Tour de France 2012

['Dale]

Please take all the doping-related comments to the thread dedicated to Schleck's situation.

 

Let's write about racing, strategy, teams, Sagan, Sky Train, top 10 contenders, etc.

 

The shows goes on!

 

 

http://velonews.competitor.com/files/2012/07/sagan-wins-2-579x421.jpg

[NotSoBigBen]

Sorry guys that's on my Dreefta

[SwissVan]

Nice Article on Sagan in todays International Herald Tribune

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/18/sports/cycling/18iht-bike18.html?_r=1&ref=global

 

PAU, France — Heavy rains had soaked the roads on Stage 3 of the Tour of Switzerland last month, and as the pack furiously approached the finish line, Peter Sagan’s front wheel slipped on the wet pavement.

 

A lesser rider would have panicked, hit the brakes and crashed into one of the sponsor signs lining the course. Not Sagan.

He calmly unclipped from the pedals, put a leg out for balance, then sprinted past an astonished Baden Cooke to capture the stage victory.

“That’s not a normal thing for a road biker to do,” said Roberto Amadio, Sagan’s team manager at Liquigas-Cannondale. “It’s not easy.”

Sagan, a 22-year-old Slovak who currently wears the green jersey as the top Tour de France sprinter, is not an average road cyclist. Before he began dominating sprint finishes, he was a junior world mountain bike champion.

Sagan’s recovery move in Switzerland was a nod to his days racing suspension-rigged and knobby-tired bikes in the mountains near his hometown of Zilina, a two-hour drive from the Slovak capital of Bratislava, where he won his first race at age 9 on a bike his father had purchased at a local supermarket. Though he switched to road racing full time in 2010, it has not deterred his passion for riding mountain bikes.

“You are in the forest, it is technical and the climbs are harder, but it’s not too long,” Sagan said of mountain bike racing. Despite his knack for road racing, “it’s not as fun” for him as mountain biking, in part because of the frequent lulls in the action, he said.

Sagan is not the first Tour star to make the transition to the road. Among those who started their careers as talented professional mountain bikers are the race’s defending champion, Cadel Evans; Ryder Hesjedal, the Giro d’Italia winner who crashed out of this race on Stage 6; and Floyd Landis, who was stripped of his 2006 Tour title for doping.

There are many disciplines within the world of competitive mountain biking, including the terrifying downhill event, where riders hurtle down cliffs or, on occasion, long stretches of steep urban streets. The specialty that helps form strong road riders, however, is cross-country, a nearly two-hour sprint along narrow dirt paths in the mountains.

To succeed on these tight, undulating courses, cyclists must become expert bike handlers and push the limits of their aerobic capacity.

“You spend two hours giving a threshold effort,” said Hesjedal, who won the silver medal at the cross-country world championship in 2003. “It’s just brutal.”

It is great preparation for racing on the road, though. Sagan, whose teammate Ted King said has “the best bike skills in the peloton,” was able save another near-crash during the Tour de France prologue in Liège by putting his feet down; in the 2003 Tour, Lance Armstrong, who occasionally raced mountain bikes during his career, cut across a field to avoid a spill.

Mountain bikers are typically strong in road time trials, too. In the concluding race against the clock of the Giro d’Italia in May, Hesjedal used his cornering skills to overcome Joaquim Rodríguez and win the race; in 2009, Jean-Christophe Péraud, a mountain biker who won an Olympic silver medal a year before at the cross-country event in Beijing, captured the French national time trial title.

“It provides us with a motor, so to speak,” said Péraud, a rider for AG2R La Mondiale who took second place in Stage 12 last Thursday after a valiant effort on a breakaway. “On the road, when we’re attacking, riding sprints, or on the last mountain climb, we’re at the same level of effort that we sustain throughout a mountain biking race.”

Péraud, 35, is a relative latecomer to the world of professional road racing. Three years ago, he decided to pare back his mountain schedule and focus on the road, but he continues to ride selected cross-country races. He is one of the rare riders to do so.

[Cyclewizz]

Ok up and running .... I haven't seen anything for the old man's birthday yet .....

 

 

Thanks Ben

[Tubehunter]

link pls NSBB .....

 

Please send a link someone...

[The Pirate]

For me the best one on the web is : http://www.letour.com/le-tour/2012/us/live/aso/

[The Pirate]

The break will most probably only come after the Sprint point today.

[kosmonooit]

Many options here

[Cippo]

Doesnt seem like Sagan is going to bother with 1st sprint of the day. He aint in break of 30 riders.

[The Pirate]

Half the peloton seems to be in the "break" - 39 guys

Edited July 18, 2012 by The Pirate

[Lucky Luke.]

looks hot as hell out there, please for the love of bicycles let somebody put the hammer to Wiggins on the steepest ramp available.

[NotSoBigBen]

looks hot as hell out there, please for the love of bicycles let somebody put the hammer to Wiggins on the steepest ramp available.

 

from your lips to the BMC/Leeky Gas or anyone elses team managers please

[TNT1]

from your lips to the BMC/Leeky Gas or anyone elses team managers please

 

Need Brailsford's phone number?

[Lucky Luke.]

from your lips to the BMC/Leeky Gas or anyone elses team managers please

 

I reckon BMC need to hack into the Sky radio channel and put on their best Yates impression. Neck a bottle of vodka to get the slurring right and order Froome to either put the hammer down like his life depends upon it or pull off and hand in his kit.

[Zook]

I reckon BMC need to hack into the Sky radio channel and put on their best Yates impression. Neck a bottle of vodka to get the slurring right and order Froome to either put the hammer down like his life depends upon it or pull off and hand in his kit.

 

It's a great idea. If they fail at making it exciting in even these mountains, my own idea is to hand Tour and team managment over to the pro wrestling people. It'll take ages for the public to realise the change, although the cyclists will wish for the days of "tacks on the road" being their biggest worry. I'm thinking teams including some rugby players, and open warfare on the hillside, with paint-ball guns. The cyclist girlfriends personally encouraging them up the mountain in revealing kit should top it off, live-twittering each other as they lose bets and have another tequila.

[Lucky Luke.]

It's a great idea. If they fail at making it exciting in even these mountains, my own idea is to hand Tour and team managment over to the pro wrestling people. It'll take ages for the public to realise the change, although the cyclists will wish for the days of "tacks on the road" being their biggest worry. I'm thinking teams including some rugby players, and open warfare on the hillside, with paint-ball guns. The cyclist girlfriends personally encouraging them up the mountain in revealing kit should top it off, live-twittering each other as they lose bets and have another tequila.

 

I think you might be on to something, I've often thought that LA might bulk up a bit and turn to pro wrestling as a place where the fans are still able to suspend belief regarding his athletic achievements. Tri is out for him now so WWF is surely the next logical stop.