Tour de France 2013 *spoilers*

[threebikesmcginty]

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Well hello!

 

[laurence]

Any of you lot on here?

nope, but i was just along the road from you as i could see that lot too

 

[SWSteve]

I've warmed to Froome over the tour. Before I found him a bit shy, but his resentment to all of the doping questions made me think "This guy knows what he is doing, and MUST be clean" and to be honest, he's put his heart on his sleeve at times. I'm a fan, but not as much as I am of Wiggo. I didn't even watch the tour last year, nor did I follow track cycling prior to the Olympics.

I'm a fan of Wiggo purely because he is a bit of a tw*t

 

[ayceejay]

I thought I'd mentioned this but maybe not... My dad used to work in South America and still has close friends in Colombia, and according to them, Quintana is not all that popular among metropolitan Colombians of European descent - he's very much seen as an "Indian", rather than "one of them". Uran is much more popular.

I think I speak for many when I say f'em.

 

[Flying_Monkey]

dont forget to include the folk who slated froome last year and then feted him this year.

I've never been a fan of Froome, and I still haven't warmed to him. I don't know why, and it's nothing rational, there's just something a bit creepy about him.

 

[smutchin]

I don't really like Froome.

There I said it. I don't think he's a cheat, and I think he's an amazingly strong all rounder. Yet I still don't like him. I am not sure why. I don't think a comedy beard would do the trick.

I have no problem with people not liking him. We all have our favourites and the reasons for our choices don't need to be justified with rational arguments - that's the beauty of sport.

But I do have a problem with some of the things that have been said about him. For example, Brits aren't obliged to cheer for Froome just because he's British, but to refuse to cheer him because he's not British enough seems a bit weird to me.

On reflection, the comparison with Sagan or Wiggins may not be the most useful one. Perhaps it would be more educational to look at who prefers Voeckler and who prefers Froome.

 

[Chromatic]

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I'll have an E please Bob.

 

[rich p]

I'll have an E please Bob.

I think you'll find that E is on the WADA banned list. You may better off just having an F.

 

[ColinJ]

Okay, that's the 2013 TdF done!

Here's some news about the 2014 edition ... I was out on my bike the other day and discovered that our council are already starting to patch up the roads to be used on the local Yorkshire stage next year.

Traffic calming measures are being added to the road coming out of Mytholmroyd before the foot of the Cragg Vale climb and I observed that they are bolting down a temporary pedestrian refuge rather than building a permanent one. I reckon that they are thinking ahead and will remove it before the Tour's arrival?

The local media are still describing the Cragg Vale climb as a 'stiff challenge' for the Tour riders. It involves 968 ft of climbing in 5.5 miles, an average gradient of only about 3.3%, with one short section at about 8%. 'Stiff challenge' - ha - I managed to get up it in about 30 minutes even when unfit and suffering from a DVT and pulmonary embolism! If they bother to categorise it at all, I reckon it will be a cat 4 climb.

PS To show the way that official minds work ... Despite the fact that our roads are in an awful state and need a lot of money spending on them, the council has seen fit to replace the sign at the foot of the Cragg Vale climb with a shiny new one. I sense a TV photo-opportunity in the making. They couldn't let the cameras focus on the tatty old sign ...

... so they splashed out on a new one!

 

[smutchin]

It was the same at the Olympics - "How on earth will these poor weedy Continentals cope with the magnificent Himalayan splendour of Box Hill?"

 

[Rob3rt]

The local media are still describing the Cragg Vale climb as a 'stiff challenge' for the Tour riders. It involves 968 ft of climbing in 5.5 miles, an average gradient of only about 3.3%, with one short section at about 8%. 'Stiff challenge' - ha - I managed to get up it in about 30 minutes even when unfit and suffering from a DVT and pulmonary embolism! If they bother to categorise it at all, I reckon it will be a cat 4 climb.

Cragg Vale is indeed easy. I could probably get up there in less than 21 mins, maybe less than 20, especially with a tailwind Took me ~25 mins to roll up it at tempo back in January, including standing at a temp traffic light for several minutes.

They have to big it up though, would be a bit unexciting to say, "they are going to ride along a rather drab bit of slightly uphill road for 5.5 miles" and I suppose if you are bad at going uphill it is a challenge of sorts.

 

[ColinJ]

Cragg Vale is indeed easy. I could probably get up there in less than 21 mins, maybe less than 20, especially with a tailwind Took me 25 mins to roll up it at tempo back in January, including standing at a temp traffic light for several minutes.

It's pretty rare to get a decent tailwind on it. There is usually a cross-headwind coming from the front-right.

Hmm, if they got a strong crosswind that day, that could actually make the exposed top half of the climb pretty exciting after all! I've experienced wind so strong up there that I had to stand up in my bottom gear to make any forward progress. They would have had the same wind coming up from Oxenhope. Let's hope for a windy day, eh!

They will be doing a quick descent to Ripponden after Blackstone Edge and the climb out of the village is a lot stiffer, but it is only short.

 

[BSRU]

The local media are still describing the Cragg Vale climb as a 'stiff challenge' for the Tour riders. It involves 968 ft of climbing in 5.5 miles, an average gradient of only about 3.3%, with one short section at about 8%. 'Stiff challenge' - ha - I managed to get up it in about 30 minutes even when unfit and suffering from a DVT and pulmonary embolism! If they bother to categorise it at all, I reckon it will be a cat 4 climb.

It will probably be a cat 3, 5.5 miles is 8,851 metres, so the points for the cat would be 3.3 * 8,851 = 29,208, above 16,000 is a cat 3 and above 32,000 would have made it a cat 2.

 

[Rob3rt]

I would call into question why many of the UK's "classic" climbs are deemed as such because most of them are not hard to ride up at a steady pace (anything is hard if you try to do it as fast as possible), they are not exactly the kind of thing that pits you against your demons, lol.

I did the Cat and Fiddle last week, for the 1st time (shame on me, lived near-ish it for ~7 years), it is another one of these "greatest climbs", but I rode up it twice in about an hour, once leisurely and once racing, there was no point on the climb that could be deemed "difficult" or "challenging".

 

[fimm]

Some of the comments about Froome remind me of some of the things people said about Andy Murray...