Tour t' France

First topic message reminder :

It's nearly time for the biggest race of the year, the event that has everyone so excited that the England football team made sure they'd be back in time to see the start in Leeds. Froome and Contador are the big favourites for yellow, with Nibali as biggest outsider. Meanwhile Sagan is the favourite for green, just ahead of Cavendish and Kittel.

Teams (riders left):

Sky (7):

Movistar (8):

Katusha (6):

Tinkoff-Saxo (7):

Astana (9):

Cannondale (8):

Belkin (8):

Omega Pharma - Quick-Step (8):

AG2R-La Mondiale (9):

Garmin Sharp (7):

Giant Shimano (8):

Lampre-Merida (5):

FDJ.fr (8):

Lotto Belisol (7):

BMC (8):

Europcar (9):

Trek (6):

Cofidis (7):

ORICA-GreenEDGE (6):

IAM (6):

NetApp-Endura (8):

Bretagne-Séché (9):

I don't think Sky had a team this year to really do what they did with Wiggins in 2012, a lot of alright guys who would've been dropped early on mountains I reckon.

But I agree better racing and although Nibali won at a canter, the podium battle was fantastic

Both grand tours this year have been very good

delighted to see Valverde dropped off the podium, and two Frenchies on it.

As Mike said, a reminder that the final ITT of GTs doesn't always throw up the expected result.

As for the yellow jersey, 8 minutes is a huge gap, but as people say there's been some good racing for the other spots. It's nice to have a few young guys coming through, and as Olly points out, most of them (pretty much all) are attacking riders, which usually makes for a better spectacle.

One of the things for me is, Saxo still had riders like Roche, Rogers and Majka who can do stuff. Sky couldn't think of a Plan B on the fly. They seem to treat cycling as a computer simulation, which is alright when things go well, but any deviation, they can't adapt to it.

There's a coldness to Team Sky and British Cycling I feel. Successful,yes - but too regimented. There is little room for a bit of heart and sentiment.

Not really sure they had the riders to do what Saxo did, Porte has been off form all year and Thomas is good but not particularly great in anything to win a stage. Froome I feel is actually pretty anti what Sky are, he likes to blow things up.

Shame for Cavendish that he crashed because the sprinters weren't particularly great in this race I don't feel. Kittel tired badly, Sagan can't catch a break and Cav would beat the likes of Kristoff/Greipel if on form

I've enjoyed the Tour overall. I think it's been a good route as well. I really liked the short sharp Pyrenees stage - meant people basically had a crack all the way through.

Sky to be fair did have a crack at a few breakaways through Thomas, Nieve and Kyriemenka (apologies for the spelling). I agree with Olly though, basically there was no plan B and Richie Porte being so out of form, they did try but they just didn't have the personnel. I get the point about them being machine-like though.

I think maybe what made the racing more exciting was there was no dominant team on the front of the peloton. Nobody could really control the pace up the final climb like in years gone by, the leaders were often quickly isolated and had to take things up themselves. It's been interesting to see how they react to that.

Roll on tomorrow into the champs.

Really fancy Kristoff to take the win today again, maybe Renshaw as an outsider each way

Dave. wrote:There's a coldness to Team Sky and British Cycling I feel. Successful,yes - but too regimented.

It's a fair point, but at the same time the British element was pretty limited this year. Even Thomas was riding with Froome long before they joined Sky, and then you have Wiggins and Kennaugh left at home. Makes you wonder if there's some sort of Froome/GB split in that team.

This has been the worst tour in years and has been completely forgettable, Nibali is probably because lets be honest he doesn't tend to get the best of Contador or Froome when they're concentrating on a certain race.

198 riders sign in, 198 riders
they start in a town, they pedal around...

164 riders managed to finish this year's race, down from 169 last year. Astana, AG2R, Europcar and Bretagne-Séché got all their riders to Paris; Lampre were hardest hit, finishing with just 5 riders.
Yellow jersey Vincenzo Nibali finished with a time of 89 hours, 59 minutes and 6 seconds. Ji Cheng finished last, 6 hours, 2 minutes and 24 seconds behind Nibali, the biggest gap since 1954. Geraint Thomas came 22nd at 59m14s.
Green jersey Peter Sagan ended up with 431 points, with Alexander Kristoff coming second on 282 points and Bryan Coquard in third on 271. Geraint Thomas was 53rd with 34 points.
Polka dot jersey Rafal Majka finished with 181 points, with Nibali second on 168 and Joaquim Rodriguez third on 112. Geraint Thomas was 34th out of 67 with 10 points.
White jersey Thibaut Pinot had a final time of 90 hours, 7 minutes and 21 seconds, with a 3m11s advantage over Romain Bardet, and more than an hour on everyone else. Davide Cimolai finished bottom of the 24 man category, 5h4m43s behind the winner.
Alessandro De Marchi was the most combative rider.
Best team was AG2R at 270h27m2s, Giant-Shimano came in last, 7h44m45s behind. Sky finished 7th, 1h40m36s behind the winner. Astana won the most prize money (€539.330), Lampre won the least (€9.830). Sky won €24.240 over the past three weeks, putting them in 18th place.

Nice little joke doing the rounds when I was at the Etape (pros' Stage 18) last week:

"A pro cyclist is someone who pretends to be well when he's really seriously injured;                              a pro footballer is someone who pretends to be injured when there's nothing wrong with him".

Thinking of Bertie and others...!