Fair banter. But don’t listen too much to Paul & Phil, or the hilarious Baden, they have a pretty simplistic view.
lulz
Did enjoy that stage.
Gutted to see finger banger go in those circumstances. Astana looked like they were stretched to the limit all day but delivered Nibali at exactly the right time to show everyone who’s boss. Even if it is a one man race from here on in (which, mind you, I don’t think it will be), I’ll be happy to see it, as he’s shown more than enough style and aggression to be deemed the best man out there.
Very keen to see Porte get amongst it. Only a couple of minutes behind, if Astana has a bad day in the hills, you never know.
Also only just noticed last night how fucking ridiculous Sagan’s bike is. Cannae find a pic, but it has his eyes airbrushed on to the top tube doing an evil pose. Haha WTF.
sagan popping a wheelie near the finish of stage 10
Already posted.
ABC24 have some ex-pro offering insights during the morning news, not sure who she is but a few times I’m not convinced she’s watched the stage prior to her report
There’s only 10 minutes separating the top 10, this shit is far from over. Nibali is on form, but he and his team have had a tough week defending yellow, and more to come before Paris. Remember that in 2011 Cuddles only took yellow at the very end. If things stay tight in the mountains I reckon that the TT could be as tense as in 2011.
how likely is it that contador’s bike didn’t snap in half while he was riding it? Specialized seem to be doing a horribly unconvincing job of covering up a frame failure,
There’s a fair bit of discussion about this
Details of Alberto Contador’s Tour-ending crash - VeloNews.com
Tinkoff Saxo tangle with Belkin bikes identified as cause of snapped Contador frame | CyclingTips
Seeing as the broken bike had no dirt/water/road grime on it even though it was a wet stage, I reckon the story about it being hit on the roof of the car is legit.
Don’t rain on the conspiracy theory parade. More juicy cos specialized
Sorry.
I’ll put my tinfoil hat back on.
Yeah. This one looks pretty much intact…
I predict that cheap Venge’s will flood the market now, as people unload their ‘dodgy’ Spesh rides. I may finally buy a used Specialized without feeling horrible about myself as a person.
They might not crack in half, but I’m still not going to buy one…
For HMC…
It would be very much in the spirit of SKY’s team train to ‘marginal gains’ porte closer and closer to nibali. every rider has at least one ‘jour sans’ in the tour and i feel nibali has yet to have his.
plus theres a lot of stress in holding yellow for basically the whole thing. you have to be pretty damn sure of your team (see:LA and wiggins) to pull it off. holding up until later used to be the standard approach… it saves your rider from all the post-race media duties/testing/etc, plus its less stress for the team as they arent obliged to control the peloton.
i agree its now nibalis race to lose, but theres a lot of people nipping at his heels if he fumbles. i like the guys style so far, but the thought of vino winning a tour as a DS leaves me very uneasy. kwiatkowski looks good (and seems to have a determined and organised team) for sniping a podium spot.
Haha yes.
In other news Cancellara abandoned. Pity.
Lost it
Not so sure about Kwiatkowski looking as good as everyone says he does. He was glued to Martin’s wheel for pretty much the entirety of stage 10, then cracked like nobody’s business not long after Martin blew up. Who knows though, as you said, everyone has their good and bad days. I just can’t get the image out of my mind of the start of the final climb the other night; EVERYBODY looked like they were in immense pain, but Nibali looked cool as a cucumber and once his last team member peeled off, just surged away effortlessly. It was so beautiful to watch!