Obviously Cav to win today.

No nice pics for you today, will have a look as the stage goes on..

Some useful links:

http://live.cyclingnews.com/
http://gaps.letour.fr/us.php
http://data.srmlive.de/TDF/

Alexandre Vinokourov apparently just announced on French tv that he is retiring from racing. This Tour which ended so tragically for him will have been his last pro race.

cav for the win in a sprint. It is the last chance before Paris for him and the other sprinters
HTC at the front and pacing it already.
:

Cav gets the sprint points, but not by a lot. Does he ever go full gas on an intermediate?

The boss of HTC just revealed Cav was only a minute inside the cut off time yesterday!!

The boss of HTC just revealed Cav was only a minute inside the cut off time yesterday!!

then again you could look at it a different way, cavendish used the time limit to minimise the amount of energy he used.

depends if he realised he was going to be inside and sat up / eased off to conserve, or struggled to make it……

Tight though, even if the former – silly mechanical / puncture with that short a buffer could be costly.

The boss said they had three riders back helping him in a “mini team time trail” to make sure he did it. He was riding at 100% so i’d take that as a close (ish) shave rather than playing the clock.

The boss said they had three riders back helping him in a “mini team time trail” to make sure he did it. He was riding at 100% so i’d take that as a close (ish) shave rather than playing the clock.

IF that is really the case and not mind games, i wonder what Lotto and Movistar will do come the alps, Going by form Cav should win today and next sunday, therefore Rojas’ best chance of getting green is getting Cav eliminated on time.

That’s what i wondered too.

getting exciting 1 km to go

Easy

aye like clockwork. They are just such a well oiled machine with the fastest sprinter to unleash. Close to unstoppable.

Cav’s the man 😉

Cav and Renshaw are the men 😉

Really impressive the way Renshaw and Cav emerge out of the ruck for the win -they make it look effortless, but that’s beautiful judgement.

Yeah, the few times you think HTC have blown it they just sit firm, don’t panic and then blow the others into the weeds

I dont think that Cav is daft enough to fall behind the last substantial group on the road. And I also dont think that the Commissaires would eliminate 30 or 40 riders that finished outside the time limit.

Good stuff.

Another cracker of a finish from Cav and Renshaw.

Brilliant team effort

Brave attempt from Gilbert at the end, nice win for Cav. Think it’s the first time I’ve seen Petachi do anything this tour.

1. CAVENDISH Mark 319 pts
2. ROJAS Jose Joaquin 282 pts
3. GILBERT Philippe 248 pts
4. HUSHOVD Thor 192 pts

😀

SbZ, whilst i agree to a point that if 30-40 riders miss the cut they will fiddle the figures, IF Cav puts in another crap mountain stage and is one of a handful of riders then maybe and he was behind the last group on the last stage, not by much granted, but still off the back. Did he sit up or was he struggling, who knows.

What mountain stages are left? Is it just the Galibier mountain top finish and the Alpe D’Huez mountain top finish?

Galibier isnt that steep a climb so I dont see Cav struggling too much there and Alpe D’Huez isnt that bad either.

Stage 19 is only like 65 miles, and the cut off times depend on how fast the winner goes I think. Is it the faster the average speed, the smaller the cut off? And they do it in percentages.

So if they do a 10% cut off for stage 19, and they do the stage in ~3 hours, it’s an 18 minute cut off. Assuming Cav catches up with everyone else on the galibier descent, and starts d’huez with them, and Andy (yeah, Andy..) climbs it in 45 mins, Cav has to do it in at most 1 hour 3 mins, which isn’t massively quick, but it’s not slow.

I don’t know if those numbers hold up though, I might be talking rubbish.

And galibier is a massive climb, I think Cav will struggle on it. It’s just that it’s got like a 45km descent afterwards, so I think he should be able to catch others.

Yes Galibier is long, but it’s not steep.

And hell I can get up Alpe D’Huez in under 1hr3mins so Cav will be a hell of a lot quicker than that.

To the mincers finish or the TdF finish?

Yes Galibier is long, but it’s not steep.

Yeah, but because of the length of the stage, I think the GC riders are going to rocket up it, as there’s a chance they could cause a split, stay away on the descent, then create big time on d’huez. Thinking about it actually, it might be the stage Evans plans to go for.

Real man NOOOOOOOOO it is far more complicated than that 😯

The time cut is of critical importance to all riders, especially those who are gravitationally challenged. The Tour organizers classify each stage into five different categories and determine the time cut based on the category and average speed of the stage. Riders wishing to stay in the race must finish within a certain percentage of time from the stage winner. The five categories and their cutoff percentages are:

Category 1 – stage with no particular difficulty
4 percent if the average speed of the winner is 21mph (34kmh) or less
Up to 12 percent if the average speed of the winner is greater than 30mph (48kmh)
Category 2 – stage presenting medium difficulty
6 percent if the average speed of the winner is 19mph (31kmh) or less
Up to 18 percent if the average speed of the winner is greater than 26mph (42kmh)
Category 3 – stage presenting intense difficulty
5 percent if the average speed of the winner is 15mph (26kmh) or less
Up to 18 percent if the average speed of the winner is greater than 24mph (38kmh)
Category 4 – individual time trial
Must be within 25 percent of the winner’s time
Category 5 – team time trial
Fifth man crossing the line must be within 25 percent of winning team’s time
Basically, the faster the stage goes, the longer the cutoff time. Also, the harder the stage, the longer the cutoff time. The sprinters tend to calculate the cutoff time for the mountain stages so that they just get in under the time limit.

Every once in a while the sprinters get it wrong and the whole group faces elimination. The Tour organizers have put in a codicil to the rule book allowing them to adjust the cutoff time if more than 20 percent of the starters of a particular stage may be eliminated by missing the time cut.

Anyway tomorrow is a rest day you can have a lie in 😀

I struggle with long sentences 😆

Could it be 5% then..?

Anyway tomorrow is a rest day you can have a lie in

I know, finally. This tour has really been messing with my sleep patterns.

Who knows it is a scale between 5-18% based on average speed of the rider who finishes [15-25 mph]. Probably 10-15% is my guess.

Didn’t see the stage, but that’s good going for Cav if he really had to give it everything yesterday to stay in!

also the HTC sprint finish set-up was taking a few punches from individual attacks from 3km out. Anyone else see Geraint Thomas trying to climb on to the HTC rider’s bike during the leadout? 😉