All roads lead to Harrogate: Pro cycling 2019

[ursus arctos]

Alaphilippe on the Mur is like death and taxes.

[longeared]

That was all about as exciting as Fleche usually is.

Has Kirby never watched the race before? He didn't half talk some bollocks even by his own low standards.

[ursus arctos]

I was going to say something about that.

He's gotten demonstrably worse, which I didn't think was possible.

[ursus arctos]

Van der Breggen won the women's race for the fifth year in a row, holding off AVV by a second.

[ursus arctos]

[URL]https://twitter.com/helenpidd/status/1121073252611305473?s=21[/URL]

[longeared]

They're wasting their time with the land art - it simply won't get shown on the telly. There's been protest material in fields before and the cameras will deliberately ignore it.

[ursus arctos]

Wet and cold at LBL

Valverde and Dan Martin have already abandoned

[ursus arctos]

AVV rides away on la Redoute and wins the women's race by two minutes

[longeared]

No telly coverage of the women's race again because ASO can't be arsed.

In the men's race there's some daft riding from Kangert on La Redoute; showing how strong he is today but not enough of an attack to try and form any sort of meaningful gap.

[ursus arctos]

Slovene 1-2 in the Romandie Prologue in Neuchatel.

National champion Tratnik pips Roglic by 39/100ths of a second.

[Ray de Galles]

Not sure if we're interested in "Team Ineos" or boycotting them but they've launched their kit :

https://twitter.com/TeamINEOS/status/1123528314222673920

[ursus arctos]

Red is very much the new Black in this season's peloton.

At least it is a different shade from Sunweb, Trek, Katusha, etc. Though it is often the case that cycling kits look different when riders are in action.

[ursus arctos]

Roglič wins in La Chaux-de-Fonds after a shambolic call even by Kirby's usual subterranean standards.

Thomas, who he claimed had "blown away the field" in the run-in, was 20th.

[longeared]

The INEOS kit looked more pink than red in the images from the press launch, which was held at a secret location to avoid protesters.

Off to the Tour de Yorkshire in Donny tomorrow, which I expect will be my only interaction with the race this year. Be interesting to see how the crowds hold up for the event as a whole given Veritygate / poor weather forecast / underwhelming men's field / threat of anti-fracking protests.

[Me Old Flower]

Marcel Kittel won't start the Tour de Yorkshire, citing ongoing health issues.

[Felicity, I guess so]

Fracking Ineos (which I propose as the team’s official OTF name) have a suitably devilish colour scheme, rather matching the protesters’ masks

[longeared]

Back from a showery Donny. Some things seen and heard:

- Richard Moore of The Cycling Podcast saying "there's people who want something to go wrong this weekend, I've got no time for them"
- ITV interviewing Alexander Kamp of Riwal which concluded "Do you want to be on the World Tour?" "No" "Why not?" *shrugs*. "Ambitious" said the chap next to me. Bet that doesn't make the telecast.
- Philippa York wandering around completely unnoticed
- Team INEOS conducting a PR exercise by giving away flags (with plastic handle), badges and cards
- Various protesters, a mix of anti-fracking and general environmentalists. Amusingly the latter were waving flags at CCC vehicles while ignoring Total Direct Energie around the corner. I was unaware that Polish shoe retailers were such a major threat to the planet
- Biggest crowd was around INEOS, second biggest around Dimension Data. Cav looked relaxed
- van Avermaet on the stage saying "today we try to survive, then on the last day see what we can do on GC" thereby unwittingly giving away that the men's race will likely be back to three sprints (unless someone rips it in the wind on Saturday) and an effective one day race for the GC on Sunday
- Pierre Rolland back from injury with a lot of strapping on his wrist
- A WIGGINS rider wearing a skinsuit that left rather too little to the imagination.

[longeared]

Successful day out for Jake Hennessy as he's won both intermediate sprints and the only categorised climb, so that'll be a nice trip to the podium for him and his sponsor. Absolutely lashing it down, they should have stayed in South Yorkshire as it's been lovely here this afternoon and barely rained since they rolled out of Donny in the wet.

[longeared]

Incredibly the break sticks and Jesper Asselman of Roompot just manages to hold off the peloton having caught a spectator's Yorkshire flag on his handlebars. Happens again on the opening day. Blimey.

[Capybara]

Having cycling back on normal telly has reminded me that that Sun Life bloke still exists. He's grown too many parsnips again, the idiot.

[longeared]

Marianne Vos won the women's race overall, which is very pleasing. Hope that's not her last win in Yorkshire this year.

The men's race has ripped in the wind, a little earlier they got signalled to keep away from some heavy waves on a seafront. A couple of riders have just crashed on what looks like the same corner Ben Swift crashed on in the inaugural edition (Phil Deignan makes the same point as I type). Ooh, now there's kettles and a nice class 25 at Grosmont.

[ursus arctos]

Roglič wins an unfortunately curtailed queen stage (high winds and rain left only the summit finish above Aigle) and should wrap up his third one week tour victory of the season in tomorrow's time trial in Genève. He has 12 seconds on Rui Costa, 16 on Gaudu and 26 on Thomas.

If Kirby is doing the Giro, I may need to watch in Italian. At least their chauvinism is a bit better informed.

[longeared]

A splendidly bad couple of minutes for INEOS there as Lawless is outsprinted by my unambitious friend Alexander Kamp for the stage win in Scarborough and it is simultaneously announced that Bernal has broken his collarbone and is out of the Giro. (Probably means he'll win the Tour now)

[ursus arctos]

PCS currently listing their leaders for the Giro as Knees and Moscon.

Ouch.

[longeared]

If they're serious about winning the Giro they should put Thomas in. They won't though because that might detract from their prime objective of winning the Tour, and as we've seen down the years nothing will be compromised in search of that goal. They've got TGH and Sivakov on the provisional start list so presumably hope they can reprise their Tour of the Alps form, maybe they'll shove someone else (de la Cruz?) across from the planned Tour team as a further option.