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.
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View Comments
@RobSandy
Lemond was quoted with an interesting observation before today's stage, "The race for the top step is over, unless someone is willing to sacrifice second..."
Good way of putting it, it's going to take someone walking up to the table & chucking their whole pay packet on black to be in with a chance of dethroning the spider.
@Erik
yup, heatstroke*. Apparently it was still 33 degrees at the top of the Aspin.
*this information was relayed by PnP, so take that with however large a pinch of salt you desire.
As to the doping conversation above, when I said Froome looked amazing, I meant it in a good way. Had I said, "His training sure is paying off," then I would be saying that in a bad way.
Was watching the Pantani movie "Death of a Cyclist" last night. Good gravy how could we ever have thought that those guys weren't doped? It was like they had motors on their bikes.
Here is food for thought: Assume Wiggins didn't dope. I don't think he did. He had such praise for Pantani in the film. I can't remember the exact quote, but he felt that he didn't feel worthy to be in Pantani's presence. Wow.
A slightly different piece of speculative science off the back of last night's stage from Jeroen Swart of Science2Sport in South Africa.
If you aren't watching live and catch a replay or recording, don't skip the descent off the Tourmalet, where Barguil makes up about 45 seconds on the yellow jersey group.
As the camera follows him down you can hear the moto's tyres squealing every time they go around a corner, still losing ground as Barguil throws it around, and then trying to accelerate up to him in the short straights.
Scary stuff.
@ChrisO
I'm looking forward to the on-board camera footage from the descents.
Does Majka's stage win chasing mean that Saxo Tinkoff have given up on Bertie as a contender?
@chris
Very good question - exactly what I was hoping they would ask him, but they didn't. No doubt it will come up at the full press conferences.
My suspicion is they had him in the break as a possible help to Contador if it all went off. Then when they saw Sky were happy to ride tempo they let him go on the Tourmalet.
Could have just been giving him a chance. Sky were unlikely to attack today, so maybe Saxo were giving Majka a stage win.
I was watching tonight and had a thought. Tactically is sky better off letting a breakaway with no GC contenders go to avoid the other contenders getting time bonuses?
From Quintanas comments in the past few days it sounds like he's holding off for week 3 and trying to limit damage before attacking, but given the gap that's opened is that too big a risk?
@ChrisO, @Roobar
I'm not convinced that they looked at Sky, saw no attacks coming and decided to have an easy day today.
No attacks on Froome is as good as giving him a rest day. Leaving it until next week or whenever is relying on him having a properly bad day rather than chipping away at his lead and putting him under pressure to force the bad day out of him.