Strong field, equal prize money with the men's race, good media coverage so far (especially given the World Cup) - but it's rubbish that the organisers still can't provide live telly coverage. I get why they didn't do it in early editions of this race but we're into year five now, the event is firmly established and part of the World Tour, it gets big crowds and is popular with the riders. This seriously needs correcting next year.
This has to be the Frenchest thing I've seen/heard in a long time.
As I often point out to my students (usually when teaching Amelie), accordions were introduced to France by Italian migrants, relatively recently in historical terms. Before that it was le cornemuse (bagpipes!) played by auld fellas in cafes.
Jolien d'Hoore takes her second win of the year in Southwold. Vos was 6th and the best-placed Brit was Hannah Barnes in 9th.
Tour of Slovenia gets underway today as well - a really nice race and it's got a good number of big-hitters again this year. Upgrade it to 2.HC at least, says I. Suspect the locals are hoping that Roglic takes the overall with that final 21km ITT.
Had a great day at the Women's Tour today, riding down to Framlingham for the start and then over to Southwold for the finish. I managed to get a good vantage point for both and had a good view of the aforementioned jersey sported by stage winner Jolien D'hoore.
I have a nice picture of her celebrating as she crossed the line but I'm buggered if I know how to share it here.
I use tinypic.com for photos on here - upload it and copy the URL.
Watching the highlights and I see there's some familiar features of Sweetspot races all present and correct. Firstly there's badly edited telly coverage with five minutes showing the fucking neutralised zone. Secondly there are silly "climbs" which are false flat really - this example being 800 metres at 1.8% through a park in Ipswich.
Watching the highlights and I see there's some familiar features of Sweetspot races all present and correct. Firstly there's badly edited telly coverage with five minutes showing the fucking neutralised zone.
Shenanigans at the Route d'Occitanie (formerly La Route Du Sud), when Laporte almost beats team-mate Bouhanni to the win after they come close to touching in the sprint. Instead of celebrating the one-two they looked at each other afterwards. Bouhanni sounded pissed off in his post-race interview cos he's a macho jerk.
Saw some nice photos of Northants children cheering the Women's Tour as it went by, I'm glad they let them out of school for it.
Some of Europe is having its national championships this week/weekend, and some next week/weekend. There's a wiki page keeping track of who all the new jersey-wearers are: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_n..._championships
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