2012 Tour de France

If you've been watching the tour that long I would have thought you'd understand that it's a 3 week race and the team is important. If all 9 riders rode for themselves, another team would win. Lemond had to wait for Hinault--that was one of the most, if not the most, infamous instances in which a younger, stronger, teammate had to wait for his more experienced, successfull, older leader.

Seeing team leaders falter and young riders doing better than they or their directors expected is not new this year. It's one of the great things of the sport--there's no place to hide out there.

 

I do understand. I just find that as it becomes more common and more "enforced" (by use of the radios), this years tour has become a little dull. I'm not saying it never happened before. Notice how now that Cadel has lost so much time, TeeJay is now able to ride to his potential.

 

The Tour. Bleah! What a disappointment. Maybe it's just me but I feel even if it was Zabrieskie or Horner in Wiggins place doing the exact same ride I'd still be bored with it.
Super glad GB finally has a Tour win though! They are so happy!!

 

I think decided to showed everyone he still is the fastest by far. There was on one in the picture once he turned the afterburners on. Makes me belive the crash hurt him more then he let on.

 

After this in '09 Giro, it ain't over till it...yadda...yadda, yadda.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaCpwR8G0hw


Plate #1:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sziZ6PejrfM&feature=endscreen&NR=1

 

First year that I lost interest in the tour. Just now finding out who even won and that it was over already.

 

Still cool to watch Cavendish rocket. WOW! I also thought it was cool that Wiggins led him out at the finish. You don't see that very often, if at all. For some reason, I was just not a Wiggins fan in the beginning (I can't explain it). But I like his drive for tradition and wanting to give back to his team. That dude is growing on me.

I hate the radio thing, and I think it is ruining the Tour de France...

 

Interesting article / thoughts from Horner on food / bottle poisoning...not saying that Frank and others are innocent...but this opened my eyes...I always assumed that during the race they were only drinking "known" bottles.

http://velonews.competitor.com/2012...ry-time-you-take-a-drug-test-you-worry_230775


“During this Tour de France, I probably took 30 Cokes and 30 bottles from guys on the side of the road that I don’t have any idea who they are. And I drank them anyways,” Horner said, sitting on the road after the mountaintop finish of stage 17.

“The very, very best riders in the Tour? They don’t have to do that because they’re not suffering that bad. Away from the top five? After the top-five best climbers, maybe the top-three best climbers, then we have to take what we can get sometimes. Sometimes it comes from the guy on the side of the road. You saw where they throw tacks on the side of the road, so they could easily put something in a bottle for sure.”

 

I agree! That was actually the first thing I thought about when I saw the Frank thing. I was watching those guys take stuff from the crowd and thinking WT? Who knows what is in thos bottles!?!?!!?

 

Wiggins was to strong for Evans this year congrats

 

Clinical. By far the best riders (responded to attacks as needed, won stages, had a sprinter win stages, no panic, top climbers, top TTers) this year. Few guys tried, but no one else could do anything. This year's race was fairly tailor made with the amount of ITT. Will be interesting to see next year's route and see how things shake out. I don't think even if Contador or A. Schleck had been racing it would've been much different. *Maybe* Contador cause he can TT and explosive climb. But, doubtful without that kind of full team support. Rainbow stripes spent like 7 days as bottle boy.

 

Dig that finish. Cavendish goes from 500 metres and nobody was up for that charge.

Wiggins as leadout - holy crap! Eurosports estimated that Wiggins upped the speed from 40MPH to near 45 for 600 metres that just toasted most leadouts. Wiggins is one great rider. Super stuff!

 

I'm showing an avg. speed of 24.5 MPH for Wiggins/Sky. (2139.5 miles/87'34"= ~24.5 MPH)

Disco in '05 still has the top avg. speed: 26+.

TdF stats through the years:

http://www.bikeraceinfo.com/tdf/tdfstats.html

 

Brailsford hits the big time - again. Wiggins' team braintrust:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/ot...radley-Wiggins-historic-win-for-Team-Sky.html

 

Cav proves he is the fastest sprinter. What an awesome, and rare, sight to see the yellow jersey leading out the sprinter for the finish. While watching it a coworker overhears Liggett mention Sagan's name and asks, "Did they just call that guy Penis Sagging?" Now that it's over, what are we going to watch and bitch about till the Olympics?

 

Loved to see TJ do so well this year.... and Froome, watch out, this guy is an animal... fun to see the "new" guys coming up. Be interesting to see how AC fares in next year's Tour. I still love watching the French countryside in HD...

 

Riis talking the talk now, "Contador has to win Vuelta" ...yadda, yadda.

Cool stuff. I'll have another three weeks of blowing off morning rides.

 

I know, it makes me wish there were a channel just called "Helicopter", that streams footage of flyovers from around the world on days of local celebrations, with light narration by Phil Liggett ...or Stephen Fry or just some nice regional music with subtitles...

 

My wife wants to go to the our next year just based on the flyover shots. She actually knew more riders names by the end than I did. I didn't follow it at all before this year.