even tho I said ignore polls until after convention…

Harris has her work cut out, but I think she can do it

My heart sunk when she was endorsed because I know sentiment towards her is not overtly positive. But listening to her speak, it’s a bit, wow, normal politician… Exactly the thing Americans are calling out for. I’ve no idea if it’s going to cut through but there’s hope that the voting public are feeling the same way. I see a glimmer of light.

Anyway, I’m convinced it cost bronze and possibly silver but not gold, YMMV.

Maybe. I’m not saying he would’ve won but I think it would’ve been within 5s. We don’t know how the change affected his performance either, whether he went faster or slower knowing he was chasing from behind. I’m pretty sure he’ll be wrestling with some what ifs.

Presumably he’ll be riding the world’s so will get another chance.

If their bike swap took 50% longer than that I reckon there’s some [whatever the opposite of marginal is] gains to be had.

The time is lost in slowing from 55kmh per hour and getting back up to speed. The bike change itself is maybe 5s.

How do you mean?

I could be wrong, just going off what I could see on screen, but from memory Tarling was up about 14s on Van Aert, and immediately after the bike change still getting up to speed he was around 14s down. He came in around 32s behind Remco. My numbers could be a little off but the change definitely cost him in the region of 30s.

any suggestion Remco’s win was in any sense ‘by luck’ isn’t right IMHO

Not suggesting he was lucky at all. Apparently the fastest TT in Olympic history by 1.5kmh. They’re all beasts. Just saying it would have been close and Tarling must be gutted not to contest it because of a mechanical.

Edit: he was less than 28s behind Remco.

The amount of abuse you get as a cyclist is unacceptable. If you swapped ‘cyclist’ for race or neuro diverse then the abuse would not be tolerated

I completely agree with this on the basis that the danger and violence you’re subjected to as somebody who rides a bike is very real, and there are very real and sometimes tragic consequences to attitudes played out towards people on the road.

When considering the amount of cyclist hate there is out there, the strange thing then is to see just how popular traffic free routes are.

Surprisingly all the same attitudes exist in the Netherlands and if you wander onto the road, drivers will quickly let you know you’re unwelcome. The solution is well planned infrastructure that works for everybody, whether it’s lower speed limits, improving pedestrian and cycling infrastructure, or building dedicated routes. Nobody needs to think about cars versus cyclists, we just need to build networks that work for everybody. All the evidence is there to support it.

The times on screen suggested he lost at least 28s in the swap. I reckon there would have been a couple of seconds between them.

Would have been very, very close without that puncture.

Tarling’s putting in a good effort. Will be gutting if a mechanical costs him gold.

Cars are a necessity for rural dwellers if you want any kind of access to modern life.

Which applies to less than 20% of the population in England. Even there, there are issues with closing public services, schools, etc. There are things that can be improved everywhere outside of the most remote locations.

It’s a difficult topic to approach because of the very biases it’s confronting and I’d say very few people get it right. That’s a decent effort from GCN, which is good to see, and good on them for taking it on.

The thing is people view cars especially as a “necessity” and for some they probably are…

They are because that’s the way we’ve made them, and we continue to to make it more and more difficult to use any alternative means of transport. It needs addressed.

What would be good to see as a follow up, is an actual working model. There’s one just a stone’s throw from the UK where these problems are thought of pragmatically, and almost everybody, whatever age, has safe means of travel regardless of their chosen transport. The principles around which really need to be brought into our thinking when designing infrastructure before it’s too late.

… disadvantages … the prime one being its easy to lose control of your spending and get into debt.

Every transaction is recorded and itemised for you. Maybe this applies to some people, but personally I feel the opposite is true.

We have loads of local shops that flat out refuse cards even though they have the facilities. Some of them I’d use on a regular basis but I don’t go at all because I don’t carry cash, and even if I had notes on me, I’m not breaking into them in return for a pocket full of 20p’s. I’d happily have the card processing cost passed onto me for the convenience.

Shop owners must be aware they’re losing customers and that that must greatly outweigh the cost of processing, so I can only assume they’re way too far gone down the conspiracy rabbit hole, or it’s a tax dodge that might have some financial benefit to them.

How do we know this isn’t normal?

Have we ever had “normal”

The definition of normal:

“conforming to a standard; usual, typical, or expected.”

There has been a fairly typical style of racing for the past few decades, with some exceptions during the Armstrong era. What we’re seeing now far surpasses what we seen from Armstrong and Pantani imo.

The type of racing we’re seeing now hasn’t really happened since Merckx and was strongly considered to be impossible in the modern era.

People are playing it down, saying there’s just no competition, yet the riders themselves are telling us the racing is harder than ever. Bardet claimed the performance he put in this year would have given him a top 5 position 10 years ago. Even MVdP was surprised he was being caught so easily.

Every metric you measure it by tells us the racing is faster than ever.

Pog is dominating every single race, not because everybody else is slower, but because he’s either one of the greatest natural talents we’ve ever seen (alongside Jonas, and perhaps Remco) or he’s found a considerable athletic advantage over the rest, whether it be ethical or not.

Nobody can possibly claim there hasn’t been a massive shift in pro cycling in the past 4 or 5 years. It’s night and day.

Of course none of this is evidence of cheating. Its just not normal.

This is all it comes down to. The amount of people going out their way to explain how normal it is when it so blatantly isn’t, is a bit surreal.

Nobody knows if there’s anything underhand going on, but it’s curious to say the least.

Weight plays a massive role when climbing. You can be as fit as can be but if you’re carrying an extra stone or 3 then it will slow you down considerably. Even if you’re trim but not built like your typical noodly cyclist, it’s going to be a struggle. There’s also fit, and there’s FIT. Tough conditions will have a tendency to make you feel small unless you’re somewhere on the elite side of the spectrum. 2300m is a huge amount of climbing over that distance.

He’s in joint 8th place for most stage wins in the Tdf. He has 5 more stages than Peter Sagan.

Lance Armstrong would’ve pushed him down to 9th if he hadn’t have been removed from the list, but he’s only 5 stages behind, and Lance didn’t start his total domination until he was 27 year old.

Tadej, of course, was the youngest winner of the GC since 1904 (and that win was only awarded because 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th were all disqualified for cheating).

I think an awful lot less of Biden for making this announcement over X.

A bit off topic, but how come Biden is using his own Xitter account? Is it just the trend that Trump set, or did Trump seige the potus account?

Over the last 10 years the average time gap between 1st and 10th has been 16 minutes with a range between 7 and 26 minutes. 10th place is currently sitting at 22 minutes, it’s hardly suggesting they are way ahead of everyone else compared to history.

10th is now 29 minutes. 4th is 19 minutes. 4th!

That’s immediately after winning the Giro with the biggest margin since 1965.

Not to mention winning single day races going solo from nearly 100km out.

25 years old and he’s placed 1st three times, and 2nd twice.

Crazy to think that if it wasn’t for Jonas, Pogacar would have won 5 Tours de France already at the age of 25.

I’d give a foam roller a go. They’re easy to use on calves and will pinpoint and release any knots.

I had a really bad squeal on a mechanical caliper for ages. I tried new pads, greasing the backs, messing around with the retainer, aligning the caliper, basically everything I could think of, over and over. In the end I stripped it all down, made sure the caliper bolts were properly greased, put it back together and it mostly went away. I still don’t know what the cause was but I put it down to ‘dry’ joints on a bike that had seen more than enough wet weather over the years, potentially creating some kind of resonance. I honestly don’t know. It drove me nuts for the best part of a year.

Vuelta as well? Why not, and win half the stages too.

I think UAE have already ruled it out on the basis they don’t want him burnt out. Which is probably sensible, even if it would be an incredible achievement.

Last year we were using Pogacars performance to justify the Vingagard was juiced now it’s vice versa.

Both of them are producing performances well beyond what we’ve seen in the modern era.

2nd place was in intensive care a few months back

Which is more reason to raise an eyebrow.

3rd place has little track record in GTs and is only in his 1st TdF

Yet is producing performances on climbs better than anybody in the history of the TdF before him, albeit slightly behind 1st and 2nd. This is the guy that was consistently getting dropped by domestiques a couple of weeks prior in the Dauphine.

The numbers don’t lie. There are several former grand tour winners in the peloton. These 3 are way ahead because they’re riding faster than anyone in the history of the sport. These margins of winning simply haven’t happened in the modern era. You can argue that we suddenly have an influx of super talented individuals, or that they’ve uncovered new training techniques, but you cannot argue that it’s normal or due to a lack of competition, because that’s simply not true.

I’m sorry, but after today’s stage I’m finding it increasingly difficult to not be suspicious.

He’s done it every race he’s ridden this year, and plenty in the years prior. It’s hard to buy into the idea that it’s down to nutrition and technology when 4th place in the GC is over 15 minutes back. 2nd and 3rd are also ‘once in a generation’ wonders, smashing records themselves.

It was considered for a long time that because of the specialisation and alignment in training and technology, there never could be another Merckx. Yet Pogacar has already gone well beyond what Armstrong and Pantani were doing, and well into Merckx territory.

I’ve said it loads of times, I’m quite enjoying the spectacle. Good or bad, we’re witnessing an historic moment, and it makes for some utterly bonkers racing. But you have to ask the question, how? How is it even possible? What’s changed?

5 years for conspiring to hold up traffic??

Scary.

British bread is great! But you need to get it from an actual baker, not just buy supermarket shite.

Greggs?

I refuse to deal with them since one of their drivers tried to run me off the road, and they never had the courtesy to even respond to my complaint.

Could just be a quarter of a century of performance improvement.

It could be. I enjoy the spectacle, but I also find it fascinating. I don’t think even the likes of Armstrong and Pantani rode like these guys. What we see now we’ve not really seen for 50 years. Something has changed, and it’s just changed in the past few years.

45 seconds?  It was beating Marco Pantani’s 1998 effort by 3 minutes and 44 seconds

Vaughters checked it on his phone during the ad break and thought it to be 45 seconds initially. They corrected it later on, confirming it was closer to 4 minutes.

He looked utterly cooked at the finish.

The insane thing is that he’ll still have ridden it over an hour quicker than even the fastest amateurs!

It’s funny, when you watch these guys in the flesh, they’re absolutely rapid uphill, every single one of them. The differences between the climbers and sprinters are marginal when compared to the average amateur.

EuroSport talking about the very real risk that the time cut is going to be a big test for a lot of riders today to get in before it.

33 minutes back for Cav now and they’ve still got half the stage’s climbing to go.

Can’t see how Visma can attack given the riders Pog has supporting him

One of them has already dropped out with Covid. They’ll all have been spending time together, so it will be interesting to see whether they all make it through the next week.

Remco is the biggest surprise for me. I’d pretty much written him off as a grand tour rider, despite winning the vuelta. But to be only a short distance behind Jonas and 4 minutes ahead of the next person, that’s quite impressive. I could still see him having a bad day on a really tough climb, but so far he’s been flawless.

Missed an opportunity to name this thread Bidon, stay or go?

On a more serious note, are there any concerns with microplastics when putting bottles in the dishwasher? We don’t want to be drinking mould, but we probably don’t want our organs full of plastic either.

Covid in the peloton is worrying. I fear a lot more will drop out. It’s surprising people are being allowed to ride after testing positive.

You only have to go back to the heady days of the Truss government to see the trouble cutting taxes and borrowing more can cause.

I’m not for one second suggesting Trussonomics was in any way good policy, but there’s a significant sociological component in economics, and I do wonder how much of the reaction to that was down to it being delivered by Liz Truss.

Would the markets have had the same reaction if it was delivered with confidence by a Blair or Obama type figure? I’m not convinced they would.

There’s posts, reels, and stories on Instagram. Posts show as default on their feed. You need to select to see their reels in their feed (play icon I think) . And stories are similar to Facebook if you’re familiar, by clicking their profile pics, or they’re listed at the top of the homepage.

The notification could have been for either of those 3.

Cav will be kicking himself after that one. Was in the perfect position on Biniam’s wheel until he decided it wasn’t. Did a good job getting there as well.

There’s an interview with Cav where he claims there’s a number of people riding with Covid. I think maybe the Never Strays Far podcast, or The Move (I forget which) mentioned whispers of illness with Remco. Let’s hope sickness doesn’t become a deciding factor in the race.

Tell him it’s £100pw to rent your drive.

I imagine he’s just sorting logistics for picking it up. Maybe he went out on the piss at the weekend instead. Would be taking the piss a bit if he didn’t turn up this weekend imo.

Pog doesn’t have to attack in the mountains

He will though, he can’t help himself.