Tour de France 2017 ***SPOILERS***

[FishFright]

No feeding in last 20k

IIRC Sky took mussettes at 12.5 km to go. Not 100% certain though

 

[Adam4868]

Might be one of those etiquette things that Bardet gets away with cause he won the stage ! It'll be buried in the manual small print.
UCI rule 2442134
Any french national who wins a stage of the Tour can be looked on favourably on bending the rules.

 

[Pro Tour Punditry]

Might be one of those etiquette things that Bardet gets away with cause he won the stage ! It'll be buried in the manual small print.
UCI rule 2442134
Any french national who wins a stage of the Tour can be looked on favourably on bending the rules.

I think you'll find that it's covered by Regulation Z3.1 - any rider wearing any article of clothing whilst riding uphill cannot be penalised for any act committed on the day prior to Bastille Day

 

[Pro Tour Punditry]

On a punditry related theme, keeping it away from the **no spoilers** punditry thread, I wonder what the scoring would have been of someone had picked:

Demare and Kittel for all the early sprint stages and Froome, Bardet and Aru for the lumpy ones to date...

It seems we are settling into a "Kittel, <one of Greipel, EBH, G'wegen> theme for sprints and "Aru, Froome, Bardet" for everything else.

Useless fecking parcours that it is.

 

[Pro Tour Punditry]

Can I draw attention to pages 6 - 8 of this thread? Posts 87 - 113 should cover it

Mystic Marmion...

And now that I can actually quote them...

Has anyone mentioned how "crap" the stages are/route is?

Dunno. Is it?

It has the potential to be more open, less processional (see posts above) and hopefully more interesting.
It might also need the riders in with an outside chance of a win to animate the race and challenge the status quo.
Dan Martin, Bardet, Contador, Fuglsang etc.
Given their patchy form compared to previous years, it could be the best course and opportunity for them to challenge Froome and Quintana.

Right, it all came flooding back when I had another look...

The first week is going to be a dullfest. 5 x flat stages of over 200km on top of the opening 14km TT; only the stage which finishes at La Planche des Belles Filles looks in any way interesting. As previously stated the first mountain stage involves a few climbs and then finishes on downhill and flat, which dulls my mind. I have no idea why they'd need a rest day after that dullfest, maybe to sleep off the boredom?

Then another couple of flat stages, then a decent enough looking "mountain" stage (on a weekday - FFS!) followed by a "mountain" stage that finishes on the flat, then 2 half-assed "medium" (barely) mountain stages before another day off for a snooze (I hope someone wakes me up as I'll have dozed off a while ago)

And then 3 out of the last 6 stages are fecking sprint stages, and one of them is a short ITT. And the 2 stages that look like they might be ok are on a weekday again.

FFS!


@rich p and @Dayvo could have come up with a better route if they'd painter a spider's legs with black ink and let it run about a map of France.

Who knows, we may be pleasantly surprised. It may just possibly be that it won't be a slugfest of either Movistar or Sky sucking the life out of the opposition.

Yes think there's 8/9 sprint stages.I think they have tried to make the course so it will encourage attacks.Not as many long mountain finishes where a team can control it.Stage 9 looks brutal though !

Right, so you won't be watching,reading or listening about any of it. What will you with the time? Maybe you could spend the 3 weeks coming up with a better route and then we can all play PTP!!!

I suppose for me it's a mix of too many long dull stages that will end in sprints, not enough "medium mountain" stages that will see a bit of action, and, most of all, it just ain't a tough parcours at all. That "no team will take control" means that no team will see any reason to; our winner might come from an effort on 1 or 2 stages. And I think it might have been designed so Sagan does not have it as easy for Green other than anything else.

When the route was announced last year, Prudhomme said it was designed to make a more open, less controlled race. He seems to have ended up with the exact opposite.

 

[SWSteve]

On a punditry related theme, keeping it away from the **no spoilers** punditry thread, I wonder what the scoring would have been of someone had picked:

Demare and Kittel for all the early sprint stages and Froome, Bardet and Aru for the lumpy ones to date...

It seems we are settling into a "Kittel, <one of Greipel, EBH, G'wegen> theme for sprints and "Aru, Froome, Bardet" for everything else.

Useless fecking parcours that it is.

Check out my latest post. More flare than a 70s nightclub

 

[Pro Tour Punditry]

Check out my latest post. More flare than a 70s nightclub

This is your picks, represented in a jeans style

 

[Adam4868]

Well you got the part about it not being a sky/movistar slugfest right ! What the feck has happened to Quintana ? Not too long ago he was being billed as 'best climber in the world' I guess he's missed Valverde but really blowing in tour so far.

 

[Pro Tour Punditry]

Well you got the part about it not being a sky/movistar slugfest right ! What the feck has happened to Quintana ? Not too long ago he was being billed as 'best climber in the world' I guess he's missed Valverde but really blowing in tour so far.

That was that nobber @rich p not me. I got everything right

 

[SWSteve]

This is your picks, represented in a jeans style
View attachment 362030

Oh come on, I'm doing my best to win the competition, as opposed to not lose my top 5 placing...

 

[SWSteve]

That was that nobber @rich p not me. I got everything right

Did you say Quintana would be average at two GTs this year? Even Bert is dropping him

 

[Pro Tour Punditry]

Did you say Quintana would be average at two GTs this year? Even Bert is dropping him

I was only really commenting on the parcours and the impact on potential green jersey/dullfest.

I was right on green "potential" and dullfest.

If you want individual rider predictions I'll give you this one - Froome will crash out.

 

[SWSteve]

I was only really commenting on the parcours and the impact on potential green jersey/dullfest.

I was right on green "potential" and dullfest.

If you want individual rider predictions I'll give you this one - Froome will crash out.

I thought you were being marm-stradamus earlier this year, not during the bloody race

 

[brommers]

Well you got the part about it not being a sky/movistar slugfest right ! What the feck has happened to Quintana ? Not too long ago he was being billed as 'best climber in the world' I guess he's missed Valverde but really blowing in tour so far.

Lack of other team mates support as well

 

[Pro Tour Punditry]

I thought you were being marm-stradamus earlier this year, not during the bloody race

I'm upping my game