Tour de France 2015

[Powerful Pete]

@Raymo853 119270 wrote:

One other thing to point out about having the women’s race on nearly the same stages and nearly the same time. That would greatly increase the amount of time the road would need to be closed and/or controlled. That would really change the nature of the event for the on the ground spectators. No longer could you jump on your bike or motorcycle, into your car, camper car, etc… to make it to the next good viewing spot or a good spot on the next stage. Or in towns it would keep the city center closed down for multiple more hours, something that would kill the good will of the local businesses. Espically since people are learning the idea that hosting sporting events is such a financial benefit to locals is kind of a lie.

It also depends on the approach taken. IIRC, in France road closures tend to be longer, while at the Giro it is more of a rolling road closure. So I suspect at the Tour it would not make a huge difference in terms of closure times…

[Powerful Pete]

@ShawnoftheDread 119229 wrote:

That was all Greek to me.

LOL. It is NI-ball-ee

[TwoWheelsDC]

@PotomacCyclist 119285 wrote:

I’d agree that the Olympics may not benefit a host city financially, but the Tour is a different type of event. The towns don’t have to build infrastructure. Most of the towns only host one stage, so it’s not a long-term inconvenience. I’d guess that police/security would be one of the largest costs locally, but compared to large-scale construction for Olympics cities (which can run into the tens of billions of dollars), it’s not that great.

Some towns repave roads and such, but I don’t know if they have to foot the bill or if the federal government pays…but your average Tour town sees maybe 10 minutes of racing, but with a big spike in visitors on their stage day. My wife and I were in Grasse (in the hills north of Cannes) for one of the stages. With the parades and all that, the whole Tour event was through the town in about an hour, maybe less, but there were hundreds of people who came into the town to see the peloton roll through…and like us, many of them stayed and had lunch and bought souvenirs. Most of the security looked like either volunteers, or a few municipal police here and there…probably just the guys on duty that day anyway.

In Nice, where the TTT was, all the race-related infrastructure was temporary and traveled with the Tour, so the town didn’t have to make much of an investment in that regard. Plus, the festival they held lasted several days and hundreds of thousands of people packed into the city. Other than street closures and a day’s worth of hassle for locals, it’s hard to imagine that the race was anything but a huge boon to the city’s economy.

This is what the Tour looks like when it comes through the average town:

[PotomacCyclist]

SPOILERS from yesterday’s opening stage (but not from today’s stage)

The race started off with a short individual time trial yesterday. Rohan Dennis of Australia (and BMC Racing) won by riding the fastest time trail in TdF history, according to reports. He averaged 34.453 mph over the 13.8 K course (~8.6 miles). He finished in 14:56. He was the 38th rider to start, of 198 total, so he had to wait for more than two hours while watching to see if the other riders could beat his time.

I haven’t seen today’s stage but I read about it. The repeat coverage airs at 8 pm on NBCSN. No spoilers about results, but I’ll say that it was apparently a very windy day. There was a similar stage either last year or in 2013, a flat stage that involved huge time gaps because of the wind. That made it more exciting to watch than the usual flat stage (where the peloton usually stays together most of the day, the breakaway riders get caught and the sprinters go all-out at the end). There was more drama than usual for a flat stage.

[PotomacCyclist]

Early in the race, the standings can be odd.

After Stage 1:

Overall Leader (Yellow) – Rohan Dennis
Points Leader (Green) – Rohan Dennis
Best Young Rider (White) – Rohan Dennis
Mountains Leader (Polka Dot) – Points not yet awarded

[Powerful Pete]

Exciting stage yesterday, great win in the sprint by Griepel.

Bummed that Nibali and Quintana lost so much time in the stage – surprised Nibali was caught out the way he was. And then the puncture… When it rains it pours!

Hope for more exciting racing on cobbles now that we are proceeding into Belgium.

[Greenbelt]

@Powerful Pete 119508 wrote:

Exciting stage yesterday, great win in the sprint by Griepel.

Bummed that Nibali and Quintana lost so much time in the stage – surprised Nibali was caught out the way he was. And then the puncture… When it rains it pours!

Hope for more exciting racing on cobbles now that we are proceeding into Belgium.

Agreed — tuning in for the last 90 minutes or so of yesterdays (stage 2) race well worth the time suck.

[Kitty]

I’m glad to hear that at very least it looks like they’ll be doing the La Course women’s race again this year. Has anyone hear of any watch parties for that (or the end of the Men for that matter) on the 26th?

It occurs to me I’ll be participating in a metric century that day, and closing that out with drinks and viewing while I’ve got bikes on the brain already might be a lark.

[Powerful Pete]

Rough weather today – seeing how he came from behind, it looks like Griepel is really at the top of his game thus far this year. Also nice to see the Somme countryside.

[kwarkentien]

Well I guess I don’t need to watch the prime time broadcast now PP.

[Powerful Pete]

@kwarkentien 119710 wrote:

Well I guess I don’t need to watch the prime time broadcast now PP.

Oops. I thought this was also a spoilers thread. Will be careful not to do that moving ahead. Sorry! 😮

[ShawnoftheDread]

Oh look, Strava is putting spoilers directly in our Strava feeds. Great.

[PotomacCyclist]

No spoilers from today’s team time trial from me. The primetime broadcast repeats today’s coverage at 8 pm.

On Saturday, Alexis Vuillermoz was the first French rider to win a stage at this year’s Tour.

Leading into today’s stage, Chris Froome was wearing the yellow jersey. Peter Sagan had the green jersey (points leader) and the white jersey (best young rider). A few days ago, Daniel Teklehaimanot took over the King of the Mountains competition (polka dot jersey).

Teklehaimanot is riding for MTN-Qhubeka, the first African team to compete in the Tour. He and teammate Merhawi Kudus (the youngest rider overall this year) are the first black Africans ever to ride in the Tour. (Chris Froome was born in Kenya and raised in Kenya and South Africa, but his parents are white English and Froome now rides under a British license.) At the Tour of Austria (which overlaps with the TDF), there was an alleged racial incident with a Belarussian rider and an MTN-Qhubeka rider.

http://www.theguardian.com/sport/2015/jul/10/tour-de-france-daniel-teklehaimanot-africa-eritrea-cycling

There are other African connections to the Tour. Announcer and retired pro cyclist Paul Sherwen was born in England but raised in Kenya. He currently lives in Uganda. Phil Liggett is British but he now spends much of his free time in South Africa, where he owns a house.

http://www.pezcyclingnews.com/interviews/pez-interviews-phil-liggett/

While Froome, Quintana and the other big climbers are likely to take over the polka dot jersey as the Tour moves to the Pyrenees, Teklehaimanot did win the King of the Mountains at the Criterium du Dauphine this year. He says that cycling is very popular in Eritrea. The country has a lot of mountainous terrain, which helps to prepare for the mountain stages at the Tour.

=====

Monday is a rest day, but NBCSN will air TDF programming during the morning, repeat broadcasts of today’s team time trial. In the evening, they will continue the nightly primetime broadcast schedule with a review of the first nine stages of this year’s race.

Tuesday is the first big mountain stage, in the Pyrenees. All the commentators say that the Tour, or at least the GC race, really begins on Tuesday. The stage is mostly flat until a big climb at the end, 9.5 miles with a finish at the top.

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[PotomacCyclist]

From the 2012 Phil Liggett interview with PezCyclingNews, linked above:

Phil Liggett: I’ll tell you a story about a bike shop in South Africa, a guy I know. He walked into this shop and said: “I want this bike,” I think it was a Pinarello, “… and I want it in this specific colour with these new components.”

And the owner said to him: “Well, it’ll be difficult to get that exact colour. How about if you just take this other colour?” The guy says that, no, it has to be very specifically one particular colour.

So it was going to take a while to sort it out, but eventually the bike shop owner got the frame, got the parts and the fellow comes to collect it.

The owner asks him why did it have to be that particular colour, and the man answered that he wanted a new bike but he wanted to have it sit in the hallway and look just like his old one so that when his wife saw it she wouldn’t know he’d just spent the equivalent of Ј4,000 on a new bike!

That sort of thing is more and more common now. People are spending a lot on new bikes which is helping to grow the bike market. It’s good for the economy. Mind you, sometimes the missus might think that Ј4,000 could be better spent!

[Powerful Pete]

@Steve O 119211 wrote:

Another year gone by and no women, at least I cannot find any reference on the TdF home page.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/she-the-people/wp/2014/07/24/the-tour-de-france-again-has-no-women-cyclists/

http://www.bicycling.com/racing/kathryn-bertine-2015-women-s-tour-de-france

Picking up a conversation from the start of the TDF thread (I won’t ruin it with spoilers) the female Giro d’Italia (Giro Rosa) ended today. The FB page seems better than the website for info.

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Giro-Rosa-Cycling-Race/1436449503235716?fref=nf

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