Bardet still unhappy with his bike. Fear we might see a repeat of the 2015 cobbles when Pinot got so frustrated with his machine he ended up slamming it down in front of the cameras.
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Grand Slam or Sham? Tour de France 2018
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Bardet managed to get back on, so that'll mean Landa did too. Great sprint from Degenkolb. Quite amusing that Trek won given the social media nonsense yesterday over some bellend deciding Skujins had a motor based on an single camera shot.
Terrific stage, if the football is half that good it'll be a belter.
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- Oct 2011
- 26984
- Cambridgeshire
- Ipswich (convert)
- Those chocolate-coated ring-shaped ones you get at Christmas
Originally posted by Kevin S View PostYeah, but it's Porte, and something will go wrong in true Porte style.
[COLOR=#333333]Well, this is it. Like sending wave after wave of men into no-man's land to face the machine guns, I have no rational reason to think that Richie Porte will complete and win the Tour this year when he always finds a way to fall short (and, last year, nearly kill himself and Dan Martin in the process). But just maybe this is his time. Maybe the year when we're not talking about the Porte and Froome showdown is the year we get to see it.
The gambler's fallacy there, everyone.
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- Oct 2011
- 26984
- Cambridgeshire
- Ipswich (convert)
- Those chocolate-coated ring-shaped ones you get at Christmas
A blow for AG2R and Bardet, this. How annoying, too!
https://twitter.com/inrng/status/1018826692876488704
https://twitter.com/inrng/status/1018826692876488704
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That's a bugger for AG2R and the race in general as they'll find it a lot harder to rip the race apart in the mountains now. Bardet really isn't having a great time of it so far what with all these incidents, suspect he'd sign on now for a repeat of his stage win and podium finish of recent years.
The race as a whole has a GC with time gaps but as it hasn't been up a serious hill yet we haven't established a pecking order. Thomas in 2nd and Uran in 22nd are separated by just 2:10, you can remove Gilbert and Andersen from GC contention and you need a pretty active imagination to see riders like Barguil or Pozzovivo winning the thing but other than that everyone is still closely grouped given what is still to come.
Thomas has had the best week, he's the only rider not to have had a time loss anywhere and he's even picked up a few bonus seconds. That doesn't tell us a great deal about whether he'll handle the really big mountains. Would assume he won't be put to work for Froome while he's still a minute ahead, once the mountains have established Sky's hierarchy they'll fall in behind a leader. Not sure where Froome's form is and he's crashed twice, admittedly the second wasn't his fault but these things add up. Movistar's trident should sort itself out too, Valverde looked strong yesterday, Quintana has done fine apart from his issues on the first day, Landa did well to limit his losses from his crash.
What's interesting is those riders who've been keeping their powder dry, Nibali most obviously who has barely even been on screen, just quietly ticking away and keeping himself well placed. Yates should have a race like this but he sits too far down the peloton which is costing energy and effort - Dan Martin showed on Saturday that this can turn out badly.
Three mountain stages now and by the time we reach Alpe D'Huez on Thursday night the picture will be a lot clearer. Also we've got ASO's box ticking exercise tomorrow in the shape of La Course, expect Van Vleuten will win that again.
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