Velominati Super Prestige: Tour de France 2015

Sep Vanmarcke rides the cobbles Kelly-Style in the 2014 stage to Port du Hinault. Photo: Cycling Tips

Cobblestones make the race, I’m not ruining any fantasies telling you that. Wet cobblestones, well, those make a legend. Nibbles rose in my esteem considerably when he rode the wet cobbles as well as he rides any mountain descent or climb; that is a boy with some nerves and some mad bike handling skills.

Wet cobbles are scarier to ride that dry ones, but they aren’t really that much more difficult to ride; you’re still playing the lottery that your wheels keep pointing where your bike is trying to go. But wet stones are definitely more draining; the mud and silt you ride through make it like riding through molasses. Awesome molasses, but molasses nonetheless.

The cobbles are back this year, and hopefully so will the rain. Let us pray for rain, because last year’s stage made the race.

The Tour de France needs no introduction but the VSP prizes deserve a gentle reminder. This is a Grand Tour, people, lots of points at stake. And those points are going towards amazing prizes including a Jaegher frame and a Café Roubaix wheelset. There is plenty of time for you to Delgado this thing, too, if you wait around until the last minute. So my advice is that you avoid doing that.

Give yourself enough time to enter your picks so if something has gone amuck, you have time to hit “reload” or come back V minutes later to try again before the event closes. Remember, your procrastination in this matter will not result in our emergency to enter your picks for you. All that said, if you do encounter a problem, please be so kind as to take a screenshot and upload it because the descriptor “it didn’t work” or “hm, not working” doesn’t help us debug the problem. Also, Internet Explorer is not supported and apparently only shows one Pick Entry box, so use Chrome, Firefox, or Safari instead.

The scoring for the Grand Tours is a tad more involved than the one-day races and one-week Tours, so look the guidelines over before making your prognostications.

So get your picks in before the countdown clock goes to zero, hit the go button, and good luck.

[vsp_results id=”33262″/]

frank

The founder of Velominati and curator of The Rules, Frank was born in the Dutch colonies of Minnesota. His boundless physical talents are carefully canceled out by his equally boundless enthusiasm for drinking. Coffee, beer, wine, if it’s in a container, he will enjoy it, a lot of it. He currently lives in Seattle. He loves riding in the rain and scheduling visits with the Man with the Hammer just to be reminded of the privilege it is to feel completely depleted. He holds down a technology job the description of which no-one really understands and his interests outside of Cycling and drinking are Cycling and drinking. As devoted aesthete, the only thing more important to him than riding a bike well is looking good doing it. Frank is co-author along with the other Keepers of the Cog of the popular book, The Rules, The Way of the Cycling Disciple and also writes a monthly column for the magazine, Cyclist. He is also currently working on the first follow-up to The Rules, tentatively entitled The Hardmen. Email him directly at rouleur@velominati.com.

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Oli says:

Jul 14 2015 at 9:30 pm

@brett

I've been watching every stage live and it's been an absorbing Tour, and I can honestly say I've enjoyed every stage. I think your (understandable) cynicism has killed the Tour for you so it wouldn't matter who was winning or how you wouldn't be able to enjoy it. I feel a bit sorry for you.
Oli says:

Jul 14 2015 at 9:30 pm

*how they were winning it.
Beers says:

Jul 14 2015 at 9:54 pm
@ChrisO
I guess Movistar were just trying a show of strength. To say they weren’t afraid and maybe to get into a one on one situation – in the past Quintana has at times been better than Froome when they are in direct competition.

Regarding the suspicion, yes there is some element of being stuck in the past but isn’t that also because nobody has done a lot to move into the future.
- there’s a voluntary code of conduct followed by some teams when it suits them;
- teams with terrible records are not punished or sanctioned by the UCI;
- the evidence to the drugs commission was that far from having stopped, there was still considerable doping it had just become more precise – as always the dopers are ahead of the testers;
- teams still refuse to publish (or allow independent third-party access) real data about training or racing to make everything open and transparent and criticise anyone who tries to work with this – possibly the only information which could settle the argument.
There is a lot of scepticism about Froome from sensible people who have been looking at the performances of top riders over a lot of years. I’m talking about sports science and data specialists, not haters on message boards.

Froome was estimated to have done 6.1 w/kg for 40 minutes yesterday. That level for that duration is extremely suspect. Unfortunately we don’t know his HR and physiological details. The only people with the data to confirm or deny it is Sky and they are setting lawyers on people.

Until teams and the sport’s administrators realise that it isn’t good enough to sit and say “He was tested, he’s clean, we don’t dope” then it is going to continue.
Of course, you brought logic to the gunfight!
From their perspective, why then do the teams not want to provide their data? What is the risk?

I can only see that then opposition will be able to target specifically? (we know he can do 6.1w/kg for 40 minutes, so lets burn our guys out and hold at 6.2w/kg pace for him and then put our GC on the front).

Is that it? I mean, even then power numbers from a race are only specific to that race, so the past numbers wouldn't really reflect their form the next year unless they did the exact same preparation, correct?
ChrisO says:

Jul 14 2015 at 9:57 pm
@Beers
@ChrisO
I guess Movistar were just trying a show of strength. To say they weren’t afraid and maybe to get into a one on one situation – in the past Quintana has at times been better than Froome when they are in direct competition.

Regarding the suspicion, yes there is some element of being stuck in the past but isn’t that also because nobody has done a lot to move into the future.

there’s a voluntary code of conduct followed by some teams when it suits them;

teams with terrible records are not punished or sanctioned by the UCI;

the evidence to the drugs commission was that far from having stopped, there was still considerable doping it had just become more precise – as always the dopers are ahead of the testers;

teams still refuse to publish (or allow independent third-party access) real data about training or racing to make everything open and transparent and criticise anyone who tries to work with this – possibly the only information which could settle the argument.

There is a lot of scepticism about Froome from sensible people who have been looking at the performances of top riders over a lot of years. I’m talking about sports science and data specialists, not haters on message boards.

Froome was estimated to have done 6.1 w/kg for 40 minutes yesterday. That level for that duration is extremely suspect. Unfortunately we don’t know his HR and physiological details. The only people with the data to confirm or deny it is Sky and they are setting lawyers on people.

Until teams and the sport’s administrators realise that it isn’t good enough to sit and say “He was tested, he’s clean, we don’t dope” then it is going to continue.
Of course, you brought logic to the gunfight!
From their perspective, why then do the teams not want to provide their data? What is the risk?

I can only see that then opposition will be able to target specifically? (we know he can do 6.1w/kg for 40 minutes, so lets burn our guys out and hold at 6.2w/kg pace for him and then put our GC on the front).

Is that it? I mean, even then power numbers from a race are only specific to that race, so the past numbers wouldn’t really reflect their form the next year unless they did the exact same preparation, correct?
ChrisO says:

Jul 14 2015 at 10:11 pm

@Beers

From their perspective, why then do the teams not want to provide their data? What is the risk?

I can only see that then opposition will be able to target specifically? (we know he can do 6.1w/kg for 40 minutes, so lets burn our guys out and hold at 6.2w/kg pace for him and then put our GC on the front).

Is that it? I mean, even then power numbers from a race are only specific to that race, so the past numbers wouldn’t really reflect their form the next year unless they did the exact same preparation, correct?

Whoops, keyboard slip above... it's a good question.

Dr Ross Tucker of Sports Scientists compared it to a runner wanting to have the timeclock covered up. It's pointless to hide it. So many other things go into a performance - tactical, mental etc.

Look at yesterday. There was a widely published photo of a warmup routine stuck on Contador's bike which clearly stated his FTP was 420 watts. He weights 62kg, let's say 65kg on a bad day. That should give him the ability to maintain 6.4-6.5 w/kg for an hour. But he can't - he never has and never will.

Look at Nibali - he's capable of nearly 6w/kg, he did it last year, but Fuglsang said he just gave up in his head.

Even if the teams were worried then the least they could do would be to release a wide range of training and race data to an independent third-party on a confidential basis. And then for selected data on key races or stages to be publicly released for all riders.

The fact that people are unwilling to do this leads to suspicion. We're right to ask "Why not?" and the answer is uncomfortable.
gilly says:

Jul 14 2015 at 10:45 pm

I'm surprised by a lot of the comments here. The TDF is not my favourite GT but I have been glued to this one. Great first week, crosswinds, cobbles and Stybs getting a stage. The late TTT just added to the mix and the current time gaps will surely lead to Froome being attacked over the four cols today. As @Jay states, he's gotta be tired.
gilly says:

Jul 14 2015 at 10:57 pm

@Erik

@frank

@Erik

Well, barring a crushing collapse, which I suppose is possible, this race is for the scraps. Ah, I got nothing in my VSP.

This first-mountain-stage crushing routine is a bit tiresome but that was one crazy stage.

It was a cracker of a stage. Fun to watch, even though I was watching my VSP collapse. Froome was positively amazing. Quintana’s face never reveals anything, but he didn’t look bad. TVG kept it together, relatively. Truly enjoyed it.
Teocalli says:

Jul 14 2015 at 11:05 pm

@ChrisO

Given that Froome appears to be a fair bit bigger than Porte and Quintana and given that neither were massively behind Froome my uninformed logic would seem to extrapolate that all 3 would have had similar power output per kg over that climb?
ChrisO says:

Jul 14 2015 at 11:18 pm

@Teocalli

@ChrisO

Given that Froome appears to be a fair bit bigger than Porte and Quintana and given that neither were massively behind Froome my uninformed logic would seem to extrapolate that all 3 would have had similar power output per kg over that climb?

Quintana and Porte were estimated around 5.9 w/kg. To put that in perspective it's around or slightly higher than most winning performances for the Tour in the last four years. But behind Froome.

Robert Gesink has actually published his data and if his weight is assumed to be 71kg then he did around 5.8 w/kg so the Quintana, Porte and Froome estimates seem to be validated relatively.

One of the weird things about Froome's ride is that he only attacked halfway up. So his 6.1 w/kg is likely to have been around 5.8/5.9 w/kg for 20 mins then 6.4/6.5 w/kg for 20 mins. That's extra-terrestrial.
Teocalli says:

Jul 14 2015 at 11:29 pm

@ChrisO

That’s extra-terrestrial.

Maybe that explains the elbows/knee thing?

Also what's that stat that along the lines that if a human could run as fast as a spider proportional to human height : spider length then a human would do 100 metres in sub 2 secs.