Tour de France 2009

[Jungle Jumbo]

Sean Kelly annoyingly starts every sentence "Well, yes, certainly..." very irritating. The main bloke is gun, but Kelly is dire.

Cavendish storming through again. He should be knighted, not Chris Hoy, two gold medals in a minority sport that only we seem to take seriously pales in comparison with Cav's achievements on the road.

[Neil Pickup]

Cav is currently on another level to the rest of the sprinters; stunning to behold and great to see the other Brits lifting it - if the aim of a Road Team GB to challenge the GC is to be realised then these guys have to keep on lifting it.

With the peloton splitting, barely anyone scored with more than two riders. I have Cavendish and Hushovd as 1 and 2 - hence I am in a group of 94 people in 62nd place. I will be hoping to match last year's exploits where I stood in the dizzy heights of 4th place at one point before falling out the top 100 by the end...

62 Pickup (35)
242 Walsh (30)
369 Mork (25)
423 Gray (21)
441 Thomas (19)
475 Mitchell (15)
484 Reddlapalli (14)

[Samuel_Vimes]

Cavendish storming through again. He should be knighted, not Chris Hoy, two gold medals in a minority sport that only we seem to take seriously pales in comparison with Cav's achievements on the road.

why not both?

IIRC one of Eddy Merckx' greatest achievements - the one hour world record - came on the velodrome.

But yeah, Cav is on another planet. Hoping he'll wimp out of last-day Ventoux though.

[Craig]

Armstrong took a nice advantage to gain time over his main rival

[Redbacks]

Wow, Cavendish is an amazing sprinter! He missed the Hill last tour to prepare for the Olympics so it will be interesting to see if he has the tank to complete the tour this time.

[Redbacks]

Sean Kelly annoyingly starts every sentence "Well, yes, certainly..." very irritating. The main bloke is gun, but Kelly is dire.

It all gets a bit annoying with their constant talking up of the breakaways etc. even when it seems pretty obvoius they will get caught and it means zilch to the overall picture most of the time. After a few hours I guess it would be hard not to dribble **** or just repeat the same things again and again. Nothing more annoying than all the French riders that go in breakaways to get on TV and then disappear for the rest of the tour.

[biased indian]

in yesterdays round even if you dont finish do you get your team mates time ???

[Samuel_Vimes]

in yesterdays round even if you dont finish do you get your team mates time ???

No.

The first group gets the time of the fifth rider to cross the line; the rest of the team get the time they finished in. If you don't finish, you can't start tomorrow.

[biased indian]

oh ic

[Craig]

As much as the course was technical, Cadel Evans and his team should of done what Astana, Saxo Vank, Garmin, and Columbia did and went out and did a recce of the course a few times last week. Same for Rabobank.

I guess it shows Cadel won't ever win the Tour.

[Jamee999]

Can't quite look past Contador for the time being, though I reckon Leipheimer has a pretty good outside chance. Can't wait till the Ventoux stage, should be an absolute ripper.

Anyone else think that Shaun Kelly is deadset the worst commentator going? You can barely understand his extremely boring voice and I seriously can't remember the last time that he said something insightful or interesting, espeically considering he has ridden the tour several times. Reckon the rest of them are awesome though.

I have been attempting to watch on German Eurosport. The commentator speaking over an Armstrong\Cavendish interview in very loud German is very frustrating. I can only understand when they STFU:

[Chubb]

Well done Voeckler. When he was in yellow a few years back L'Equipe called him "le nouveau (Jacky) Durand", on which a Guardian journalist wrote "that's a bit like saying Tim Henman is the new Jeremy Bates".

[Samuel_Vimes]

Well done Voeckler. When he was in yellow a few years back L'Equipe called him "le nouveau (Jacky) Durand", on which a Guardian journalist wrote "that's a bit like saying Tim Henman is the new Jeremy Bates".

I assume that Guardian journalist had never watched anything but Le Tour?

That said, it's a bit tiresome how the French hype their no-hopers every year.

[Matt79]

As much as the course was technical, Cadel Evans and his team should of done what Astana, Saxo Vank, Garmin, and Columbia did and went out and did a recce of the course a few times last week. Same for Rabobank.

I guess it shows Cadel won't ever win the Tour.

Is it him or his team? They never seem to have their **** together for him.

[Craig]

It was face palm worthy watching Ignatiev attack so many times with 6km to go. He basically put all his cards on the table and everybody was marking him. That is basic cycling racing tatics 101. Congratulations to Voeckler though, he was the smartest of the lot of them.

BTW Gesink is out with a fractured wrist.