Getting in early on this thread cos I’ll be on a train for a lot of today. Also, I can’t do tomorrow’s thread cos (oh the irony) I’m working on a bike race…

What did we learn from Stage 1 then? Yves Lampaert has gone from being a solid TT’er to someone who can beat the world’s best in rather unexpected fashion. The team of marginal gains can forget the basics like taking off a gilet. Helmets with built in aero snoods look stupid. Worn on an rider who is upright and moving fast rather than sliding across a rain-soaked corner (twice…), the EF Education – Easypost kit is…”vibrant”. And Copenhagen is really quite a beautiful city, even in the rain.

And today, the stage moves up to the Danish coast so the word on everyone’s lips is…CROSSWINDS. Or SIDEVIND in Danish. 🙂

Hugging the coast for 202 very flat km (bar a couple of 4th Cat lumps), the race finishes over the spectacular Great Belt Bridge which, depending on the weather forecast you see is supposed to be either a headwind or a crosswind.

Picks for today? Obviously it should have been Cav but moving on from that outrage…
Fabio Jackobsen is the obvious one from a QST team now defending the yellow jersey. Riders like Wout van Aert and maybe Mads Pedersen will likely be there if the bunch is shredded by crosswinds and Peter Sagan is probably as near as possible a dead cert for a top 5.

Spoiler chat about today’s stage, who’s crashed, who’s in the break etc in here, general TdF chat in @lunge ‘s thread HERE

nice one – i wondered if you would pull this together so i can read it with my morning coffee 🙂

I hope we have crosswinds!!!

Rollout now!
Yellow Jersey: Yves Lampaert
Green: Wout van Aert
White: Tadej Pogacar

it’s certainly a bit blowy today here in Copenhagen at least, the bridge could be fun

The crowds are absolutely insane! The number of people out and about watching the race makes the Tour De Yorkshire look like an evening tt crowd

Windsock on the bridge very much shouting CROSSWIND!!

Seems to have been mostly tailwind up until now and it’s been a fast stage so far.

Sounds like Valverde is out – incident with a vehicle in the convoy.
I’m watching live coverage again but only just back online so on a bit of a catch up.

Crashy McCrashface.

Good lad, I know people are disappointed about the Cavs exclusion but what a story this makes.

Sounds like Valverde is out – incident with a vehicle in the convoy.

No, it was while training.

https://road.cc/content/news/alejandro-valverde-hospital-after-hit-and-run-crash-294091

We need to talk about Magnus Cort today.

Celebrating going into polka dots like it was a stage win:

The mountain king of the day:

🇩🇰 Magnus Cort Nielsen!#TDF2022 pic.twitter.com/xwkowC39qU

— Domestique (@Domestique___) July 2, 2022

Then wears these crocs on the podium:

The man the shoes pic.twitter.com/7rfZ0ROXEX

— Tour de France™ (@LeTour) July 2, 2022

My new hero.

What a finish. For the wrong and right reasons. With the best will in the world, Cav would not have won that. I wish he’d been there though.

Christ that was a dull dull dull stage. Usually you can hope for a bit of decent scenery to lessen the boredom, but even the superbridge was dull. Just hope tomorrow is a bit more exciting.