TdF Stage 18 – Sporting Stakes [Spoilers]

Rumours on Twitter suggest one of the bikes was thrown off a cliff shortly after Contador changed bikes, which was shortly after the ‘surprise’ bike weigh in was announced.

I would so love this to be true (and filmed).

But it won’t be.

Sep vanmarke tweeted that his small chainring broke on first climb so he was stuck on his 53 for one and a half ascents of Alpe duez 😯

Well that was a great stage, so glad it lived up to the hype. The fanzone at canary wharf was a great place to spend the afternoon, lots of food but only coors or cider… Not much shade either.

ITV4 coverage as well, this is the first time I’ve watched it. Terrible, so many advert breaks and always when something’s happening! And then the commentary…

Taking the penalty was definitely better than running on empty.

After van Garderen’s chain slip and chase did he go past Riblon and Moser or sit with them for a while?

Any (reliable) news from the weigh-ins. Presume they must have reason to suspect some bending of the rules.

I wonder what Jaguar make of team sky blaming their prestige xf for the energy gel debacle.

I wonder what Jaguar make of team sky blaming their prestige xf for the energy gel debacle

This!

Should have got a Skoda. Or a Rolls. I hear those never break down.

some fun was had at the back of the peleton

Skoda claim on their web site that they have never suffered a breakdown in any of the cars they supply for the Tour. If true that’s over 200 cars a year for 10 years which isn’t too bad. Depressing though in a way that the worlds greatest race has more cars covering the course than cyclists.

Yeah, but ‘technical problems’ could just mean that the box of energy gels fell behind the driver’s seat and no-one could reach them. I’m sure it’s all posturing but it’s not hard to imagine a set of circumstances where they couldn’t get ample gels to the riders.

Suspect you’re right, but using one of your sponsors as the scapegoat is a bit unprofessional, no?

I don’t think the guy doing the interview had the media training the cyclists did. The truth is the truth though. Sky have a Jaguar person embedded in the team. Let’s see what his report is like tomorrow.

Here’s the link to it:

http://www.teamsky.com/features/0,27285,,00.html

Holy shizzz that was intense! The spectators **** me right off, I was cringing all the way through that, FFS stay out of the way! Wonder how Froome will recover tonight? Porte was a better man today than Froome was last year….

Could TJ have done it without the bike problems, he’ll never stop asking that eh. What a day!

Sick to death of the ITV commentory now, they are so unbelievably poor, they miss stuff happening constantly while babbling inane crap.

Camaraderie between Porte and Froome certainly seems stronger than between Wiggins and Froome last year! How much of that was down to Wiggins I wonder?

Sick to death of the ITV commentory now, they are so unbelievably poor, they miss stuff happening constantly while babbling inane crap.

Had to put up with this the other week while out the country, can’t believe how poor it is compared to Eurosport.

Agree with that, they seem to understand each other very well and get on better again. It’s funny to be in the same position as last year wondering what Porte could have done on the climb if he wasn’t waiting for his team leader a la Wiggo/Froome.

Aye, def preferred the Eurosport coverage for the early season races. Can’t trust Eurosport when it comes to recording stuff though I found 🙁 might be better now? Why the hell doesn’t Boardman commentate?

It’s a different situation to last year though. Porte is well down the GC and has no chance of winning the Tour, whereas last year Froome was running second in GC and could conceivably have beaten Wiggins by enough on the mountains to take the lead, so his impatience with having to play domestique was understandable. Porte going off the front and leaving his team leader on his own would be unforgivable in terms of the team’s tour goals.

Love the “back of the peloton pic RD!

Camaraderie between Porte and Froome certainly seems stronger than between Wiggins and Froome last year! How much of that was down to Wiggins I wonder?

Maybe it was down to Froome who Wiggins couldn’t trust and who didn’t want to do what he was being payed to do.

Froome did what he was paid to do whether he liked it or not.

He gapped Wiggins a couple of times but dropped back to collect him again – just like Porte did on the second d’Huez.

There was an interesting comment from one of Sky that Froome was a great leader to work for partly it sounded because if you toiled for him all day you could trust him to try and produce results from your work (Aix, Ventoux) and partly because he’s just easy to get in with. It didn’t sound scripted.

Certainly if Porte has pedalled his bum off dropping people up a climb, it probably makes him feel good to see that turning into tens of seconds gained on the day – an “I did that” feeling.

I studiously ignored this thread yesterday, as I was recording the live coverage to watch in the evening.

What a magnificent stage, I’ve not had my excitement levels sustained at that level for a very very long time…. 😀 ….if ever 😳

Magnifique! Formidable! Incroyable!

Chapeau and chapeau again to too many to mention by name.

Agree with that, they seem to understand each other very well and get on better again. It’s funny to be in the same position as last year wondering what Porte could have done on the climb if he wasn’t waiting for his team leader a la Wiggo/Froome.

Porte did deliberately take it very easy on the TT the day before though, I think he was about 5 minutes slower than Froome, so he’d have fresher legs to support Froome. He was still probably quite surprised to see Froome coming back to him though after he’d gone up the road.

brothers in arms

okay so I’m a bit late to the party but I need to ask this question as it’s been bugging me.

There I was last Thursday morning riding up the alpe with my two sons when I hear someone comment “look at that dialled with slicks” commenting on the dialled bikes frame I had kitted out for my youngest son.

That must have been someone off here, c’mon who was it? 8)

Here he is at the top

Looking a bit better than Froomedog

A great week spent riding the alpe and then Col de la Madeleine the next day and Semnoz on Saturday. If you haven’t done it yourself you really must ride the alps during the tour.