jyl

I haven't watched the sprint replay. But Griepel only beat Degenkolb and Kristhoff by a half bike length. Being the only pure sprinter at the finish, he's pretty much expected to do that.

Marcus_Ti

Sepulveda can at least be forgiven a bit. He was probably oxygen deprived and had his brains baked out by the sun.

The AG2R taxi drivers OTOH, dunno what they were thinking.

Athens80

After 37 years the memories are not recalled so easily.

Giacomo 1 

How the heck does Cav get dropped in the last sprint finish before Paris!? Now he has to haul himself over the Alps and six more stages just to get one more shot at a win, which right now, I have to think Greipel will be the guy to watch in Paris. He is really on form right now, and Cav just doesn't look good enough, and tactically, he is really suspect after missing todays move, a move by-the-way that none of the other sprinters missed. Awful performance by Cav!

The bike change by Sagan was interesting for sure. The sport is becoming very specialized, isn't it? Still not sure he played the right strategy today by going out in the break, which was eventually caught. It had to sap him of energy.

I think we saw the 5 best sprinters in the world at todays finish, minus Cav and Kittel. Demare and Coquard aren't there yet and Mathews can't match up.

Giacomo 1 

Uuuumm, maybe I have to apologize to Cav.

I was a bit tough on him in my post above, but it seems that he had a bad case of the runs before the start today and really wasn't up to riding today. All I can say is, Metamucil man! It works wonders on the digestive system and keeps you regular through all the dietary abuses these riders go through.

Stinks that it happened on one of the few sprint opportunities though...


I also heard that a lot of riders had no air conditioning last night, and from all reports, it was hot! That is pretty unforgivable IMO...

Leinster

It also wasn't so much that he "missed a move," more that he got dropped on the climbs expecting to get back on, but the pace got so high (once the other teams heard Cav was dropped, obv) that it was never on.

On the A/C, that (and mattresses on the floor, ****ty hotels, etc etc) is exactly why Sky wanted to bring the RV, and why I can definitely see them becoming a fixture on the World Tour races.

jyl

Oblique reference yesterday to Cav "suffering in the heat", code for "not feeling good". That didn't sound promising. I was disappointed too, but I guess everyone has a bad day, too bad his was on this day.

I think Griepel (or Kittel, Cav, Bouhanni, etc) will beat Degenkolb, Kristhoff, Sagan 8 times out of 10 on a flat bunch sprint.

USAZorro

Not a Gorilla fan. One day he's going to try to lean on Peter while passing, and it won't go well for him.

Sagan will still claim Green an Paris, and if he ever times it right, he'll take a stage. Every time but one that he's missed, his bike has been traveling the fastest at the finish line (and that was Cav beating him)

Giacomo 1 

Formula 1 went in that direction, and now it is really tough for the smaller money teams to compete and stay in the sport. But yeah, in the end, I see it going that way for cycling to. These little towns that the Tour goes through simply cannot handle these big time sporting events...

Giacomo 1 

Agreed, that he is often the fastest rider at the line, but that darn timing thing is really, really important in sprinting!

While he got in the break and maximized his green jersey points, I think he blew it by wasting so much energy getting there...

TCR Rider

On the A/C, that (and mattresses on the floor, ****ty hotels, etc etc) is exactly why Sky wanted to bring the RV, and why I can definitely see them becoming a fixture on the World Tour races.

I wonder if the Tour Organizers putting the kibosh on the RVs had anything to do with kickbacks from the local hotels or municipalities along the route. That would explain a lot.

TCR Rider

In the sprint today Sagan really plowed his way past Coquard. It was either get out of the way or go down. I was surprised it wasn't mentioned in the post stage recap.

Marcus_Ti

Meh. Quite frankly...I'm amazed the gendarme haven't wheel clamped or towed those RVs yet. I've seen photos and they're typically parked badly....I'm curious if there's local law or hotel parking lot rules about sleeping inside a camper in a private hotel lot. I suppose since the hotel rooms are rented to the Team and not individuals, the RV sleepers are only technically not trespassing.

jyl

If I were Sky, I'd bring some portable AC units for the hotel rooms.

Laggard

He said that he had intestinal distress over night.

Leinster

It's not just the lack of convenience or consistency of the hotels, though. Even on price, the millions of Euro that gets spent on hotel rooms every year could easily cover enough vehicles to sleep 3 or 4 men per. As it is, the race pays for the hotels on WT events, but if the accommodation costs are reduced overall, it helps everyone. Even the hotel owners would still be providing beds for journos, support staff, all the marketing caravan etc, not to mention the tourists who are the ones paying top dollar for their rooms as opposed to the riders who presumably get a cut rate. The 200 beds taken up by the riders themselves are a rounding error on the bottom of a balance sheet.

sprince

I don't see what the hotels would be losing. It's not as though those rooms would go empty. Sky should not be allowed to use RV's that other teams may not be able to afford, but it's much worse if some teams have A/C and others do not. If the organizers are going to insist on riders using the hotels, they should at least enforce some minimum standards for those rooms so that no team gets an unfair advantage.

Rich Gibson 

1. Don't be surprised to see Cav abandon...for a medical reason of course.

2. Sagan might have gotten higher in the sprint (of course not beating Greipel) except for Coquard blocking him at a critical moment. The break strategy was a very good decision. He can never beat Greipel, so padding points at the intermediate sprint helped tactically. You have to be suspicious of the Tour folks changing the rules ....trying to break Sagan's string? I hope Peter can widen the gap in the sprints in the mountains....unless the officials have front loaded the sprints ahead of the mountains (I haven't looked very deeply into the remaining stages).

Rich

Leinster

I don't know that the rule/score change was deliberately aimed at Sagan himself, as much as at people who score points but don't win stages generally. So this year that would include Degenkolb, who's sitting in 3rd.

HardyWeinberg

Eh... municipalities aren't going to shut down their roads in all directions, never mind resurface them ahead of time, if there isn't something in it for them.

HardyWeinberg

Not played up nearly as much as that Australian against the Cofidis guy.

Marcus_Ti

Further the municipalities are paying to be on the tdf route. They aren't just closing roads and paying to repave some roads

Athens80

It's about a 100 rooms for the riders, isn't it? The standard seems to be two riders per room.

Leinster

Well it's 200 BEDS, but from all the stories of mattresses on the floor and riders sleeping in hallways, it seems it's some way short of 99 (ie, 198/2) rooms.
A big city like Gap, Toulouse, Bordeaux or Paris could obviously absorb as many guys as you have, but the provincial towns obviously have capacity limits.

Of course, the RVs wouldn't be just for the Tour. They'd be available for races like the Giro, Paris Nice, spring classics, etc.

Steve C

Just remember that it's UCI's rules that riders sleep in the hotels.

The SKY RV's are used by support staff.