Tour de France Prologue *spoiler*

Pokerface

Wow. Didn't see Armstrong beating Contador in the cards.

iainf72

I watched some of the ITV coverage. P&P make me feel sick.

Good ride by Armstrong - must've trained for 2 days.

Chinny ace as ever

morstar

Fabian has the batteries in his skin suit. There is no other explanation!

Brad has some work to do already.

Anonymous

Had to watch on ITV4 (at work). P+P are ridiculous. It's just the Lance Armstrong show featuring the Tour de France...

blazing_saddles

He is sucking up air time as we type.
Ferrari has hit form just at the right time.

emadden

I got a mention from Carlton Kirby

Pokerface

Is WIggins out of it already?

frenchfighter

Wonderful ride by Tony Martin given he had the rain and Cancellara had dryish roads. Would the rain cause a 10sec deficit....maybe but then Millar said that it didn't slow him down, so probably not.

Cancellara's helmet was super and his legs are :shock: as always.

Good ride by Contador and Evans. Suprised by Armstrong.

It is totally ridiculous that Lance gets more tv coverage than the defending champion and more importantly the Olympic and World TT Champion. The sooner he leaves the Tour the better.

Furthermore he is an eyesore with that black, bland lid, black glasses, black shoes and grey socks, not to mention the horrible kit of the Whack Shack.

Contador looking stylish as usual.

Agree that Brailsford made a mistake - marginal gain sand minutiae type stuff doesn't quite work I'm afraid.

Agree also that ITV4 adverts are too long and frequent and that the commentators are rubbish and Lance's Lions.

Rotterdam is a pretty ugly place to start the Tour.

afx237vi

Pokerface wrote:

Is WIggins out of it already?

Just noticed that he was beaten by Sastre :shock:

Surely he can't blame it all on the weather...

Contador has 42 seconds on Andy Schleck already.

bipedal

Thomas in cracking form by the looks of it... Maybe Wiggo will end up riding for him!

Cleat Eastwood

afx237vi wrote:

Cor, T Mart's girlfriend is alright. We need more cycling WAGs.

Saddle Bags?

frenchfighter

Contador took 43seconds out of Andy on Verbier. That is a lot of time to take back in a mountain attack.

andyp

afx237vi wrote:

Just noticed that he was beaten by Sastre :shock:

Surely he can't blame it all on the weather...

Contador has 42 seconds on Andy Schleck already.

Just spoke to a friend in Rotterdam and he reckons Wiggins rode during the heaviest rain of the day.

A gamble which failed, much like my PTP pick. :oops:

frenchfighter

Forgot to say that Wiggin's skinsuit, helmet/visor and bike are pretty damn cool. I hope he gets on the right side of a split in the next few days and takes a minute out of all the GC favourites.

frenchfighter

dupe

squired

So, Millar said that the rain would have made no difference to times, meaning Bradley can't use that as an excuse. Given that fact, what was the point in going out early? Even if there was a potential difference, surely it is better to suffer the same conditions as all the other GC guys than to gamble on the predicted weather working in your favour?

Bradley has talked all year about the Tour and I don't think he could have got a worse result today. Lets see where he is after Monday, which will either be carnage or totally over hyped and have little impact on the race.

Great ride by Thomas though. Maybe he will have a good race.

NJK

Bit of a Brailford cock up IMO. He tried to be clever and got burned! He should of just stuck Wiggins where most of the other GC riders were. I think it sends the wrong signals out when your main GC rider starts not around the main riders.

reppohkcor

WIggins is either playing mind games (unlikely) or he has a very well timed training program where he peaks during the vital last week (again unlikely as peaking for such a short period is a huge gamble - this is also assuming the 'others' have peaked slightly too early). Rain would affect the time, but I would only give 10secs over 8km for that due to the high speed corners (apart from one or two)

The more probable explanation is that he has concentrated on training for the 30-60 min efforts of the mountain top finishes/longer TT at the end plus the fact that he is looking lighter than last year. Even with this I think he will struggle for top 5.

Lance Armstrong knows how to peak for this, whether he's doped to the gills or not, he has timed it perfectly it seems, beating Contador over 8km is good, but he will lose time in the mountains (5 mins?) so he needs an incident in the early stages, possibly attacking over the cobbles?

Alberto Contador will be happy. He knows he can beat Armstrong in the later stages and he has put in a better time than brakovich (who he couldn't drop on alp d'huez).

Great ride by our Thomas

moray_gub

Blazing Saddles wrote:

He is sucking up air time as we type.
Ferrari has hit form just at the right time.

Are we going to get this for the next three weeks ?

dcj

relative time losses for overall top 20 contenders

MILLAR David 0
ARMSTRONG Lance 2 secs down
CONTADOR Alberto 7
LEIPHEIMER Levi 8
BOASSON HAGEN Edvald 12
GERDEMANN Linus 15
BRAJKOVIC Janez 15
ROGERS Michael 15
KLÖDEN Andréas 16
VINOKOUROV Alexandre 18
KREUZIGER Roman 18
EVANS Cadel 19
GESINK Robert 31
SASTRE Carlos 34
BASSO Ivan 35
WIGGINS Bradley 36
VANDEVELDE Christian 40
CUNEGO Damiano 53

Bradleys reaction after his ride - not bothered http://www.teamsky.com/video/0,27287,17549,00.html

andyp

Yes. Plus the drip, drip, drip of Landis accusations. It's Sunday tomorrow so I'm sure there will be new revelations in the papers.

Oh, and hand wringing every time Wiggins loses any time by the looks of things.

reppohkcor

dcj wrote:

relative time losses for overall top 20 contenders

MILLAR David 0
ARMSTRONG Lance 2 secs down
CONTADOR Alberto 7
LEIPHEIMER Levi 8
BOASSON HAGEN Edvald 12
GERDEMANN Linus 15
BRAJKOVIC Janez 15
ROGERS Michael 15
KLÖDEN Andréas 16
VINOKOUROV Alexandre 18
KREUZIGER Roman 18
EVANS Cadel 19
GESINK Robert 31
SASTRE Carlos 34
BASSO Ivan 35
WIGGINS Bradley 36
VANDEVELDE Christian 40
CUNEGO Damiano 53

Bradleys reaction after his ride - not bothered http://www.teamsky.com/video/0,27287,17549,00.html

schlecks?!

moray_gub

frenchfighter wrote:

Furthermore he is an eyesore with that black, bland lid, black glasses, black shoes and grey socks, not to mention the horrible kit of the Whack Shack.

Contador looking stylish as usual.

.

What is this a bloody fashion show or what ? meanwhile back to the racing the defending champ loses time to an old man...........lightweight !

Pokerface

Moray Gub wrote:

frenchfighter wrote:

Furthermore he is an eyesore with that black, bland lid, black glasses, black shoes and grey socks, not to mention the horrible kit of the Whack Shack.

Contador looking stylish as usual.

.

What is this a bloody fashion show or what ? meanwhile back to the racing the defending champ loses time to an old man...........lightweight !

+1. Frenchfighter - you are tiresome to me and it is only day 1 of the Tour. Please limit your comments to the racing at hand and not to personal attacks on the team kit of riders.

Or is this just a way to gloss over the fact that your hero was beaten in a TT by your arch-nemesis? Sucks to be you.

iainf72

There are actually quite a few GC people clumped around Wiggins time. You'd expect him to be better being an ex-prologue specialist. But whatever.

As we all know from the Giro, tomorrow is a different day and a bit of wind and the insane Dutch roads could really shake things up.

GroupOfOne MkII

Well at least Graham Watson has got the right angle on things, from twitter:

What a star Lance is, 4th in Prologue and the best of the overall favourites - and this is just the start!

Yeah Graham, just the start. It's all downhill from here....

tailwindhome

frenchfighter wrote:

Contador looking stylish as usual.

Did you watch in black & white?

dg74

Bit poor form knocking someone's racing kit.

dave_1

Moray Gub wrote:

Blazing Saddles wrote:

He is sucking up air time as we type.
Ferrari has hit form just at the right time.

Are we going to get this for the next three weeks ?

I bet a few are not happy Armstrong showed he's still got it. Only Armstrong dopes though of course!

jerry3571

I'm enjoying the coverage of the ITV coverage with the ex pro pundit Mr Stan Boardman saying "well, I'm a bit disappointed with Brad as he should have stoved it into the barriers like I did on a wet Tour de France prologue"

Great advice Stan!!

-Jerry