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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frank says:

Jul 15 2015 at 11:14 am

@ChrisO

@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.

Or, they didn't expect big gains to be made today anyway, and let him go rub one out.
ped says:

Jul 15 2015 at 12:47 pm

Team tactics aside, I'm just thankful he kept those Oakleys on and didn't wink at the camera
GalleySlave says:

Jul 15 2015 at 1:02 pm

@ChrisO

He really nailed it.Great stuff!
Mikael Liddy says:

Jul 15 2015 at 3:39 pm

@ChrisO

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.

Not to mention the fact he had to dodge a couple of bovine road intruders at around 80km/h!
brett says:

Jul 15 2015 at 5:06 pm

@chris

@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.

This. Everyone is too scared to give up 2nd or 3rd in Paris, so it'll be a free ride for Froome from here. TvG just doesn't have the ip to attack so he'll be happy with 2nd, but Conti and Qunti should be going nuts trying to put Froome under pressure. They have fuck-all to lose and a shitload to gain.

G Thomas hanging in the mountains? What's going on there?
PeakInTwoYears says:

Jul 15 2015 at 7:40 pm

@Mikael Liddy

Not to mention the fact he had to dodge a couple of bovine road intruders at around 80km/h!

That was nuts. Loved it.
Mikael Liddy says:

Jul 15 2015 at 9:08 pm

@brett

@chris

@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.

This. Everyone is too scared to give up 2nd or 3rd in Paris, so it’ll be a free ride for Froome from here. TvG just doesn’t have the ip to attack so he’ll be happy with 2nd, but Conti and Qunti should be going nuts trying to put Froome under pressure. They have fuck-all to lose and a shitload to gain.

G Thomas hanging in the mountains? What’s going on there?

A guy who has always been mooted to have GC potential starting to show it now that he's stopped dividing his attention between track & road, and therefore has shed some track weight?

Sky didn't have to do any work on Tuesday before halfway up the final climb, yesterday they could just ride at a high enough tempo to discourage attacks, without having to overly exert themselves.
wiscot says:

Jul 16 2015 at 1:20 am

@rfreese888

@Dean C

We got Degs and Kittle selling caffeine shampoo on Eurosport every 30 minutes!

Interesting how they now call it "German Engineering for your Hair." The ads are awful because it sounds like they are dubbed and Kittlel's hair is far from it's pompadour best.

While I'm here, Dan Martin needs to improve his tactical nous. He could have had two stages by now if he had been in the right place at the right time.

I'm avoiding the Froome drugs issue. I just can't warm to him. GT I do like, seems like a top bloke and I hope Sky are willing to pay him big $$ to keep him. TJ better shape upif Richie P is going to BMC. That could be awkward unless TG hits the podium. IMHO he's getting the hell tested out of him. And you knopw they are testing for everything.I'm watching the Tour here in the UK and after Tuesday a lot of folks were basically saying it's a done deal. Au contraire. There's a long was to go. Today (Thurs) is nasty and the Alps are still to come. Bad days happen. f he blows, the others will pounce mercilessly.

My VSP picks were/are shite.

PhilLiggett is also shite. If he just has to focus on one rider at a time and the race is unfolding slowly, he can handle it. If it's fast and messy, he can't cope.
chris says:

Jul 16 2015 at 1:40 am

@brett

@chris

@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.

This. Everyone is too scared to give up 2nd or 3rd in Paris, so it’ll be a free ride for Froome from here. TvG just doesn’t have the ip to attack so he’ll be happy with 2nd, but Conti and Qunti should be going nuts trying to put Froome under pressure. They have fuck-all to lose and a shitload to gain.

TvG is in 2nd more by accident than design. Listening to his rest day press conferences, all "if this happens...", "I hope..." and "maybe", he's no GT leader. It'll be a fucking travesty if he's on the podium.

Nairo, if he doesn't pull something out of the bag or die trying, it'll be an anti climax the like of which we haven't seen since, er, Peter Sagan.

As for everybody else, you're right they've nothing to lose. What happened to the days of team alliances. Astana, Etixx and one or two of the teams with riders in places eight to 12 of the GC could pull together to hurt the top five and push their riders up the rankings.

Having said that, I'd love to see Thomas on the podium in Paris. A future British GT winner?
RobSandy says:

Jul 16 2015 at 1:41 am

If Contador or Quintana are going to have a go at Froome, surely it's got to be today, on the climb to the finish? Or if they really have the cohones, go on one of the earlier climbs and try to stay away.