Tour de France 2024 - this time it’s personal

Quick one, anyway I can watch the tour for free?

That's all well and good (I doubt its the whole forum though) but some of us are just as tired of having to read the same stuff about him every year and also want a whinge about that. It's a bit like the circular economy, which if my maths are correct, means Cav is going to sweep all before him this Tour before riding off into retirement.

I was wondering when someone would bite at that one 😂

Same. I wonder if that was part of the idea of attacking him so early in the Tour… feel him out to see which strategies work. Wouldn't be surprised to see a slightly different approach with his next dig.

Debunked according to who? You haven't debunked anything.

Perhaps you can point us to this UCI points list? because I can sure point you to the official World Tour rankings with Froome Top 10 on the list every year 2012-18 whilst Cav appears once in 09. As the World Tour is a collection of the most important/relevant races I don't think any further explanation is required.

https://www.uci.org/discipline/road/6TBjsDD8902tud440iv1Cu?tab=rankings&discipline=ROA

Anyone else think that Pogacar was annoyed with Vingegaard after the summit yesterday? Pogacar was going 100% but Vingegaard definitely didn't match that effort. His pulls were shorter and with far less power. And it looked like Pogacar was shaking his head a little bit at Vingegaard's tactics. Maybe Vinegaard is being conservative with his energy after the crash, but he really had to work to keep up with Pogacar and Pogacar looked a decent bit better to me yesterday. I wonder if Pogacar was able to gauge anything from Vingegaard yesterday.

It's a good sign for the Tour ahead though.

Sure, but Vinegaard also had the opportunity to take time on everyone else and wasn't too interested.

Vingo was right to just sit on but Pog is such an instinctive racer I would say he hates Vingo for being a more calculated type of rider. He looks like he can't understand why everyone isn't all in the way he is.

Its been exactly the same for the last couple of years though. Pogacar attacks, and Vingegaard follows. Jonas takes the long view, knowing its a marathon not a sprint. Its like he knows Pogacar inside out now, and knows eventually he will run out of steam. Its fascinating to watch. Without Vingegaard you'd have Pogacar winning the tour by a wide margin every year and would be boring.

Really looking forward to it! Usually the first week is a bit of a bore for me, even the sprint stages seem so telegraphed and formulaic. I love the fact that they've thrown in a couple of testing stages right from the off to shake things up and give the sprint teams a bit more to think about.

Regards the Cav v Froome debate, I'm not a fan of either, but recognize their contributions.

Both actually had similar careers. Their teams did all the donkey work and then let them off to finish the stage and take all the glory. At their best, they made the tour a bit boring and predictable. Eg the Sky train sitting at the front for mountain after mountain. Then if Froome was ever dropped by an attack, he'd work his way back on with his unorthodox style.

On balance you'd have to give it to Cav, longevity, up against some tough opponents, always seemed to be in the right place at the end. There was no-one like a Pogacar or Vingegaard during Froome's prime. From memory his main rival was Quintana.

It's down to how you rate the 3rd favourite I suppose.

I don't think Remco will be in the picture once the mountains come into play.

I was talking about Vingegaard not putting in the effort. Pogacar definitely was going max out trying to gain time on Evenepoel yesterday.

If there were lessons to be learned from previous Tours, where Pogacar made efforts to gain 10/20 seconds here and there, I don't think that Pogacar has learned them. He will have the same tactics in this Tour. And to be honest, I don't mind those tactics.

Maybe it's poor tactics if you aren't 100% fit, and you should worry about the third week. But Pogacar backs his fitness and his powers of recovery and was probably over confident in the last 2 years, when he had more reasons than this year to pull back on the throttle a bit. Especially last year.

Dont forget there is a fight for Yellow today if someone overhauls Pog on the countbacks 🤣