Professional Cycling For the Fans - Norse invasion of France?

Whats with all the Norwegians in France. Every where you look there is a Norwegian flag.

THEY ONLY HAVE 2 RIDERS IN THE WHOLE D@MN RACE. Mind you two good riders, but not even 2 GC riders. Has it always been this way? Or is this a product of a cycling boom in that country?

The Vikings have been invading France since the beginning of time!

+1

England too. :D

You may be familiar with the section of France's coast the borders the North sea - Normandy. Is like seypat said. :)

Be careful using that word "invasion". Howzit might read this and start telling you that it really isn't an invasion, and promptly proceed to clarify that point. :innocent:

Great to see guys like Thor & Edvard who are really sprinters get up and win mountain stages too. Both of their latter wins have come on stages with genuine climbs. The fact that they are outside the GC contention ( and don't really have colleagues who are up there either - although Danielson is close for GarminCervelo) means that if they get into a decent breakaway and then hang on they won't be chased down by the peloton. Great for cycling and great for a nation of only 5million (?). It shows that the alps/pyrenees stages also have a little more variety in them that might be expected, particularly when the main group is relatively uninterested in winning stages.

Did someone on Versus claim the Norwegian fans were a rent a crowd? To me, Thor evolving his bicycling style is a pleasant surprise.

No, he just made a joke that they were a rent-a-crowd, based on their numbers being so surprising.

I don't know that this year's Norwegian crowds are that surprising, though. If you watch last year's stage on the Champs-Elysées, there's a huge crowd of Norwegians with flags just at the Joan of Arc statue corner. We froze the DVR to check them out last year.

My favorite TweetQuote this year: "The Tour of Norway continues."

I think at the end of the tour I will do a stage wins per rider nationality density chart. Should be interesting.

(That mean # of stage wins per country / # of riders from the country)

Norway and England will probably top the chart.

The Vikings have been invading France since the beginning of time!


hehe
nice one seypat

it's the same on the wrc,rally
with the solbergs!

master race. . .rs

Great to see guys like Thor & Edvard who are really sprinters get up and win mountain stages too. Both of their latter wins have come on stages with genuine climbs. The fact that they are outside the GC contention ( and don't really have colleagues who are up there either - although Danielson is close for GarminCervelo) means that if they get into a decent breakaway and then hang on they won't be chased down by the peloton. Great for cycling and great for a nation of only 5million (?). It shows that the alps/pyrenees stages also have a little more variety in them that might be expected, particularly when the main group is relatively uninterested in winning stages.

It makes you wonder what kind of races and winners we would see if every rider rode with the Coppi and Merckx attitude of old.

I think at the end of the tour I will do a stage wins per rider nationality density chart. Should be interesting.

(That mean # of stage wins per country / # of riders from the country)

Norway and England will probably top the chart.

That's what they showed onscreen; Norway head and shoulders (and head and shoulders) above UK (Norway had an even distribution of stages/rider, UK heavily skewed), then the rest. France had the most riders among 0-win countries.

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