Tour De France 2016 thread

At least he tried once or twice today, as opposed to whole of last year. Froome uphill not as good as last year imho.

Dumoulin killed it.

he went ahead so early, unbelievable that he held the lead uphill for so long

HI DERE,
Euro just finished, what's shaking over here on the TdF?

hailstones the size of cherry tomatoes is whats happening

With frogs inside?

pinot finished 6th iirc

Catching up on everything myself. (I hadn't realized how absolutely handy the NBC web package deal is over here -- $30 for a full year of coverage of most of the major races? I can live with that.) Today was nuts!

rip contador

what the actual fuck just happened

chaos

biggest WTF Tour moment in FOREVER

did Porte and Froome collide?? or did some angry Colombian fan steal Froome's bike

Froome running will make for one hell of an iconic photo

This is crazy! I don't think I've ever seen anyone try to run up Mont Ventoux before.

https://www.lds.org/bc/content/shared/content/images/gospel-library/manual/31118/31118_000_021_02.jpg

Froome upon the mountain

I'm guessing the motorbike had to avoid some twat trying to get some screen time and Porte etc were the unfortunate result. Had to do a double take when I saw Froome running up the mountain

wtf

at fuck

wt*

total madness.

Madness.

So Porte, Froome and Mollema all crashed behind a motorcycle. But what happened to Froome's original bike? Did it get run over?

Very stupid that other sky dude didn't give Froome his bike tho.

froome is 6" taller than henao, fit might've been an issue?

For those last 100s of meters?

Froome gets to keep yellow they're saying now. Not sure how I feel about that.

sounds like they've taken the times from 3km out, kinda bullshit tbh

1. Froome
2. Yates 47"
3. Mollema 56"
4. Quintana 1'01"

crash probably wouldn't have happened if they hadn't moved up the finish line to avoid the summit and then forgot to bring the finish line barriers to keep all the dummies off the road

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CnVzU--XYAA42zu.jpg

looks like they readjusted the times again, Quintana gains some seconds

1. FROOME
2. YATES + 00' 47''
3. QUINTANA + 00' 54''
4. MOLLEMA + 00' 56"

Why were the crowd booing Froome when he got the yellow jersey again? Same thing happened at the British GP when Rosberg got 3rd. People are just fucking nasty all over right now.

Mollema has been 1st, 3rd and now 4th today. No doubt people are the worst (^) but it's the inconsistency that irks me. If it were anyone other than Froome I'm positive they wouldn't have done this. Which stinks.

*2nd, 3rd, 4th

Quintana's time was clocked from before the crash, Mollema's time from after the crash. Trek has protested. Travesty.

?

As I understand it, the times given were the finishing times across the line - Froome and Porte were given Mollema's time (as that was the group they were in before the crash), whereas Quintana was given the time of the next group on the road, even though he actually came in slightly behind them (the argument being that he was held up by the aftermath of the crash and that broke up the group he was in).

I wasn't clear, but indeed. Froome and Porte were compensated. Even Quintana, who had fuck all to do with the crash and was indeed behind the group they gave him the time of, gets compensated. But Mollema's 24 seconds he gained by getting up quick and riding his balls off got annulled. The rider who got up quickest is being punished here. It makes no sense whatsoever. As Mollema said after the race: I should have just taken it easy and stayed with Froome and Porte then.

That's one way of looking at it. Another way is that a motorbike brought down Mollema's group of three, but Mollema had the good fortune not to be the one who took the full force of crashing into the motorbike (Porte) or having his frame snapped with no replacement bike anywhere nearby (Froome), so it's not as if he Mollema was any keener than either of those two at getting back up and riding again. In reality, but for the crash the three of them would have stayed close together and would probably only have been separated by 2 or 3 seconds at the line (in what order, I couldn't say) and Quintana would almost certainly have lost more time to them than he's ended up doing.

what a time to be alive

xpost honestly i'm more cheesed that quintana is gaining off this than anyone else

Yeah, agreed.

Yep. Footage just resurfaced of Quintana holding on to the back of a motorcycle, whizzing by Porte trying to get back on his bike, does not help either.

(here)

I would have given Froome bonus seconds for the indignity of riding the neutral yellow bike for geeks btw.

oh god it looked like he was riding a lego bike, poor bloke

so much shade @ quintana. i get doing what u have to do to get out of there but cmon dude

sidebar, i have been watching Orica's youtube channel, fun bunch of dudes imo

poor gerrans tho, out of the tour and rio.
tough

These last few days, nutty.

time trials a welcome slice of normcore

Lol. There's something deeply beautiful about riders who really know how to TT. Seeing Dumoulin sitting on his bike as aerodynamic as possible, body hardly moving, is a thing of grace.

yeah he was so impressive!

i saw a photo of alaphillippe's TT crash, wtf happened there?

Cav with the win!!! Nicely done sir

Just goes to show how much omega pharma was the wrong team for him.

god that stage looked like a beast. so brutal. and still, whither goest thou quintana

Yeah I'd have to say this was my favorite stage overall so far, not that there haven't been some good ones. The only thing that would have made it great would have been if Quintana had put Froome to the test but I don't know whether to credit Sky's relentless efficiency or to think that Quintana is turning into a bit of a bust here this year. Hell, Astana applied more pressure in the end.

welp that's it for another year, what an empty tensionless race this year for GC tho :/
sorry to see Rodriguez go, have always enjoyed watching him race

i am sure the Vuelta will be espectacular

also Purito might be there too, I assume he wil, to do another farewell lap :)

Any word on why Tony Martin pulled out?

knee pain, apparently

:(