Nope. France stops from Sunday - Tuesday. France likes baguettes.
The French stopped caring about the tour in the last 15 years or so. Overall a bit disappointed with the tour. A few days there were good but found a lot of the racing pretty conservative. The fact we are losing our minds over a few pathetic attacks from Frenchy says it all really. Too many motors and too many watts for proper attacks.
Having commentators who have actually raced bikes this century was a bit step forward.
The fact that Robbie is able to see important things in sprints and tactics and call them out quickly and informatively makes it even more valuable.
But they can’t waffle on like P&P… so there’s that for the boring parts of stages.
Everywhere we went (in France) it was on a telly. I found a lot more French people talking about it this time (vs last visit in 2010). I think it was due to Bardot, actually having a contender got a lot more French people interested and talking about it.
But EzyLee is right about the baguette, they love em. The tip is to not buy the cheapest. Most bakeries will sell two styles, the basic cheap and an slightly more expensive (+0.30E) loaf. Spend the extra. Big difference in taste.
How many days until Omloop?
Anyone watched/listened to David Millar’s commentary? Reckon his commentary would undoubtedly be excellent for the same reasons
Robbie and Keeno = no idea about le chateaus
Keeno is reading from the exact same booklet they hand out to all the commentators, including Paul.
Hopefully next year’s route has a few less sprint stages and few more hilly days where Sky can’t control the break so easily.
Comment from elsewhere that I lol’d about:
“Coming second to Sky at the Tour de France is certainly a step up for Michael Drapac.
Just a year ago he was coming second to Avanti in the NRS.”
Did lol.
This quote from Jonathan Vaughters shows him as pretty much the anti-Dave-Brailsford. The more time goes on, the more I dislike Team Sky.
"Jonathan Vaughters: As I’ve been saying, we come to every race with the objective of making sure that all the riders are prepared the best they can — that the staff has done everything that they can to get the race ready, to do the reconnaissance, to make sure the nutrition is correct, the training is training…whatever. A hundred percent of the effort of the whole team to make things work.
And, you know, sometimes that ends up being 23rd place and sometimes that ends up being a win. And sometimes that ends up being 10th. And the point of it is, when I’m most happy is when I see that the organization is doing everything it can to achieve the maximum results.
And you have to be happy with that, whether it’s first or second or fifth or 50th or whatever. It doesn’t matter. And by the way, if you’re taking an anti-doping stance in the sport, you cannot focus on the final result. If you focus on the final result, then you are thinking about, well, I need to get to that final result, and no matter how I get there. We focus on the process, and in this case the process worked great and we’re incredibly happy."
So Vaughters is essentially saying that if you’re clean you’re racing a race-within-a-race, with the dopers at the lead and the clean guys just doing their best back in the pack.
Makes sense.
Pretty much always been that way though, and plenty of comments from those within the pack over time have said as much.
Yeah, just interesting that he’s blatantly stating it. Or as blatantly as he can without actually pointing a finger at Brailsford.
Yeah-nah. He’s saying that if “win at all costs” is your objective, then you’ll be tempted to push the boundaries
Yeah thats more what i got from it as well. If you are anti-doping you can only focus on doing the best you can as a team, not on results. If the results come, then they come, otherwise you did the best you could without cheating so you need to be happy with that.
Yeah, this is the bit that struck me as the Dave Brailsford approach.
“Marginal Gains”…
Vaughters has a good track record of turning gems into spuds so possibly covering his tracks lol.
Not just the French, me too (I have very few tattoos but one is a baguette)!
Did you get the cheap one, or cough up the extra +0.30E for your tatt?