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2016 Tour De France


Chico

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Nothing on this batshit crazy day yet? 

 

I I thought the reason the motorbikes were there were partly to get the crowd out of the way. They should have license to clip anyone who doesn't get out of the way quick enough imo

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ah they reset the time, so he still leads, oh well...

 

I mean if you're going to dope, let's at least see the ceiling of it. I want to see how fast he can do this TT and the other MTF at full blast. Like Panatani and Armstrong up Ventoux

Edited by phart
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4 hours ago, Toepoke said:

Are you allowed to complete part of the route minus a bike?

No, and had Froome taken to fell running under any other circumstance he'd have been DQ'd.
A rider was thrown out of the race last year because he got in a team car which then drove just 100m down the road, to pick up his spare bike. The 100m cost him his place in the race.
There's also a very famous incident where Jens Voigt had to complete a Pyrenean descent and more on a borrowed child's bike because he crashed and broke his, and his teams cars had already passed him.

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4 hours ago, Toepoke said:

Are you allowed to complete part of the route minus a bike?

If you're Chris Froome, you can pretty much do as you like. Him and Brailsford in influencing the UCI commissaires before the announcement that he'd get given an incorrect time. 

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33 minutes ago, Sherps said:

No, and had Froome taken to fell running under any other circumstance he'd have been DQ'd.
A rider was thrown out of the race last year because he got in a team car which then drove just 100m down the road, to pick up his spare bike. The 100m cost him his place in the race.
There's also a very famous incident where Jens Voigt had to complete a Pyrenean descent and more on a borrowed child's bike because he crashed and broke his, and his teams cars had already passed him.

Shut up legs do what i tell you. :P

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Nae long back fae climbing Ventoux a few days before the tour came through. The fans seem to have come in for a lot of stick after the Froome incident and quite rightly so, but in my opinion the French authorities have to shoulder some of the blame for what happened.

There were heaps of fans with tents and motorhomes all the way up past Chalet Reynard to the weather station days and days before the tour came up. After it was announced that the stage would end at Chalet Reynard all these folk had to come off the mountain and make their way down to the forest which was already bursting at the seems with fans.

Although the decision was made 2 days beforehand very little additional fencing was put up to hold everyone back, it was all left up the mountain where it wasn't needed.  It was inevitable that chaos and carnage would result. 

 

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This is by far the most ridiculous Tour of the past 10 years, a farce from start to finish. I cant even enjoy the freak show anymore. 

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Just now, Parklife said:

This is by far the most ridiculous Tour of the past 10 years, a farce from start to finish. I cant even enjoy the freak show anymore. 

Why ? Anything in particular ? I missed most of last wee but managed to catch some of it up. What's the farce ?

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Just now, fringo said:

Why ? Anything in particular ? I missed most of last wee but managed to catch some of it up. What's the farce ?

The guy wearing yellow, he's easy to spot. 

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2 minutes ago, fringo said:

But why ? I'm probably not as clued up as most on this thread but don't get your point.

He used to ride sideways, now thanks to all those amazing "marginal gains", he rides up hills for 25 mins at 6.6 W/kg :lol: 

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13 hours ago, Parklife said:

He used to ride sideways, now thanks to all those amazing "marginal gains", he rides up hills for 25 mins at 6.6 W/kg :lol: 

You really have a hard-on for the guy. :lol:
You don't know how much he weighs and you don't know what his power output was, so you have no way of knowing he was knocking out 6.6 watts per kilo.
It wouldn't surprise me if he was, though, as I've said before on this thread, it's what Froome specialises in - short bursts of effort at FTP on mountain top finishes or in time trials, the rest of Team Sky do the vast majority of the work. With the obvious exception of the time trials, the only three times Froome's even come out from behind a teammate's wheel and put in a real dig was the descent into Louchon; the break with Sagan, Thomas and Bodnar; and the quickly-halted attack on the Ventoux.
For Sky's "marginal gains", just read "$5 million a year bigger budget than any other team" - they can afford to have 4 guys on their team who would be genuine GC contenders in their own right all pulling for Froome to win.

Bardet and Porte also only finished 42 and 33 seconds slower than Froome, so assuming they're lighter than Froome, why no surprise at their w/kg?

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2 hours ago, Sherps said:

You really have a hard-on for the guy. :lol:
You don't know how much he weighs and you don't know what his power output was, so you have no way of knowing he was knocking out 6.6 watts per kilo.

I dont have a "hard-on" for him, i just don't like seeing the sport like this. 

I don't know how much he weighs, Sky would never publish such data as they know it'd lead to obvious questions being asked about how the feck their riders can do what only folk who've been proven to have taken PED's have been able to do.

Wonder if we'll find out what British Tour riders Dr Mark Bonar worked with... Surprised he worked with any as, we all know that Brits don't dope, it's just Johnny Foreigner :lol: 

You stick your fingers in your ears and pretend that everything is okay if you like, i simply wont do that though. The link below is a decent listen, if you're interested. 

http://www.newstalk.com/podcasts/Off_The_Ball/Off_The_Ball_Highlights/149905/Tour_de_France_2016__New_Tour_Same_Questions

 

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5 hours ago, Parklife said:

You stick your fingers in your ears and pretend that everything is okay if you like, i simply wont do that though. The link below is a decent listen, if you're interested. 

http://www.newstalk.com/podcasts/Off_The_Ball/Off_The_Ball_Highlights/149905/Tour_de_France_2016__New_Tour_Same_Questions

 

I've followed Ross Tucker on Twitter for a while, ever since he did a episode of The Cycling Podcast with Jeroen Swart, another South African physiologist.
They were both discussing the tests Froome did at the end of last year's tour at the GSK labs in England, at which Swart was present, which were also featured on an episode of The Cycling Podcast (unfortunately behind a paywall) and made up the basis of this article - http://chrisfroome.esquire.co.uk/ .
The article is interesting and makes some good points, but Richard Moore has had to write for a non-cycling publication, so it's not as in-depth as the podcast itself.
The most important thing that came from the article is that Jeroen Swart, when comparing data from Froome's tests when at the UCI training centre in 2007 to those done in 2015, saw no magical transformation in his numbers, he was just lighter and better trained.

Ross Tucker is the ultimate cycnic when it comes to Froome and cycling in general, so it doesn't surprise me that he would doubt Froome's performance.
As he admits himself, though, he has no evidence to prove his cynicism correct and freely admits in the podcast you linked to that his lack of data leaves us "all speculating in the darkness with our eyes closed here". So even though he doubts Froome himself, he admits he has nothing to back it up with.

Scepticism in cycling is sometimes a good thing and, going on the past twenty years, it's no wonder that a lot of people think like you and Ross Tucker.
To say "This is by far the most ridiculous Tour of the past 10 years", is massive hyperbole or just bad memory, though. 2006 was the year of Operacion Puerto and Floyd Landis, 2007 was Rasmussen and Vino's Astana team withdrawal, 2008 was Ricardo Ricco and Bernard Kohl, 2010 is Contador and his contaminated beef etc etc.
I don't think I'm sticking my fingers in my ears, and as i said earlier in the thread I've no doubt they're still pushing the boundaries of what is legal (TUE abuse etc), but I don't see any performances as "superhuman" as happened in the '90's and 00's.

In any case, today's stage was a good one. Bambi on Ice.
Unsure why Quintana and Porte didn't attack more when Froome was on Thomas' bike. Maybe they think the battle for yellow is as over as everyone else does? Nice to see Bardet still had the balls to go for it.
 

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Ross Tucker isn't the "ultimate cynic" when it comes to cycling. He's an expert in the field who makes careful speculation. He talks about loads of sports in the same manner. He just finished doing a few pieces on the south african female runner with the problems in gender testing. Also on the 100 meters etc. He writes the same for each sport. Ascribing cynicism as the reason for his suspicion as opposed to an educated guess mis represents everything he says on twitter.

Kimmage is the ultimate cynic (through experience) Tucker is a scientist. Dr Ashenden was called out in the same way by Seb Coe and Armstrong. This type of argument just doesn't fly these days.

The crazy thing is SKY running huge deep trains up mountains at about 6W/kg meaning no one can attack. Not even US Postal kept it up for as long.

We've had climbing times that compete with any previous era.

I thinks its been much the same over the years. PED's allow better spectacles allow more money.

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Someone pointed out that if Froome hadn't taken a backseat to Wiggins and not crashed, he'd be 5 times on the trot.

Considering how hard it is to win that's a small amount of luck needed for the change.

Froome got disqualified at the Giro in 2010 for holding onto a motorbike going up a climb, when he was done (had a fecked knee i think and was just exhausted) which is no shame as was near the end of a grueling Giro and can't be fun cycling with a damaged knee.

Now he has won as many tours as Greg Lemond , no one is near him. Long TT's, short hilly TT's, big Roleur stages, long grinding HC climbs. He even won a stage descending with power this time.

I wonder if he could do the Giro/tour giro/Veulta double.

 

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On ‎23‎/‎07‎/‎2016 at 6:17 PM, phart said:

Ross Tucker isn't the "ultimate cynic" when it comes to cycling. He's an expert in the field who makes careful speculation. He talks about loads of sports in the same manner. He just finished doing a few pieces on the south african female runner with the problems in gender testing. Also on the 100 meters etc. He writes the same for each sport. Ascribing cynicism as the reason for his suspicion as opposed to an educated guess mis represents everything he says on twitter.

I'll concede that point, and on reflection, perhaps cynic was the wrong choice of word.
His careful speculation is still speculation, though, and done without specific data to back it up, and his opinions are not exclusively shared by everyone, as exampled by his colleague that I mentioned, Jeroen Swart.
Tucker still comes out with a lot of interesting stuff, though, and is a good follow on Twitter.

15 minutes ago, phart said:

Someone pointed out that if Froome hadn't taken a backseat to Wiggins and not crashed, he'd be 5 times on the trot.

Considering how hard it is to win that's a small amount of luck needed for the change.

Froome got disqualified at the Giro in 2010 for holding onto a motorbike going up a climb, when he was done (had a fecked knee i think and was just exhausted) which is no shame as was near the end of a grueling Giro and can't be fun cycling with a damaged knee.

Now he has won as many tours as Greg Lemond , no one is near him. Long TT's, short hilly TT's, big Roleur stages, long grinding HC climbs. He even won a stage descending with power this time.

I wonder if he could do the Giro/tour giro/Veulta double.

I'm not sure anyone could do the Giro/Tour double nowadays.
Conventional wisdom seems to dictate the early season training and race programme required to get ready for the Giro, not to mention the effort it takes to ride a three week grand tour, would leave anyone struggling by the third week of the TdF, if not before.

Giro/Vuelta is definitely doable and even Tour/Vuelta seems to be more doable, particularly since the Vuelta moved in the calendar in the '90's.

There's only 8 men have won two grand tours in a year, and there's questions over Contador, Pantani and possibly Big Mig, so for anyone else to put their name alongside the likes of Anquetil, Merckx, Coppi etc, would be something special, but would generate a boatload of (perhaps justified) questions and suspicions.
As Froome himself found out in Andorra, in last year's Vuelta, it takes a lot of luck just to stay upright for three weeks, never mind win anything.
If anyone has the team, talent, money and tactics to do it, though, it's Sky/Froome. It would take a change in goals for the year for Sky and an increase in racing days for the year for Froome, but it's possible. Unless another team altered their team and tactics purely to stop him, I don't see anyone that could reasonably considered more of a favourite for any Grand Tour than Froome, should he enter.

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I have no problem with Cynic, being the ultimate one was a bit too far considering his academic credentials. Aye he is a good read. He isn't the final arbitrator of who is doped of course, but is an interesting voice.

That's what i was meaning Froome is that good going for two tours in a year could be his next move, probably Giro and Vuelta probably but i mind Roache and Merckx doing the "triple Crown" so added the Giro/tour as i think that's the most common one historically. Big mig did it back to back as well.

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