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Morning all.
Interesting day, very interesting with a semi-GC shakeup. More to come today? let's have a look.
The 3rd stage of the Tour de France is likely to see a bunch sprint. At 182.9 kilometres, the riders travel from Lorient to Pontivy, where the finish lies near the enchanting Château des Rohan.
Lorient hosted the start of the 5th stage of the 2018 Tour de France. The race went to Quimper, where Peter Sagan sprinted to triumph on the slightly uphill arrival.
The last line near Château des Rohan in Pontivy is less demanding. In fact, a 3.5 kilometers downhill flies down to a flat finale.
The Castle was built in the 15th century and has seen its fair share of battles. Two massive circular towers at the front were used to drop burning objects on the attackers. The battle for the stage win will be hard, but not as violent.
The first three riders on the line gain time bonuses of 10, 6 and 4 seconds.
The 3rd stage of the Tour de France starts at 13.10 and the race is expected to finish around 17.35 – both are local times (CEST).
Who to expect in the mix?
The Contenders: Caleb Ewan (Lotto-Soudal) is the obvious pick for a sprint but his leadout train isn’t as good as he is, they’re good but not world class. Arnaud Démare (Groupama-FDJ) has the better train but they’re also prone to launching him too early.
Wout van Aert (Jumbo-Visma) is after a stage win and always a menace in sprints but this finish doesn’t have any features, as in an uphill slope, to advantage him and [update 8.30am] Belgian media say he’s going to sit out the sprint and aim for the time trial instead. Sonny Colbrelli (Bahrain) also won’t find much to suit in the finish today.
Tim Merlier (Alpecin-Fenix) had a bad crash on the opening day, injuring both knees so will Mathieu van der Poel sprint instead or do they play the Jasper Philipsen card? Mark Cavendish (Deceuninck-Quickstep), well why not? But even in his pomp he often needed a sprint stage or two to get going. Cees Bol (DSM) gets a run for the line, Trek-Segafredo will probably back Mads Pedersen today
And as ever, yesterday.
Yay I get to watch this one live....... oh it's a sprint day 🙁
Ewan today for me, well at least I hope so as I put him in my team lol
Heart over head call of Cav.
He had a run at the intermediate sprint yesterday with his new leadout man.
I think Sagan will be in the mix too, maybe the technical finish will suit him. More leftfield call - Bryan Coquard.
TBH Cavs got as good a chance as anyone. Sure Ewan is a threat, but if he gets it wrong, then you can see Cav/Morkov being right right there.... Sprinting is tough in terms of positioning as we know but DQS are experts at this. It would be amazing to see him win it.
I would love to see Cav win but I think Demare has it today. Coquard is a good call though
I will shed a tear of delight if Cav wins today (may be awkward as I'm in the office)
did anyone else have serious leg envy when MVDP crossed the line yesterday. Hewn from Mahogany 🙂
chance of thunderstorms.... I wonder whether the longish drag up towards the end is long enough and steep enough for the old Bora push also known as the Cav and Caleb killer.
are we going to see green leading out Cavendish and yellow leading out Merlier ?
G out! 🙁
FFS. Welsh Crash Magnet.
There we go taxi for Thomas.
Looks like a broke bone 🙁
The white shades are broken too.
*Edit back on......doesn't look happy
I think we are at Peak Geraint
that doesn't look good
My fantasy team is in bits now.
My fantasy team is in bits now.
So is Dave Brailsford's
When he turns & looks into the camera during the Zwift advert I am always half expecting him to suddenly smack into something.
That's the kind of weather that almost makes me pleased to be off the bike.
Robert Gesink has stepped off.
David Millar being fairly scathing about Thomas' incident - it was him at fault and he's taken out other riders by his own stupidity including one who has had to retire.
dislocated shoulder
Ah crap!
Hi all. Looking for highlights videos. The ITV site doesn't seem to have yesterdays. Are they going to take more than 24hrs to put them out or am i missing something?
If not ITV what other sites have a decent longish Highlights video?
dislocated shoulder
That's going to hurt later! Although he rode to Paris one year with a fractured pelvis so there's hope for him yet although Carapaz has ridden himself into default Ineos leadership position by virtue of being able to (mostly) stay on his bike.
dislocated shoulder
Put back in and seems to be riding on; Luke Rowe and Jonathan Castrovieijo pacing him back on.....
Tough as teak, even if he can't keep it rubber side down.
uwe-r have you got the ability to record the itv4 7pm highlights?
wednesdays time trial will be painful.
he's collecting quite the crash show reel :/
He really doesn't like to do things the easy way eh?
Hi All.
RE ITV, they have this https://www.itv.com/hub/tour-de-france/1a6999a0283 which is 3 hours long. And confusingly is episode 3. It also doesn't show up under the [stage highlights] tab on the web site.
They have a short version 3mins and a pod cast. Not interested in that.
Channel 4 used to put the 1hr highlights show up on the website. Much better for catching up with the race if you miss a stage. Piss poor from ITV.
@uwe-r - the link I put up is this one - https://www.itv.com/hub/tour-de-france/1a7000a0303
1 hour highlights from 7pm last night.
I've watched both highlights so far from ITV Hub; but they aren't the easiest to find 😀
Switched back to ITV4 (on mute) when G was changing his bike and assumed he was abandoning
Is it truly a bike race if Geraint Thomas hasn’t crashed?
Like clockwork, that gap coming down nicely, peloton are properly winding it up now.
How long before alt tour is a thing in its own right
Roglic crashed again, that's a bad one, he's properly banged up.
Nasty. Let's see if can get back on.
He's going to lose some time out of this, most of JV have gone back. That means WvA is in trouble for the stage win too, he's got no support up the front now.
Oh I can hardly watch this, I hate these crashes. 🙁
this is mental!!!
That moto is SO close to the front of the bunch!
Ouch....
Oh Christ this is awful.
Caleb Ewan and Peter Sagan went down hard. 🙁
Ouch - more chaos with Ewan and Sagan.