minutes.
Polka Dot is still with Geschke but not by a lot. Two HCs and a cat 1 on stage 18.

Brian

8

Absolutely insane ride by both McNulty and Bjerg for UAE. Which is basically Tadej’s entire team, because Hirschi has been invisible the entire race and Majka was DNS this morning with a torn quad from when his chain snapped yesterday. Not looking real good for Pogacar’s threepeat right now. He needs probably at a bare minimum 60 seconds tomorrow to have a fighting chance to take the remainder in the TT. Stranger things have happened, but Vingegaard hasn’t shown any cracks on the climbs yet.

9

If McNulty and Bjerg were good yesterday, Kuss and van Aert were absolutely bonkers today. Pogi loses another minute and if Jonas doesn’t fall of his bike he’s got this race in the bag.

10

Okay, Jumbo are just showing off now.

11

I’m not a completionist – if I miss a stage I tend to just watch the latest. I started to watch stage 19 but after seeing it was pretty flat and it was sounding like stage 18 was better I stopped and watched that. Some scary stuff with both Vingegarrd Green was claimed a while ago, and now Polka Dot is set. Again we will have the tour winner also take the PD. Pogacar will have to settle for White.

Brian

12

Finally watched stage 21 – like most final stages the only competition was for the stage win.
While Yellow (2:43 gap), Green (480 vs 246), and White (58:32 gap) were not close, Polka Dot was (72 vs 65) – had Geshke got a few more points (I forget the stage he got none) he could have clinched it.
US did pretty good – 4 riders in the top 25. Powless 13th overall and 8th for climb points. McNulty third among the youngsters.
FYI “Jumbo” is a Dutch supermarket chain, and “Visma” is a business software company
Right now a woman’s TdF is in progress – two stages done so far.

Brian

13

I always find it hilarious that they have another sponsor HEMA prominently on their jerseys. It’s a department store, but if you don’t know that… sounds like it could be a blood bag manufacturer?

14

It dawned on me a while ago that I recognize almost none of the high-level sponsors at the TdF. AG2R, Bora, Cofidis, Groupama, Movistar; I have no idea what any of those companies are, or do. I’ve heard of EF, but I’m not exactly sure what they do. Trek, I know; Segafredo, I don’t.

I kinda wonder if there’s some reason for that; is there something about the demographics of cycling fans that is attractive to sponsors in Europe that are not well-known in the U.S.?

15

I’m an American who has worked for European HQ companies most of my life, and I recognize many of the names, but many of my American friends even the cycling ones do not.

Yes, many of these companies do business largely in Europe.

I’m sure the audience for TDF is massively skewed toward Europe. In my university alumni WhatsApp group almost all the TDF conversations are between the European + UK based folks. The Americans and Canadians almost completely sit it out.

16

Haha! I’ve found if I Google the sponsors I get the companies first, while my wife gets the cycling teams first.

Even though I am 100X the cycling fan she is.

17

I know that the viewership, and therefore sponsorship, skews heavily to Europeans, but it still seems like I should have heard of more of them. I just did searches for the largest companies in France, Germany, England, and Italy. There were quite a few I’d heard of.

Most of the ones I was familiar with, though, were for things like cars, oil, banking, etc. Those don’t seem to be the sort of industries that sponsor the TdF.

In a strange way, I kinda like that about the TdF. It’s like watching foreign soccer games or pictures of Piccadilly Circus; just bright colors without feeling like they’re trying to sell me something.

18

One team has a larger sponsor that’s a Canadian company and they also have several Canadian riders because of that sponsor.

Has anyone been following the Tour de France Femmes?

19

USPS had a team from 1988-2007. Unfortunately, looking at the official records, they didn’t have any success. For the last 3 years they were USPS/Discovery Channel. RadioShack had a team as well.

20

I knew about US Postal and Discovery Channel. I’d forgotten about Radio Shack, but now that you mention them it does sound familiar. There was a 7-Eleven team back in the '80s (won the Giro d’Italia in '88) that changed sponsorship to Motorola until they folded in 1996.

Still, for most of the names and logos I see at the Tour, I haven’t the faintest idea what they do.