Giro d'Italia / Tour de France Cycling thread 2013

[taylorsworkrate]

Rather hilarious opening to the tour de france opening stage.

[TopDeck113]

And then Cav crashes...

[TopDeck113]

I'm sure Yorkshire won't make the same mistake next year...

[Yossarian]

What a f*ck up!

Bit of a farce

[Jon Crofts]

And then Cav crashes...

Don't think he went down did he? Still what a monumental f**k up.

[UK Redsox]

Is Orica GreenEdge managed by Alex McLeish ?

"Parking the bus" as a defensive measure





Most of the crashes (apart, maybe, from the last major one) seemed to involve those flimsy looking advertising hoardings

[N'Rexy]

What a pathetic day.  They lowered the gantry at the finish before the last of the traffic went through (organisers fault) then they said they'd finish at 3k to go and announced it on race radio (which all riders hear via thier radios) then changed their mind because they got the bus out.  If there was a real "patron" in the peloton then the riders would have called it off at that point.

Tony Martin out.  Sagan and Contador hurt.  Stannard and Thomas also hurt (though much less). Stupid stage route caused all of this. 

Still tomorrow should be good. Lots of hills and lots and lots of attacking.  My money is on Dan Martin.

[lovejoy]

The changing of the finish line and then reverting back caused the crash as the sprinters teams were forced to jockey for position at short notice.
A farce.
Also when did the rule change that everyone gets the same time if there's a crash, I always thought it was 3kms but yesterday the crash was definitely outside this.

[Jon Crofts]

No points/scores on the fantasy league yet, seems a bit odd, normally these things get updated pretty sharpish.

[paul_e]

The changing of the finish line and then reverting back caused the crash as the sprinters teams were forced to jockey for position at short notice.
A farce.
Also when did the rule change that everyone gets the same time if there's a crash, I always thought it was 3kms but yesterday the crash was definitely outside this.

I think it falls into an 'exceptional circumstances' situation where the crash was probably caused by the race organisers fucking everyone about.

[N'Rexy]

Points are up there now.

[lovejoy]

"Exceptional circumstances" = we make the rules up as we go along.
Some years they enforce the time limit and some years they don't. personally i'd be extremely frustrated with rules not being clear at the outset.

[SteveN]

Cav is the man - you beauty.   

[TopDeck113]

Just as the first sound of the cuckoo heralds the start of spring, so the first Cav stage win at the Tour heralds the start of summer.

[Simon Ward]

Just as the first sound of the cuckoo heralds the start of spring, so the first Cav stage win at the Tour heralds the start of summer.

And then he crashes yesterday and has a melt down in the team bus apparently!