Le tour de France - 2017

1 july - 23 july

HERE WE… HERE WE… HERE WE DUCKING GO

THE ROUTE
Grand depart from dusseldorf. Tony Martin will be absolutely dying to win the prologue on home soil and take the first yellow jersey. Despite being a year or two past his peak, I wouldnt bet against him.

STATS (for rich)

  • 3540 km
  • 5 mountain stages, 5 hilly stages, 9 flat stages, 1 prologue, 1 individual time trial
  • fewer tt km than ever before
  • ALL 5 French mountain ranges feature
  • echelons banned in luxembourg this year for stage 3

STAGES
BAD - ONLY 3 mountain top finishes
GOOD - they include planches des belles filles and peyragudes (16% in final km) and motherfucking IZOARD for the first time. The stage to serre chevalier, with the ascent of galibier, Croix de fer and telegraphe looks good too.

BAD - 200 km flat stage 11 looks well dull.
GOOD - 100 KM vicious mountain stage to foix on Bastille day

GC FAVOURITES

FROOME - favourite. Again. Everyone’s favourite crazy legs descending, stem staring, uphill sprinter (sans bike). However, not shown amazing form this year, but you could say that about a few of these boys… stupidly strong team around him too. If he finishes, he’ll podium for sure, but got a sneaky suspicion he won’t win this time…

PORTE - coming into this, he’s looking like the form rider. But , much like Thomas, he always has at least one bad day in a 3 week race. Team concerns too? Surprising for bmc, but he was well isolated at dauphine. He’ll be right up there and prob in yellow at some point, but cant see him winning.

QUINTANA - already failed in his giro/tour double. Despite that, and like many contenders this year, not looking to quite have the form of previous years, the lack of tt kms will help him, and there’s enough brutal gradients to keep him interested, but will the lack of mountain Top finishes be his undoing?Reckon he might just win y’know…

CONTADOR - twilight of his gc career now and he’ll do well to podium. He’ll liven the race up no end though - expect lots of attacking from him…

PINOT - another to look decent in the dauphine without actually looking world beating… stands a chance, for sure, but dont think hes got the strength of riders around him he’d need.Will he be the first French winner in 312 years? Don’t think so…

MAYBES
Aru - looked in decent nick at dauphine, after being distraught to miss the giro when it came to his home island. Top 5 for sure, maybe podium. But equally, could end up seeing fuglsang step up to team leader if it all goes pear shaped.
Chaves- rebuilding his season after injury. Short of km, shouldn’t stand a chance. BUT let’s not forget he podiumed (ugh) twice in grand tours last year. And he has a lovely smile
Bardet- just can’t see it happening. Sorry, France.

THE REST
valverde - cunt
Thomas- crash
Barguil- ditto
Meintjes - meintNO
Uran - sorry carlton
Martin (d) just not quite a gt gc man, sadly

GREEN JERSEY
Ah Peter. Lovely Peter sagan. Sell me a bora oven why don’t you. Absolutely nailed on for green, if he stays in the race.

SPRINTS
Kittels gotta be favourite for the early sprints at least, whether he makes it through the first 3 weeks, we’ll see
Griepel- will pick up a stage or two
Cav - never ever write him off back too soon from injury - won’t win a stage
Degenkolb/kristoff - both had pretty indifferent seasons, but both capable of hanging in there on a tricky/lumpy stage and sneaking a win
Demare/bouhanni- let’s see who the premier second tier sprinter from France is…

WHITE
Straight fight between meintjes, buchmann and whichever Yates is racing this month. Too hard to call, so I won’t.

POLKA
Hmm. Tough one. Majka will have another go I’m sure. Maybe chaves if he gets knocked out of gc contention early on. Izaguirre looked great at timed in tour de suisse, so I’ll go for him.

STAGE WIN HOPES
beautiful Thomas de gendt
Stone cold Steve Cummings
Gilbert
Stybar
Phinney (casual solo descent attack like atoc a few years ago please)
Naesen

LEAST CONVINCING DUAL TEAM LEADERSHIP
uran + talansky. Congrats, cannondale-drapac!

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First 3 weeks? How many are there??

Oh yeah, tv coverage:

Live on Eurosport and itv4 each day.
Highlights 1900-2000 itv4 and 2000 -2200 eurosport.

Usually best to stick with Eurosport for live and itv for highlights.

La course (womens world tour race) will also be on eurosport - first stage up the IZOARD on 20 july from 9am with the top 20 qualifying for a pursuit race in marseille on 22 july. The women pros rarely get a chance to compete in the high mountains, so really looking forward to this. Fascinating format too…

:smiley:

Froome to crash out early on, Thomas to take team leader role and boss the whole race.

www.velogames.com
DiS Wike Bankers
League Code: 821985816

Fantasy league deets^ for anyone who missed it in the other thread.

Fucking brilliant.

Great write up @anon50098204. Some great stats in there too. Reckon this is Porte’s best shot at a TdF victory in the Froome era, but his consistency is still an issue for me. As long as Froome doesn’t kill the race on the first MTF like in 2015, I’ll he happy.

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Have Cannondale actually said both those guys are going for GC? I wish they’d just go all out for stages like at the Giro. It gets them so much more coverage than an 8th on GC, and does a lot to animate the race when there’s one or two WT riders in the break alongside the fodder.

I’m not sure about broadcasting every moment of every stage. Yeah, it’s nice to see the break form, but what about the next 4 hours?

TBF, he is more of a ringer for Nick Robinson.

Especially on sprint stages. I get the idea for a big monument like P-R or RvV, or a big day in the mountains or one of those super short stages, but for a 215km long sprint stage??

am i missing something? just don’t watch the start of it if you don’t want to

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Nah, the fact that a pan flat stage is televised in full could be a turn off for new fans. The first part where the breakaway forms, great. The ensuing 4hrs of cat and mouse is boring as fuck on a sprint stage. I might not have described it too well, but this does it better…

more importantly - why can I not watch this show?

“in France invariably has some repeat detective series like Kommissar Rex, an Austrian show featuring a crime-solving police pooch:”

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Sounds brilliant doesn’t it

Oh yeah, it’s kind of a personal annoyance because I subtitle ITV at work. Obviously watching the Tour as work is great, but the vast majority of my colleagues really don’t like it, so they direct their moaning and confusion at me. Hours of nothing allows David Millar time to go off on tangents about his early career and mentioning French terms, which is hard enough for me to subtitle, let alone people who don’t care or know much.

that still sounds much more fun than my job right now tbh

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So much this. I’ve filled a freezer and been shouted at a few times today. Much rather be doing @svenrokk work

rather watch the boring bits of the tour than the exciting bits of a spreadsheet any day

edit: most days

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That’s only for three weeks of the year. The rest of the year is filled with Piers Morgan, Jeremy Kyle, Love Island and trying to understand Gaelic football.

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