TDF 2018, Stage 12: Bourg-Saint-Maurice Les Arcs > Alpe d'Huez 19/07/2018 - 175,5 km *Spoilers*

RoadPainter

It looked like there were more police on the Alpe this year. Nibali's crash happened just before start of barriers. That's been a pinch point on every stage I've been to. The police there didn't do a very good job. Barriers started very narrow, too - if they were full width of road to start with, it would likely not have been an issue.

The video of AdH in 2015 in an early post on this thread showed a rider stopping to hand back a camera that had got caught on his handlebars - before today I didn't realise how dangerous they were!

Crowds seemed much lighter this year than previous times up the Alpe, noticeably so at bocht 7.

bigmat

davidof wrote:

Interesting that both Nieve and Landa don't seem to be able to reproduce their Sky performances since changing team. Is this just down to being (once) part of the strongest team in the world?

I keep reading this, but its just bollox isn't it? Landa was clearly hurt when he fell on the Roubaix stage, and hasn't exactly been far off his from of last year. Nieve looks to be doing just fine. While I'm on the subject, who are all the other ex-Sky riders who leave and then mysteriously suffer a drop in form? Porte has been unlucky but has generally improved, Gerrans won two monuments, EBH got back to Tour stage winning form, Cav won 4 Tour stages, Rogers bagged a couple and continued to be a strong domestique. I can't actually think of any riders who have left and then suffered any obvious negative change in career trajectory.

RoadPainter

Rick Chasey wrote:

Guarantee you 95% of people by the side of the road and watching won't know what the hell the MPCC is.

Fair point!

Still think style of racing and refusal to acknowledge fans has a lot to do with it - it's a sky thing rather than a Froome thing.

Jez mon

BigMat wrote:

davidof wrote:

Interesting that both Nieve and Landa don't seem to be able to reproduce their Sky performances since changing team. Is this just down to being (once) part of the strongest team in the world?

I keep reading this, but its just bollox isn't it? Landa was clearly hurt when he fell on the Roubaix stage, and hasn't exactly been far off his from of last year. Nieve looks to be doing just fine. While I'm on the subject, who are all the other ex-Sky riders who leave and then mysteriously suffer a drop in form? Porte has been unlucky but has generally improved, Gerrans won two monuments, EBH got back to Tour stage winning form, Cav won 4 Tour stages, Rogers bagged a couple and continued to be a strong domestique. I can't actually think of any riders who have left and then suffered any obvious negative change in career trajectory.

Even so, there is a reason that Froome was the leader and the others were domestiques.

jam1e

Apparently Nibali not having been dropped at the point of the accident was proof that he was pretty much a dead cert to win both the stage and the tour...

Jez mon

Posted in error :oops:

tim000

RoadPainter wrote:

Rick Chasey wrote:

Guarantee you 95% of people by the side of the road and watching won't know what the hell the MPCC is.

Fair point!

Still think style of racing and refusal to acknowledge fans has a lot to do with it - it's a sky thing rather than a Froome thing.

yep , sky are boring :roll:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-FNtR77x-XU

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_ ... +breakaway

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9USGFIF2UWc

No_Ta_Doctor

Delete, wrong thread

RichN95.

RoadPainter wrote:

Rick Chasey wrote:

Guarantee you 95% of people by the side of the road and watching won't know what the hell the MPCC is.

Fair point!

Still think style of racing and refusal to acknowledge fans has a lot to do with it - it's a sky thing rather than a Froome thing.

Yet the same people that call Sky boring seem to love Tom Dumoulin, the rider Sky would create if they were able to.

DeVlaeminck

One option, finances permitting, might be to descend the Sarenne and finish on Deux Alpes - I imagine you'd still get a number of fans on AdH because it's AdH but some on 2Alpes because the finish is there and some might travel to other stages because of the lack of an iconic AdH stage finish. -

RichN95.

No tA Doctor wrote:

Sprinters left in the tour:
Sagan, Demare, Degenkolb, Kristoff, Colbrelli

That's about it. Can't see any of those teams doing all that much to pull a break back.

tailwindhome

No tA Doctor wrote:

Sprinters left in the tour:
Sagan, Demare, Degenkolb, Kristoff, Colbrelli

That's about it. Can't see any of those teams doing all that much to pull a break back.

Sagan rode a very smart race yesterday.

knedlicky

RoadPainter wrote:

Other reasons fans might dislike sky:
Team cars v rarely acknowledged support roadside in first 4 or 5 years. Nearly all team cars wave or beep horns (especially on TT recce) but sky notably didn't. This refusal to engage alienated fans.

My memory of a Sky team car and how arrogantly the occupants behaved is from after a mountain stage in 2012.
As everyone made their way down, the road crowded with pedestrians, a Sky car came down the mountain at speed, swerving around people (scaring the life out of them). It then misjudged passing a car parked on the side of the road, and banged into its wing.

The Sky car stopped, its two occupants quickly examined the damage, while shouting and swearing in English that the parked car shouldn't have been there. Some French people who had seen the incident addressed them, but the Sky people didn't appear to be able to speak French, and just shouted back in English before getting back in their car and trying to simply drive away, at which point a bunch of men who weren't happy with that managed to block their way.

I didn't stay around to see what happened next, presumably the police were called, but the behaviour of the Sky people won't have gone down well with those who were there.

lucan

larkim wrote:

I don't warm to Nibali, but riding up to the top and practically catching the leading group with a cracked vertebrae deserves significant applause.

Why? He fell off, he got back on. He didn't know he had cracked a bone and may not have been in much pain.

It's like riding with a crack on your frame that you don't know about until someone looks at your bike later.

Kudos for the effort, but it may have had nothing to do with his injury.

RoadPainter

tim000 wrote:

RoadPainter wrote:

Rick Chasey wrote:

Guarantee you 95% of people by the side of the road and watching won't know what the hell the MPCC is.

Fair point!

Still think style of racing and refusal to acknowledge fans has a lot to do with it - it's a sky thing rather than a Froome thing.

yep , sky are boring :roll:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-FNtR77x-XU

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_ ... +breakaway

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9USGFIF2UWc

:roll: If you don't think sky's usual mountain train is a bit dull, then I suggest you open your eyes. A few very opportunistic attacks that are really exciting racing don't undo the reputational damage from several years of dull but highly effective tactics.

RoadPainter

RichN95 wrote:

RoadPainter wrote:

Rick Chasey wrote:

Guarantee you 95% of people by the side of the road and watching won't know what the hell the MPCC is.

Fair point!

Still think style of racing and refusal to acknowledge fans has a lot to do with it - it's a sky thing rather than a Froome thing.

Yet the same people that call Sky boring seem to love Tom Dumoulin, the rider Sky would create if they were able to.

Indeed. Tom doesn't have a train in front of him and is rarely the favourite, so is spared the dislike.

larkim

Lucan wrote:

larkim wrote:

I don't warm to Nibali, but riding up to the top and practically catching the leading group with a cracked vertebrae deserves significant applause.

Why? He fell off, he got back on. He didn't know he had cracked a bone and may not have been in much pain.

It's like riding with a crack on your frame that you don't know about until someone looks at your bike later.

Kudos for the effort, but it may have had nothing to do with his injury.

There's no pain associated with breaking a vertebrae? I'd expect any fall which was hard enough to hit the ground and crack a bone in your back was hard enough to make climbing up the last pitches of AdH painful.

Disclaimer - I've never broken a bone in my back nor ridden up AdH so my experiences may be limited!

carbonclem

Lucan wrote:

larkim wrote:

I don't warm to Nibali, but riding up to the top and practically catching the leading group with a cracked vertebrae deserves significant applause.

Why? He fell off, he got back on. He didn't know he had cracked a bone and may not have been in much pain.

It's like riding with a crack on your frame that you don't know about until someone looks at your bike later.

Kudos for the effort, but it may have had nothing to do with his injury.

To be fair, the video footage made it looked like he was in agony. I reckon adrenaline got him through.

davidof

larkim wrote:

There's no pain associated with breaking a vertebrae? I'd expect any fall which was hard enough to hit the ground and crack a bone in your back was hard enough to make climbing up the last pitches of AdH painful.

The only person I know to have fractured a vertebrae is now in a wheelchair for life... well baring some miracle cure.

RichN95.

An interesting article by a Belgian journalist about the abuse of Sky he witnessed yesterday. (Google translate does a good job).

https://www.hln.be/sport/wielrennen/tou ... ~ae3480f0/

shirley_basso

Actually feel a bit upset reading that.

rick_chasey

RichN95 wrote:

An interesting article by a Belgian journalist about the abuse of Sky he witnessed yesterday. (Google translate does a good job).

https://www.hln.be/sport/wielrennen/tou ... ~ae3480f0/

There is definitely a 'Flandrians are more sophisticated than their boorish Dutch neighbours, look how much better our cycling fans are than theirs' angle to that article too, I would add.

jam1e

I know several people who've fractured vertebrae recently and it's never the same outcome. One finished his sportive and took himself to hospital a day later as he was a bit sore, another spent weeks/months in a full cast after a helicopter evacuation on a spine board, a third got manhandled around the hospital in agony for days (told it was soft tissue damage and to stop exaggerating) until it was properly diagnosed on a 2nd xray.

So it's not at all surprising he was able to jump back on and finish with all the adrenaline etc but nor is it surprising that he's had to quit.

joe2008

jam1e wrote:

So it's not at all surprising he was able to jump back on and finish with all the adrenaline etc but nor is it surprising that he's had to quit.

Imagine Neymar in that situation

pottssteve

davidof wrote:

larkim wrote:

There's no pain associated with breaking a vertebrae? I'd expect any fall which was hard enough to hit the ground and crack a bone in your back was hard enough to make climbing up the last pitches of AdH painful.

The only person I know to have fractured a vertebrae is now in a wheelchair for life... well baring some miracle cure.

I've fractured vertebrae - I wouldn't have been riding a bike right afterwards, I can tell you.

iainf72

RichN95 wrote:

An interesting article by a Belgian journalist about the abuse of Sky he witnessed yesterday. (Google translate does a good job).

https://www.hln.be/sport/wielrennen/tou ... ~ae3480f0/

That was interesting. Kudo's to the journalist for applying the "say that to my face" test to some of it.

davidof

joe2008 wrote:

jam1e wrote:

So it's not at all surprising he was able to jump back on and finish with all the adrenaline etc but nor is it surprising that he's had to quit.

Imagine Neymar in that situation

like this?

tailwindhome

Shame Nibali went home. I suspected/hoped he was the GC rider who could have mounted a challenge in the mountains.

Now it's Dumoulin v Sky.

blazing_saddles

Rick Chasey wrote:

RichN95 wrote:

An interesting article by a Belgian journalist about the abuse of Sky he witnessed yesterday. (Google translate does a good job).

https://www.hln.be/sport/wielrennen/tou ... ~ae3480f0/

There is definitely a 'Flandrians are more sophisticated than their boorish Dutch neighbours, look how much better our cycling fans are than theirs' angle to that article too, I would add.

There is hypocrisy there, too. I've read Dutch fans leaping to Dumoulin's defence, when anyone points out the similarity in his transition to that of the guy who's transition they find "unbelievable": Geraint Thomas. They cite Tom's failed Vuelta 2015 bid as proof, while at the same time dismissing Thomas's 2015 TDF performance.

tgotb

^ Brilliant!