Another Dirty Brit is Steam Rolling the Tour de France

Even more confused wrote:

Hkkfcnk wrote:

^This. I am really surprised that people are still interested in watching the tour. Give everyone the same bike (measured to the rider’s specs of course), a flat fixit kit or extra tubes the rider carries, no team cars, and completely eliminate peds (impossible of course) - now you have something interesting.

Close the tour de france due to ped abuse? Lol. What makes it different from track and marathons? If anything that should be shut down first. Track is even more boring and has even more ped abuse

Well, they're both nothing in comparison to football/basketball/soccer, which don't even try to catch the cheaters. So what do we watch--is underwater basket weaving still clean?

ex-runner wrote:

Bad Wigins wrote:

Never mind the climbing, I want to know how they all cruise at nearly 30mph for two hours. Don't say it's the riders, cause they aren't even pedaling half the time.

Sitting in the peleton you use about 40% less energy than being at the front. An ex motorcycle racer Guy Martin demonstrated cycling at 112mph behind a lorry.

The riders swap position so only the guys at the front are working hard then they get to rest. Why do you think breakaways are usually closed so easily?

I know about drafting! But I also know how steeply the drag force from wind skyrockets above around 20mph. 40% less energy at 30mph is probably equivalent to soloing at 27 or 28mph. I don't care what kind of shape you're in, you should have to at least pedal fairly constantly to go that fast.

There must be some kind of fancy aero tech that makes the pro bikes slice through wind much cleaner. Or else they are motorized.

"The peleton is very clean these days. Froome himself confirmed this in an interview."

And, of course, us Brits do not cheat! Name any prominent British sportsperson who has been convicted of cheating! See, you can't, can you?

(In case the irony escapes some readers, tongue is firmly in cheek here!)

Oh come on. It's almost immaterial if Sky are clean or not (I happen to think most of the peloton are relatively clean these days) since if they're not, you can bet your life that the others aren't either.

It's money. They have the absolute best domestiques on the tour and it isn't close. Last year, on top of Michal and Thomas they had Mikel Landa. He leaves Sky and is suddenly a team leader for Movistar. Richie Porte, super-domestique for Team Sky, leaves and now team leader at BMC. This year they've recruited arguably the best young talent in cycling in Egan Bernal to act as a domestique. Whilst he's not top drawer yet, it just shows their financial muscle.

It's not just the riders either, the facilities they can call upon in the UK, the pure logistics team size on the roads themselves. Look at Froome's epic ride up Finnestre in the Giro, he had Team Sky employees every 2km on the road to give him nutrition and updates. The entire operation is magnitudes larger than any other team can muster. They train in better facilities, have better logistics, better nutrition, better planning and better riders, almost exclusively due to money.

Read this article on how they managed that Giro stage. No other team has the resources to pull that off, period.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/cycling/44372328

Coevet wrote:

pop_pop!_v2.2.1 wrote:

Don't forget the obscure blood-borne disease that turned Froomie into a grand tour champion!

No no no only Africans dope!

He is African.

bluetrain23 wrote:

Maybe they train harder and smarter, just like Lance's team back in the day.

Quit watching some years ago, plus Cheater Lance's disgusting post-cheating behavior sealed the deal.

It was fun to watch when we were all naive, now who gives a damn. So much cheating in sport it jades the entire enterprise.

Agree absolutely! In terms of strength of team, Sky are in a completely different league to anything else on the Tour.

Will be interesting to see how the Froome/Thomas thing plays out over the next ten days or so and if Thomas will stay with Sky if, as seems probable at the moment, Froome remains "the man" as far as Brailsford and Sky are concerned.

Too much caffeine is not good. Makes people jittery and causes crashes in the first week of the Tour and letsrun staff to start click bait threads.

The good news for Geraint Thomas is that Ritchie Porte won't be able to knock him off his bike.

Stopped watching a few years ago when Froome wanted to zoom off the front and away from Wiggins AFTER they'd already spent hours burning off everyone else on their souped up climb that day.

At least, to give credit to Wiggin, he was aware of how stupid it would look if juiced up Froome just flew away after already supposedly being spent. That's the problem with Froome - he couldn't then - and STILL can't - make the margins look even remotely believable.

Every time he races he does something to look as foolish as Ben Johnson's Seoul run.

The booing worked for G. Another stage win for the Welshman.

No proof Sky are doping.

Worst case scenario, it is a level playing field.

Today an obese Frenchman/spectator actually punched Froome. Assault!

Had that happened in the UK or USA the Frenchman would have gotten jail time, and criminal record.

Lanced Carbuncle wrote:

bluetrain23 wrote:

Maybe they train harder and smarter, just like Lance's team back in the day.

Quit watching some years ago, plus Cheater Lance's disgusting post-cheating behavior sealed the deal.

It was fun to watch when we were all naive, now who gives a damn. So much cheating in sport it jades the entire enterprise.

Are you speaking about the Paralympic Games ?

OP, Froomy's still gonna win. You know the strategy. Take it easy until the 2nd last day. Blueprint is the Giro. He'll unleash a 6-minute lead on the final day. Everyone will groan. I don't believe the G story.

Ghost1 wrote:

Had that happened in the UK or USA the Frenchman would have gotten jail time, and criminal record.

In the USA, nobody would have booed him. They wouldn't even know about the doping.

Coevet wrote:

No no no only Africans dope!

Froome was born in Africa.

This is actually all true. They may use drugs too, but Team Sky is organized like a corporation with mega funding and an amazing attention to detail. They even do things like have a dedicated team to pre-clean all rider hotel rooms (to reduce possibility of getting sick), bring in their own bedding and pillows (so riders have exactly the sleep setup they are used to). They have this "incremental gains" philosophy, finding anything that could be a possible advantage and then institutionalizing it.

Realistically we can all learn from this. Think of every little thing you could do to be a faster runner and do you do all of them all the time? Start with just thinking about every thing you eat, can you say it is all performance fuel. Sure, it's more fun to live a balanced life, but if all you want to do is win, you are going to give up a lot.

Their teeth?

medium_pace wrote:

This is actually all true. They may use drugs too, but Team Sky is organized like a corporation with mega funding and an amazing attention to detail. They even do things like have a dedicated team to pre-clean all rider hotel rooms (to reduce possibility of getting sick), bring in their own bedding and pillows (so riders have exactly the sleep setup they are used to). They have this "incremental gains" philosophy, finding anything that could be a possible advantage and then institutionalizing it.

And yet they cannot control the basics such as dehydration of their riders leading to off the charts asthma drugs test results .....

If Froome wins the 2018 TDF, he will also win

cycling's grand slam, with his Vuelta 2017,

Giro 2018?

Go Thomas!

Go Quintana!