Tour de France 2016.

What kind of nonsense is this? Cavendish pulls out of the race to concentrate on the Olympics. There are only a few stages left. I wanted to see him the last day in Paris.

Originally posted by SanDiego49er:

What kind of nonsense is this? Cavendish pulls out of the race to concentrate on the Olympics. There are only a few stages left. I wanted to see him the last day in Paris.

There are some really difficult climbing stages starting tomorrow. Cav would likely struggle to make the time cut in the grupetto. It would be nice to see him race on Sunday, but he'll save some matches for Rio.

Originally posted by SoCal9er:

Originally posted by SanDiego49er:

What kind of nonsense is this? Cavendish pulls out of the race to concentrate on the Olympics. There are only a few stages left. I wanted to see him the last day in Paris.

There are some really difficult climbing stages starting tomorrow. Cav would likely struggle to make the time cut in the grupetto. It would be nice to see him race on Sunday, but he'll save some matches for Rio.

I guess so. I like seeing him on the last day in Paris. He has won that stage many times. It is just on such a grand stage in iconic, beautiful Paris.

Rohan Dennis has done the same, guess he wouldn't have been much use to Porte and Tejay on the remaining stages and even the time trial isn't a great one for him.

Porte climbed another place in the GC, attacked close to the finish and only Froome could go with him. Took time off all the other GC contenders and sits exactly 2min behind 2nd place. I'm expecting a good TT from him and to take more time off some of those ahead of him in the next stage.
Tejay blew up and dropped over 26min, guess he can only try to help Porte where he can for the remainder of the stages as a top 10 finish is now gone and probably the teams classification as well seeing BMC are now almost 15min behind.

Yates continues to impress best of the rest behind Froome and Porte and got a little time on the othe GC riders, 2nd place might not be out of his reach. Hope Orica can resign him as at 23 he certainly looks like a future champion, shame his twin brother isn't riding the tour this year. Simon was probably the more highly ranked of the 2 for a good while.

Only just read the news about Shane Archbold, crashed at 50mph, then got back on the bike and rode 50miles to finish the stage.
Big effort but when you realise he did it with a broken pelvis it shows how tough these blokes are.

TT done and won, Froome just to good winning the stage by 22sec from Dumoulin, 33sec to Aru and Porte.
Bardet dropped 42sec, Quintana 1.10, Yates 1..23 Mollema 1.25
Froome now leads Mollema by 3.52, GC positions didn't change but 1.08 now covers 2nd to 6th.
With a couple of mountain stages left the lower steps on the podium are still wide open.
Looks like despite loosing time to a puncture on stage 2 and dropping to 81st Porte is still a real chance at 2nd.
I wonder given how well Froome ;appears to be travelling and the fact he and Porte are such good mates might he try and help Porte find the minute he needs to make the podium on the final 2 mountain stages.

Froome has it easily at this point. Everybody in the top 5 has a chance at the podium. #4 and #5 are still close enough to the top 3 to challenge for the podium.

Tejas really collapsed on this years TDF. Wow. What a meltdown. I didn't think he would drop this far back.

Stage 19 wow,
Froome, Aru, Mollema Porte all crashed, Yates suffered a mechanical, all apart from Mollema managed to get back to the peloton. Mollema was the days big loser dropping from 2nd to 10th.
Big changes at the top of the leader board with Bardet and Quintana now sitting on the podium, they were the only riders in the top 7 who didn't have drama. Cant help thinking that having to fight their way back to the peloton affected the performance of the others.
Porte wont arrive in Paris thinking what if? attacked with 3km to go and couldn't make it stick, did the same thing with 2km to go with the same result then got dropped about 800m from the finish. Despite dropping time to 4 riders ahead of him he is up to 5th and the time gap to second is smaller than it was.
Yates was impressive again got dropped numerous times on the final climb but kept his own tempo and kept yo yoing off the back as they accelerated and slowed.

Could be wet again so anything is possible as we saw yesterday.

There were not too many big surprises on the tour this year IMO.

1) Chris Froome - We have seen this before several times.
2) Romain Bardet - A good ride for him to finish 2nd.
3) Nairo Quintana - We have seen him on the podium before. Usually 2nd and not 3rd. But 3rd in the whole tour is not so bad.

Peter Sagan - Green Jersey. We have seen this so many times. He pretty much owns the green jersey at the tour.
Rafal Majka - Polka Dot Jersey.
Adam Yates - White Jersey. He appears to be a great young rider. Somebody to keep an eye on for the future for sure.
Movistar Team - Team winner.
Peter Sagan - Super Combative winner.

There were talks about Sagan losing 10-15 kilos and compete for the yellow jersey. I doubt he'll do it.

Originally posted by 190836:
There were talks about Sagan losing 10-15 kilos and compete for the yellow jersey. I doubt he'll do it.

He is so dominant with the green jersey. Maybe he should just continue with that. He seems unmatched.

Originally posted by SanDiego49er:
He is so dominant with the green jersey. Maybe he should just continue with that. He seems unmatched.

Already the highest payed rider, I wouldn't class him as the best sprinter but he gets himself into a position to contest the sprints the pure sprinters cant.