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thelawlorfaithful

OT: Tour de France 2018

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Groenewegen bests Gaviria and Sagan yesterday. Stage 8 didn’t record so I’m watching the late night airing. Probably will be a sprint. But tomorrow, man...hell yeah.

We’re all sitting in the dugout. Thinking we should pitch. How you gonna throw a shutout when all you do is bitch.

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Stage 9 is one of the centerpieces the tour organizers built the route around. It’s the roaring crescendo of a tense, but none too decisive opening week. And when the smoke clears it may prove to be the most controversial decision designing a grand tour in at least a decade. Simply put, we’ve never seen any stage like this in the 25 years I’ve been watching, and nobody knows how it’s going to go.

Faced yet again with an uber rich team that’s budget (to say nothing else) allows it to attract and retain the sort of talent that can strangle a Tour peloton to death, the ASO has thrown curve balls at Sky with the route in an attempt to foster more exciting racing. Last year was the emphasis on tricky descents on pivotal stages putting Sky on the defensive on both sides of the mountain. In 2015 the race was backloaded with a brutal slate of Mountains, putting the ball in Quintana and Contador’s Court. It made for more exciting racing, but in the end Froome and the UK Postal Service clamped down on everyone else and took yellow into Paris. Here, the organizers have decided to throw a tornado in the race, and whoever gets chewed up will be up to the cycling gods.

In the past decade the Tour has gone towards having mini-classic style stages in the first week. This helps to animate the race during when it is usually dominated by sprinters, hopleless breakaways, and long periods of nothing happening. They’ve even used to varying successs a stage heavily featuring cobblesones, most notably in 2010 and 2014. But 21.7 km of cobblestones over 15 sections is unheard of in a grand tour. That is a legitimate classics style cobblestone stage and the grumbling about it has been ongoing since the routes announcement last October. It’s not without merit.

Racing on cobblestones at an elite level is a highly specialized skill, one that less than 20 riders in the Tour peloton posess. There are another 40-50 guys that can handle themselves well on the terrain and less than a handful of them are grand tour contenders (These are guys like Dumoulin, a large powerful rider that can produce enough watts to overcome the resistance of the road, and Nibali, one of the great, great bike handlers in the world). Almost everybody with hopes of a high placement will be fish completely out of water. And everybody, without exception, is afraid of the carnage that is going to come. Guys will crash out, flats and mechanicals will be happening everywhere, season ending injuries aren’t just likely but maybe to be expected.

Everyone knows all of this. They also know that race will be on. There will be no truce’s or ceasefires. The strange cycling etiquette that applies sometimes and not others that compels competitors to wait for one who suffers a misfortune through no fault of their own will not be in effect. Andy Dufresne said bad luck floats around, sometimes you’re in the path of the tornado. If you’re in the path of the tornado tomorrow, nothing will save you.

We’re all sitting in the dugout. Thinking we should pitch. How you gonna throw a shutout when all you do is bitch.

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Poor Lawson Craddock crashed on stage 1, breaking his scapula and recieving 15 stitches. He has been heroically soldiering on with only Advil as a painkiller, finishing day after day within the time limit, and raising a good bit of money for charity with his efforts. I can’t see how he survives tomorrow. Hats off to him for his effort if he doesn’t. He made a hell of a go of it. And if he does it will be an incredible feat. The type of superhuman stuff why you watch sports.

We’re all sitting in the dugout. Thinking we should pitch. How you gonna throw a shutout when all you do is bitch.

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Stage 8 finish: Sagan goes too early, Groenewegen is the fastest man a week in, Greipel and Gaviria lose their 2nd and 3rd placing after being penalized for head butting each other. Dan Martin loses more than a minute.

We’re all sitting in the dugout. Thinking we should pitch. How you gonna throw a shutout when all you do is bitch.

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On 7/12/2018 at 11:11 AM, Extra Mayo said:

When wannabe tour de France bike rider ppl yell "On your left!" at me on CC trail I yell back "ON YOUR RIGHT!!!" 

Would you rather have riders just sneak up on you?

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10 hours ago, thelawlorfaithful said:

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Poor Lawson Craddock crashed on stage 1, breaking his scapula and recieving 15 stitches. He has been heroically soldiering on with only Advil as a painkiller, finishing day after day within the time limit, and raising a good bit of money for charity with his efforts. I can’t see how he survives tomorrow. Hats off to him for his effort if he doesn’t. He made a hell of a go of it. And if he does it will be an incredible feat. The type of superhuman stuff why you watch sports.

This dude deserves a jersey of some sort.  I can't imagine the pain. 

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Almost everybody hit the deck at least once, Porte crashed out, Van Garderen lost 5 minutes almost immediately after taking on the leadership role, Uran lost 90 seconds, and in the end the stage wasn’t all that decisive. It was awesome. 

The battered and bruise peleton is gonna badly need tomorrow’s rest day (or to the cynics, blood bag Monday). Then it’s straight into the alps.

We’re all sitting in the dugout. Thinking we should pitch. How you gonna throw a shutout when all you do is bitch.

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Shitty to see Porte crash out.  Even shittier to see his team dick him over.   

I picked Sagan for the cobbles.  His prior victory at Paris-Roubaix being the reason, but I guess he was trapped in the pack this time around. 

Meanwhile, Froome is slowly clawing his way up the GC rankings...

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On 7/15/2018 at 9:31 AM, VandalPride97 said:

This dude deserves a jersey of some sort.  I can't imagine the pain. 

I can’t believe he made it through Roubaix. That dude is a warrior.

We’re all sitting in the dugout. Thinking we should pitch. How you gonna throw a shutout when all you do is bitch.

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Stage 10 and into the Alps we go! It could be seen as an hor d’oeuvre for the next two days, but that Col de Romme is no joke. If somebody wants to make a serious move, the race could blow up. I’m doubtful that this is the profile that anybody will want to outrun the Sky train. Too many mountains to come.

We’re all sitting in the dugout. Thinking we should pitch. How you gonna throw a shutout when all you do is bitch.

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9 hours ago, thelawlorfaithful said:

I can’t believe he made it through Roubaix. That dude is a warrior.

No shit.  We have a short section of cobbles on a path nearby and I cannot imagine how much it would hurt to go over them with a shoulder injury.  Truth be told, I often avoid them because it's like riding a jackhammer.

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Alaphilippe and Van Avermaet are the heroes of the day, winning the stage and extending his lead, respectively, in a day long break. No big shakeup as most of the big names finished together. The few losers were outsiders Jungels, Zakarin, Mollema, and Majka. The big loser was last year’s runner up Uran. Now 4 minutes back of Froome, to say nothing of everybody else, he is doneski.

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We’re all sitting in the dugout. Thinking we should pitch. How you gonna throw a shutout when all you do is bitch.

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Stage 11 is a continuation of the organizers adventure in short, sharp stages. Last year they had a short mountain stage that ended on a descent. The theory being in this day and age of cycling that shorter stages lead to more animated racing. It worked last year, as far as it could, because the profile ended on a downhill. This year they have given the Alps and Pyrinees very short stages with mountain top finishes. Unfortunately, the Alps got the short end of the stick. The finishing mountain is not steep enough to cause trouble, and the preceding climbs are too far out for anyone still nursing real hopes of a final victory to give it a go. Wait a week, the Pyrinees stage is much shorter and steeper.

Unless a couple of guys who have lost time, like Zakarin or Martin, give it a go trying to get into the break on the first climb, expect few GC fireworks. If that does happen successfully, Sky may be unloading bullets way earlier than they had though necessary, which would change the race. Either way, I don’t expect much from the contenders. The Alpe looms large.

We’re all sitting in the dugout. Thinking we should pitch. How you gonna throw a shutout when all you do is bitch.

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Boy was I wrong. Stage 11 was electric. A massive breakaway, Valverde giving it a great go 50 km out, Dumoulin descending like a madman to catch him, possible chinks in Sky’s armour...and then Thomas and Froome smash the race at the end, possibly ending the tour halfway through. That last part is a bummer. Fun stage though.

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We’re all sitting in the dugout. Thinking we should pitch. How you gonna throw a shutout when all you do is bitch.

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Stage 12 is a fairly traditional route and probably the queen stage; Madeleine, Croix de Fer, Alpe D’huez. If anybody has anything to throw at Sky, today is the day. Come home from the Alpe with your shield or on it.

We’re all sitting in the dugout. Thinking we should pitch. How you gonna throw a shutout when all you do is bitch.

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