TDF Stage 7 **SPOILERS**
graeme_s-2
Posts: 3,382
They've covered 22km, break of 4 consisting of:
27 Urtasun Perez - Euskadi
133 Delage - FDJ
135 Meersman - FDJ
218 Talabardon - Saur-Sojasun
Inner Ring's stage analysis here:
http://inrng.com/2011/07/the-spin-stage-7/
Looks like it's destined to end in a bunch sprint with Cav winning.
27 Urtasun Perez - Euskadi
133 Delage - FDJ
135 Meersman - FDJ
218 Talabardon - Saur-Sojasun
Inner Ring's stage analysis here:
http://inrng.com/2011/07/the-spin-stage-7/
Looks like it's destined to end in a bunch sprint with Cav winning.
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I think this is likely to be the most 'routine' stage of the Tour this year. Hope I'm wrong but that's the way it's looking.0
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Looks like they've missed it today. Break have 6:30 on the peloton. Apparently riders are retrieving rain gear from the cars (they'd certainly need it here, it's just started hosing it down).
Sean Yates has said he hopes Lampre will organise the chase today as they don't have a stage win yet.0 -
Break at 6:35, which puts Meersman in the "virtual" yellow jersey.0
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Whats with the fines?
Public urination?
Throwing bottles?
Don't they all do that?2010 Specialized Allez Elite
2009 Specialized Rockhopper
2009 Quintana Roo Seduza0 -
Dave-M wrote:Whats with the fines?
Public urination?
Throwing bottles?
Don't they all do that?
Apparently being fined for public urination generally means you've pissed on some spectators.0 -
In regard to Gadret the other day another poster said it was because it was in a town, rather than a rural roadside.0
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Saur in the break...they've been super quiet so far...My cycle racing blog: http://cyclingapprentice.wordpress.com/
If you live in or near Sussex, check this out:
http://ontherivet.ning.com/0 -
The day's intermediate sprint being so close to the finish is a bit disappointing. No reason to tune in during the middle of the stage.
Guess it'll mean the break being caught earlier than normal as the true sprinters in the mix for green will surely get their teams to make the catch before the sprint so their man can get the big points. I'm thinking HTC here, obviously.0 -
Eurosport have just shown a Wiggins interview from the start today. They ask him if it'll be an easy day, and he said not really, then motioned at the riders around him and said "All these boys will be trying to stay at the front, and some of them aren't that good at riding their bikes, so there'll be crashes".
He had a bit of a smirk on his face as he said it.0 -
FleshTuxedo wrote:The day's intermediate sprint being so close to the finish is a bit disappointing. No reason to tune in during the middle of the stage.
Guess it'll mean the break being caught earlier than normal as the true sprinters in the mix for green will surely get their teams to make the catch before the sprint so their man can get the big points. I'm thinking HTC here, obviously.
I think the opposite. HTC will want to catch the break after the inter sprint. Cav primarily wants to win the stage, so he doesn't really want to sprint hard at the inter sprint. He'll be happy to lose a couple points to Rojas if it means making minimal effort.Twitter: @RichN950 -
Does he really have to try that hard in the intermediates? His opponents will also be going for a best result at the finish (even if they don't fancy their chances of actually winning), so they'll be rationing their effort as well.
To win the green, Cav surely has to go out of his comfort zone on a day like this. I think we might find out how much he wants the jersey today.0 -
Has there been much action this year at the start of stages? I might have missed something but breaks seem to be getting away really early with the peloton just letting them go.
Collective agreement?0 -
With the sprint coming so close to the end of the stage will the sprinters really be that bothered? Its alot to ask HTC's train to act for a sprint and then 15km start again. I wouldnt be surprised if they let the breakaway stay out and then just squabble for minor points0
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Graeme_S wrote:Eurosport have just shown a Wiggins interview from the start today. They ask him if it'll be an easy day, and he said not really, then motioned at the riders around him and said "All these boys will be trying to stay at the front, and some of them aren't that good at riding their bikes, so there'll be crashes".
He had a bit of a smirk on his face as he said it.
How to make friends and influence people.
Anyone see that installment of G Thomas's tour video diary on the team bus when he had a word with everyone in the team, but didn't dare approach Wiggo. Ok, maybe Brad just likes to prepare for a stage in peace and quiet, but for me it still added to the picture that Wiggins doesn't care enough about his team.
That Kimmage article on Wiggo in the Sunday Times last weekend was excellent.0 -
I haven't seen it, but he was probably worried he'd say something controversial, inappropriate or swear and ruin his video diary.Abdoujaparov wrote:Anyone see that installment of G Thomas's tour video diary on the team bus when he had a word with everyone in the team, but didn't dare approach Wiggo. Ok, maybe Brad just likes to prepare for a stage in peace and quiet, but for me it still added to the picture that Wiggins doesn't care enough about his team.0 -
Boonen's just climbed off and got into the team car.0
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Pity, but I'm not surprised after his crash two days ago. The only surprise is that he continued for so long.Remember that you are an Englishman and thus have won first prize in the lottery of life.0
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LangerDan wrote:greeny12 wrote:Saur in the break...they've been super quiet so far...
They (well, Anthony Delaplace) were in the break du jour on Wednesday. Didn't do shockingly badly in the TTT either
And Jimmy Engoulvent i think has been contesting some of the sprints. There was a massive banner to Engoulvent the other day hung over a road bridge, I imagine that was his hometown bit0 -
Rick Chasey wrote:Graeme_S wrote:Boonen's just climbed off and got into the team car.
Oh for f*ck sake.
Have you just thrown the remote down, turned off the TV and walked off looking for a new sport to follow?! 0 -
Graeme_S wrote:
I haven't seen it, but he was probably worried he'd say something controversial, inappropriate or swear and ruin his video diary.Abdoujaparov wrote:Anyone see that installment of G Thomas's tour video diary on the team bus when he had a word with everyone in the team, but didn't dare approach Wiggo. Ok, maybe Brad just likes to prepare for a stage in peace and quiet, but for me it still added to the picture that Wiggins doesn't care enough about his team.
I know Brad has a bit of a reputation, but I think that's unfair. Not everyone likes having a camera shoved in their face, particularly when you are relaxing in the privacy of your team bus before or after the stage.
How respected he is as a team leader will be displayed by how much guys like EBH, Gerrans and Uran help him when we get to the mountains. All in all, he seems to be getting on with the team leader role much better this year, possibly because he has the results to back it up, which he didn't have last year."I have a lovely photo of a Camargue horse but will not post it now" (Frenchfighter - July 2013)0 -
I think you are reading too much into it. Not as if he bothered uran or knees either.0
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Cogidubnus wrote:With the sprint coming so close to the end of the stage will the sprinters really be that bothered? Its alot to ask HTC's train to act for a sprint and then 15km start again. I wouldnt be surprised if they let the breakaway stay out and then just squabble for minor points
I can't believe the lack of ambition.
Racing isn't an activity, it's a state of mind. 0 -
CyclingBantam wrote:Rick Chasey wrote:Graeme_S wrote:Boonen's just climbed off and got into the team car.
Oh for f*ck sake.
Have you just thrown the remote down, turned off the TV and walked off looking for a new sport to follow?!
S'not been easy being a Boonen fan recently.0 -
This is the Kimmage article:
Wiggins’ Sky blues
Team Sky's lead rider has always had the legs but will need the head of a general at this month’s Tour de France
It’s Friday night in Les Herbiers on the eve of the Tour de France and three reporters are sitting in the press room, studying a lap-top and scratching their heads: Bradley Wiggins has just posted a quote from Sir Winston Churchill on Twitter.
“However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results.”
“What does it mean?”
“I don’t know.”
“Hasn’t he been talking all week about the process and not the result?”
“Yeah, he said it again at the press conference yesterday.”
“Wait! He’s posted another: “The more reasons you have for achieving your goal, the more determined you will become. Brian Tracy”
“Sounds like a slogan on one of those cheap postcards you see with the chimpanzee and the mouth organ.”
“Who’s Brian Tracy?”
“Isn’t he a Thunderbird?”
“I think he’s one of those ‘life’ coaches.” They Google him: Brian Tracy is chairman and chief executive of Brian Tracy International, a company specialising in the training and development of individuals and organisations.
“It says here that he has helped over five million people achieve their goals.”
“Only $197 for a set of CDs!”
“And what about his books: Change Your Thinking Change Your Life; Get Paid More and Promoted Faster; Getting Rich Your Own Way?”
“Yeah, that sounds like something Bradley would read.”
There's an old French expression of what a great racer needs: La tete et les jambes (The head and the legs). Wiggins has always had les jambes but for some time now, his tete has been a source of fascination.
The month is July 2009. He is speeding over the cobbles on the Champs Elysees and about to finish fourth in the Tour de France. Up front, his Garmin-Slipstream teammates are driving the peloton and preparing the final sprint for their specialist, Tyler Farrar.
Christian Vande Velde leads the line and then David Millar takes over, setting a furious pace until the final kilometre before handing the relay to Wiggins. But there’s a problem. Wiggins has gone missing and left the final lead-out man, Julian Dean, with too much to do to launch Farrar. Mark Cavendish wins for Columbia-HTC. Millar is furious.
In Racing Through The Dark, a brilliant and absorbing autobiography, Millar writes: “It was the one day Brad was asked to give something back to the team, after we’d given him everything for three weeks. Yet I felt he hadn’t even tried and had remained about 80 places back in the middle of the bunch, without even telling us he wasn’t going to help.”
The month is December 2009. Wiggins is standing in the centre of the Manchester Velodrome, talking to Richard Moore of The Guardian. For months now, since the Tour, he has been griping about speculation that he is to break his contract with Garmin and join Team Sky. “I’m staying with Garmin,” he tells Moore. “Once we’re into January, and it’s apparent I’m still with Garmin, everything will settle down. You’ll see.” Five days later, at a press conference, Wiggins is unveiled by his new team.
The month is June 2010. He is sitting in a room of an airport hotel on a Friday afternoon, talking to his wife on the phone. He has spent the week in the Alps and Pyrenees, reconnoitring the climbs and preparing for the Tour. Richard Stanton, a photographer from The Sunday Times, has been following him in a car for two days but needs a portrait shot before he can go home. “No problem,” Wiggins agrees, on Thursday morning.
But Friday has gone badly and now he’s in a mood. He deploys his coach, Rod Ellingworth, to relay the news. “He’s tired,” Ellingworth explains. “He says he’ll do it in the morning.” Stanton is up early the next morning and sets up his lights and cameras in a bedroom. “It will take five minutes,” he assures Ellingworth. “I’m just going to stand him against the wall and ask him to take off his shirt.”
But Wiggins has changed his mind. “He says he doesn’t want to do it,” Ellingworth explains. “He hasn’t shaved.” A year on, Stanton spits blood at the mention of Wiggins’ name.
So does Millar. On Tuesday, in an interview with The Guardian, he said: “We [the Garmin team] made him. We basically rode him into that fourth place finish in the Tour de France. It was not a one-man show. It was a team effort. He wouldn’t have hit the top 10 if he’d been on any other team so that’s why I was so p***** off with him. He never once gave us the respect we deserved. Mark Cavendish understands the game — Brad doesn’t. He’s a natural-born leader, Cav, whereas Brad has no leadership skills.”
Wiggins’ frailties at the helm of Team Sky were cruelly exposed twice last season: first, with a meltdown at Le Tour; then, more alarmingly, with a calamitous performance at the Tour of Britain in September. “Where did they get their tactics?” a rival team director asked. “Benny Hill?”
It was Wiggins’ last race of the season. He opted to skip the October world championships and was at home with his feet up when Millar — who had raced all three Grand Tours — finished second in Wiggins’ speciality, the time trial. That night he received a call from a furious David Brailsford, Team Sky’s principal. Three days later, he was summoned to Manchester. “I got a severe rollicking and I deserved it,” Wiggins says. “The way I was behaving after last year’s Tour de France, the way I was racing as a team leader, was just so far away from what it should have been it was unbelievable.” Question for Brailsford: Why was he indulged for so long?
Wiggins is high maintenance. Three weeks ago, after the time trial at the Criteriuim de Dauphine, he complained that none of the carers had waited at the finish. “You said you were going straight to the bus,” they replied.
He wants a bottle, then changes his mind. They fill it with X and he wants Y. Sean Yates, a former Tour de France yellow jersey, is a team director at Sky. “There’s never a dull moment with Brad,” he says. “You’re either laughing your head off or tearing your hair out. Or both at the same time.”
Shane Sutton, another Team Sky director, is his most trusted confidant. “He needs to be loved, bolstered, encouraged, rollicked. The key is understanding when to adopt each approach.” Wiggins insists he has changed. “Last year I had a long look in the mirror,” he said recently to the cycling journalist Lionel Birnie. “I wasn’t leading the team in any sense. I was quite withdrawn. You only have to look at the interviews at the Tour and post-Tour ... I wouldn’t say I was moody because that isn’t how I felt at the time, but I could come across as moody. I was a little bit defensive at times. I was at the centre of this team but I felt completely alone. That’s not a nice place to be.
“I had a long, hard look at myself and changed a lot of the things about myself that I felt I needed to change. I let people start to help me a bit more. It snowballed to the point where I feel confident to lead this team. I feel confident telling the guys what to do. I’d have loved to have done that last year but I just couldn’t.
“I remember at the [team] presentation in London, I asked to stand at the back. I didn’t want to stand at the front. I wanted to be presented in the mix and stand at the back of the photos. I said, ‘I don’t want the other guys thinking I’m the leader’. They said, ‘Well, you are the leader’.”
His performances this year — third in Paris-Nice, stage win at Bayern Rundfahrt, winner of the Dauphine, British road race champion — have been outstanding and he starts the Tour in the form of his life. He has les jambes to be top five.
Does he have la tete? The jury is out.
On Thursday at the Team Sky press conference, the new Bradley Wiggins sounded confident and assured until a question in the 14th minute. “What exactly have you changed in your training from last year to this year? And why now should the fans believe that a podium in Paris is possible?”
“I don’t think the fans should believe anything,” he replied. “I think they’re your expectations and goals, talking about podiums. I don’t think I’ve mentioned the podium once this season.” And suddenly you were reminded of the old Bradley Wiggins and a response he gave last week when asked the same question in London: “The top 10 seems more than achievable, but all of a sudden getting on the podium seems achievable.”
Tune in. The quest will be fascinating.0 -
Graeme_S wrote:Boonen's just climbed off and got into the team car.
A real shame. Credit to him for undoubtedly making a fair fight of staying in the race.0 -
Did I miss it, but was that a Kimmage article with absolutely no mention of doping?"I have a lovely photo of a Camargue horse but will not post it now" (Frenchfighter - July 2013)0
Was only a matter of time 
