2016 Tour de France, Stage 21: Chantilly → Paris (113km)

spock.

Sam 9th!

P_1

JK.BMC wrote: »

A ROAR FROM DA GORILLA!!!!!!!

One of Carlton Kirby's stock phrases and I bet he is overjoyed that he got to use it.

Looks like Sam in the top 10 maybe?

9th

CameraBag

Good man, Sam!

cunavalos

Waiting for confirmation but rodriguez lost time on Dan.

Not sure if it was a mechanical in last 3km but Dan could move up to 8th

Darkglasses

https://twitter.com/carltonkirby/status/757269167590543364

I swore I heard him saying Kittel won alright!

mhiggy09

Jesus that wheel spin by Sagan! Pure power. ITV where just talking to Dan he said he had two mechanicals on the stage.

Koobcam

cunavalos wrote: »

Waiting for confirmation but rodriguez lost time on Dan.

Not sure if it was a mechanical in last 3km but Dan could move up to 8th

Seems like there was a split in the bunch and all thw top ten except for Froome and Rodriguez were there. Rodriguez is down to tenth now, so his effort yeaterday goes to waste. Damn.

Doc07

I expect all top 20 on GC will magically get the same time today

Eamonnator

ITV4 showing Dan in 8th

omri

If only Sagan went on a bit earlier, but chapeau to Greipel.

Daroxtar

Froome doing La Vuelta... Please let Sky not ruin it.
Purito's last crack at it, Contador looking to make up for his Tour, Quintana, Chaves and hopefully Kruiswijk firing on all cylinders, Nico and Dan, maybe even Dumoulin
Roll on August

Eamonnator

http://www.procyclingstats.com/race/Tour_de_France_2016

8th on GC for Dan Martin

Darkglasses

Possibly adjustment made?

https://twitter.com/inrng/status/757276656918732801

Yeah think that's the final results confirmed, Dan in 9th.

RobertKK

That was a nice speech at the end by Froome, given the year France have had up till now.

Doc07

'Possibly adjustment made?'


The GC lads just need to make it to the last few km of the circuit anywhere near the main bunch and they will all get the same time. Today's stage is not supposed to effect GC.
Otherwise Chris Froome would lose 2 or 3 mins lining up with the Sky team,arm in arm before they cross the line

terrydel

Daroxtar wrote: »

Froome doing La Vuelta... Please let Sky not ruin it.
Purito's last crack at it, Contador looking to make up for his Tour, Quintana, Chaves and hopefully Kruiswijk firing on all cylinders, Nico and Dan, maybe even Dumoulin
Roll on August

Froome only confirmed for it now? Time to cancel the eurosport subscription!

Eamonnator

Doc07 wrote: »

I expect all top 20 on GC will magically get the same time today

Good call

Eamonnator

To make the Vuelta more interesting, the organisers should handicap it, make Froome and other good riders carry weights in their saddle, like they do in horse racing. If they based it on form throughout the last twelve months, that would even things up. Start off with the worst rider, and allow him to compete without any weight, then add a few grammes for every U.C.I. point earned by the riders.
Or alternatively, all teams, apart from Sky could HTFU

TheBlaaMan

Dan tweeted that Sky assisted him when he got into bother, as his team car was attending to Kittel,

https://twitter.com/DanMartin86/status/757284213301403648

but, a-la Porte receiving assistance a year ago,he could pay dearly for it, in a fine plus 2 minute time penalty......


https://twitter.com/fmk_RoI/status/757286407496953856

It would drop him to 10th, behind Kreuziger......I bet Richie Porte will be reminding the organizers.

Kieran81

Daroxtar wrote: »

Froome doing La Vuelta... Please let Sky not ruin it.
Purito's last crack at it, Contador looking to make up for his Tour, Quintana, Chaves and hopefully Kruiswijk firing on all cylinders, Nico and Dan, maybe even Dumoulin
Roll on August

sky ruin it? pretty sure its the other teams/leaders that the finger should be pointed at for ruining anything, the only gc contender to try grab this race by the balls went on and won it, and in great style too, hardly his/sky's fault the other gc guys didnt roll the dice or show some aggression more often

dastardly00

^^^^
Exactly. It's up to the rest of the teams to get better and challenge Sky. Rather than Sky getting worse and 'ruining it'.

Daroxtar

I've nothing against Froome, quite the contrary, and this year he showed huge balls to go off when he did on the descent and the break.
I agree, the others need to step up. Hopefully the 15-20% ramps in La Vuelta will blow the trains apart and leave it up to the big boys to go head to head.

pelevin

How do other teams get better though? It's not exactly a level playing-field though is it just in terms of finances? There's other teams with much closer budgets to Sky but to take the big 3 teams of late in GT success - excluding Contador who's virtually been riding solo. Sky apparently have a budget of 35million euros, Movistar have 15million & Astana 20million. If desired, Sky can literally offer double the salary those 2 can to a cyclist they all want. And so someone like Landa, one of the best in the world, is a helper, Konig 6th in 2014 doesn't even make teh team nor does Kwiatkowski, presumably on a pretty huge salary. Perhaps the 2nd best cyclist of this Tour was Porte who till this year was also Froome's helper! And that people like G Thomas & Landa aren't even Sky's best domestiques, can rest or do the spade work making it fruitless or almost impossible to try attack depending on the day. I saw Dan Martin trying to attack several times & then more or less inevitably be reeled in by Sky's doms, & actually lose time as a consequence of not just sitting there - and be criticised for doing so. That was the nature of things - attack & suffer losses because of it. This isn't an unfair reading of what there's been to look at this Tour, whilst presumably noone's arguing Froome didn't comfortably deserve his win. But that's what made it so unexciting to watch - much the best rider with by miles the strongest team strangling virtually all the life out of the race.

People can say it's up to the others to improve but there's physical limits on what their bodies can do, unless we go back down the ped's path. Porte was saying for instance that yday Thomas set a pace that noone could attack off. They presumably let Rodriguez go as he wasn't enough of a threat to bother with him but that they had 5 people together suggests they were far from vulnerable. We even have someone like Poels saying he'd not like to be riding against Sky it's so hard to do anything against their strength of riders and suffocating methods, and that yes, he presumes it's boring to watch. Says alot when the strongest helper for the winning team is agreeing that it's probably boring to watch. Spend hours of free-time watching something that's boring - the big key dramatic stages of the greatest cycling race on earth. Houston, we have a problem.

The reality is with Contador ageing, unless Quintana is flying there's no way barring accidents Froome & Sky can be pressured for the foreseeable future. How the hell is anyone supposed to up their game. "I'll decide to become absolutely world-class in what my body can do." It's not supposed to work like that in the realms of reality, and Sky are just too strong in their manpower & methods to allow imaginative tactics come meaningfully into play to make up much of the deficit.

It's quite normal for there to be a strongman of the peloton in GC terms & dominate, but here it's the nature of the racing in the mountains that was so stifling to the soul. When I saw Froome attacking earlier in the race solo & the stage with Sagan I hoped this might even be a loosening up of what GC racing could be in future, but it sure as hell wasn't for most of the rest of it.

So congrats to Froome, certainly the deserving winner but more of that kind of stuff & I'd certainly rather not be watching. On an optimistic note though, much of the above presumably applies much more to the Tour which is Sky's big focus and so for example the Vuelta to come will hopefully be much looser in its racing.

MPFGLB

Quintana is pulling from the Olympics to concentrate on the Vuelta - he wants to go there and ATTACk...bet he is smarting from all the criticism
Contador is looking to win the Vuleta and was back on his bike last week
Even Nicolas Roche is training like a mad man. obviously smarting from not being in the Tour team
Chaves & Purito as well suit the course
Dumoulin, Kruiswijk, Lopez, ....

I don't think Froome will have it all his own way in Spain

Eamonnator

Is Chris Horner racing the Vuelta?
He'd sort them out.

Koobcam

MPFGLB wrote: »

Quintana is pulling from the Olympics to concentrate on the Vuelta - he wants to go there and ATTACk...bet he is smarting from all the criticism
Contador is looking to win the Vuleta and was back on his bike last week
Even Nicolas Roche is training like a mad man. obviously smarting from not being in the Tour team
Chaves & Purito as well suit the course
Dumoulin, Kruiswijk, Lopez, ....

I don't think Froome will have it all his own way in Spain

The Vuelta always seems to be a different kind of race to the tour, lots of steep irregular mountains which maybe don't lend themselves to one team dominating so much, though you could equally say that the Vuelta can be kind of boring in that the outcomes tend to repeat themselves in lots of stages. Will be fun anyway, looks like a great field in prospect, and it can't come soon enough. What will I do with no tour to watch?

Lusk_Doyle

pelevin wrote: »

How do other teams get better though? It's not exactly a level playing-field though is it just in terms of finances?

Boards group buy of Bora hob/extractor things?

gordongekko

Lusk_Doyle wrote: »

Boards group buy of Bora hob/extractor things?

Would we not be better going on a trip to that place with the lovely bottoms

dastardly00

Lusk_Doyle wrote: »

Boards group buy of Bora hob/extractor things?

They are fairly pricy.... I was looking on their website the other day!

pelevin

Lusk_Doyle wrote: »

Boards group buy of Bora hob/extractor things?

Or those Armstrong wrist-bands things could motivate them if they look down and see them there on the end of their arms next to the handlebars.