Watch Demare from the point where they are on the left-hand side of the road.
Keep your eyes on him and then look at what happens to Bouhanni.
just saying.

Keep your eyes on him and then look at what happens to Bouhanni.

it was sketchy, but Bouhanni was going backwards.

Watch Demare from the point where they are on the left-hand side of the road.
Keep your eyes on him and then look at what happens to Bouhanni.
just saying.

Borderline, I agree, but Demare didn’t take out three riders.

Not as controversial a point as you might think – I’m certainly not disagreeing with that. The elbow looks bad, but I don’t think it was particularly significant in the crash (whether or not it was deliberate).

Yeah Bouhanni was complaining about that, and he has a point. Though I think he’s exaggerating to suggest it cost him the win – Demare was already steaming past. I reckon Demare is lucky the other incident happened, as otherwise the commissaires might have looked closer at that. I still don’t think it’s quite the equivalent of what Sagan did though.

he was simply defending from Sagan’s aggression

I don’t even really buy that. He had the wheel and was moving in a straight line following it. Sagan moves over. Cav had three options; fire the parachutes and give way which is never going to happen, he’s a sprinter going for a win and besides he doesn’t know who’s behind him about to rear end him if he does – I might not be a sprinter but one thing I know about being a group moving at speed is that you don’t drop anchors. Bail into the barriers. Or hold his line. It’s not ‘defending aggression’, I don’t see he had any other option open to him.

Can we not just blame Lance Armstrong and move on?

Fair enough – I don’t disagree with any of that, and maybe just used the wrong words.

I might not be a sprinter but one thing I know about being a group moving at speed is that you don’t drop anchors. Bail into the barriers. Or hold his line

Waving at Mr V, it always amazes me when you see the sprinters open up at the end and pull away, but then you’ll see a lot of the lead out men pretty much stop pedalling and get overtaken, i’m surprised more accidents don’t happen with this speed differential.

Waves back at the thought of me and Scud in a sprint finish. You could time it with a calendar.

Me too – I can only assume they are somehow a bit more predictable, in that the others know they are lead out men and will at some stage move over and be ready for it, plus they usually do hold their (broadly straight) line so the man they’re launching can come past along with anyone else on their wheel.

Assuming a slovakian doesn’t suddenly….. no, stop it.

Ok, I ‘m just going to come out and say it – just sack off the sprint stages completely. Looked at in totality they are pretty mind numbingly boring save for 3 mins at the end. And even that is not that entertaining. The occasional sacrificial lamb is sent off the front so we can all stare at the logos on his shorts but we all know that 99 times out of 100 the peleton will bring them back before the finish. The stages are flat and boring to make sure all the sprinters make it to the finish line. Save for the testosterone boys playing silly buggers at the end it’s just a day of sitting there tapping out some unnecessary miles for the bulk of the riders. If we must have them make them 10km long like a prologue or replace with an evening crit with 5 or 10 seconds bonus on the line every lap to shake up the GC.

This. Completely agree

the whole point of the longer sprint stages is to make sure that the riders have 200km in their legs so they’re tired even before the sprint. Sprinting at TDF level is beyond most of us anyway – delivering that kind of performance after a 200km day is another level entirely. Putting on a 10 lap crit is not the same thing.

There’d be a few more heroes waiting to have a pop as well, would be chaos…

Crits instead of sprint stages in the Tour? Would be awesome. If they can have time trials then why not?

They have a crit every year on the Champs Elysees.

except they don’t as there are no bonuses for lap wins, and they do have the (somewhat ceremonial) roll-in from the outskirts to get 50-odd km in the legs first

Sprinters points at the line every lap? It’d liven it up no end.

Super big points if you lap the peloton track stylie.

Putting on a 10 lap crit is not the same thing.

Which is was my point. Hopefully much better.

I’m not sure you can call the Champs Elysees a crit as only the last lap counts.