Attention all Velominati. The Tour VSP is going on line and it should be a good one. Sure, between Froomy and Bertie a person could hedge their bets but Moviestar is all in for Valverde, BMC for TeeJay, Astana for the Shark and Garmin is finally committing to a team leader in Talansky. Some other teams (ahem…Trek Factory Racing for one) have resigned themselves to hunting stage wins. The Tour swings through the Yorkshire Dales, everyone but the riders can enjoy some excellent ales. As the Tour continues to Lille, Norther France and Belgium, the quality pints continue. Yes, it’s hot and the VSP generator has beer on its mind.
The route, the sprints, the climbing and even the final time trial should make this a decent Tour. Here is a start list. Everyone will have a vial in their jersey pocket, but don’t worry, it’s legal.
It is still not too late to win the overall 2014 VSP and we have made it worth your while.
Refer to the VSP page for details concerning scoring and rest day swaps. If you want to call yourself Pedro Delgado, you will only have yourself to blame. The VSP banner on the homepage has the countdown clock, refresh your browser and don’t be late. Good luck and good picking.
[vsp_results id=”30275″/]
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@piwakawaka I agree, and I did get your point about it being everyone who finished. Stage 2 was a breath of fresh air in itself, as that got the GC guys paying attention, but followed up with Stage V has made for a great week of racing rather than a dull week of waiting.
@Geraint
A-Merckx to that Geraint. Prudhomme and co have put together a dynamite start to the Tour...
@piwakawaka
I was only coming from the point of view that a) it's a shame for anyone to go out that way but mostly b) if he was still in and also lost a bunch of time then the whole dynamics of the race would have so much juice in it with an additional dimension.
@VeloJello
+1
This was just on the radio and somehow seemed apt with the mountains coming.....
@VeloJello
+1 on that count. The guy has revealed himself to be an evil genius. Contender for the V-Award without having been on a bike.
@Ccos
That people who are watching sports channels in the small hours are probably low income, less health-savvy younger males, and possibly stoned.
Unless it is a direct sponsorship e.g. Monday Night Football brought to you by... or something high-profile, general advertising is related to the audience not the content.
This is something I often bring up in arguments about women's cycling. Unless and until it can deliver a different target group then sponsors and advertisers will get more return on investment from men's cycling, and that's what they care about.
@Chris
Prudhomme was on BBC Radio last Saturday morning, ahead of the Grand Depart, saying that after London in 2007 and with Wiggo causing such huge public interest in the 2012 Tour and Olympics, he and ASO had already made a decision that they needed to come back to the UK within 3 years, either to Edinburgh or Yorkshire. How do we get it back again?!?!
@Teocalli Slow day?
@ChrisO
...or the organizers should target different advertisers, i.e. ones which are interested in accessing and growing the existing audience, which some of the teams seem to be making an effort at (Lululemon yoga gear, for example). If the sport better embraced the image of fit, strong, intelligent (the number of post-graduate degrees wallops the men's peloton) women and set out to make the most of that to a female audience, rather than often falling back on selling sexy to a male audience, it might do better in a market which requires differentiation rather than emulation.
The Women's Tour in the UK seemed a good example of the sport being torn between these extremes, with a lot apparently being done for a female, especially a young female, audience, while one of the male organizers couldn't resist commenting at the opening of a stage on how much better looking the female peloton was than the male, which to me came off as basically just a desperate attempt to give men a lowest-common-denominator reason to watch.
Long, flat stages. Always excellent reasons to go wildly off topic in a thread.