Rolling Pro Cycling Thread

Formolo having a great start to the season. Bernal is fried.

looked like sivakov finished ahead of him

He did indeed.

max schachmann crashes into a civilian’s car (!) in il lombardia and still finishes 7th. how the hell the car got onto the route... serious questions for the organisers to answer

heard remco took a sore one on the descent of the sormano too

that was scary indeed! seems he's ok though, and he definetely still has his teeth.

I haven’t been following closely but why was Lombardia moved to the middle of August? I thought races were going back not forward.

fractured pelvis for remco; popped collarbone for schachmann

french mafia rallying for pinot on the last stage of the dauphine

durango y’all wooo

I haven’t been following closely but why was Lombardia moved to the middle of August?

I assume because the Tour/Giro/Vuelta are all in the autumn (and to some extent overlapping) and Lombardia is the kind of race that Grand Tour riders are more likely to win.

RIP G and froomey

kinda excited about seeing G in the giro tbf

my money's on carapaz for the tour

Coronavirus infection rate soars in France ahead of the Tour de France
French Prime Minister Jean Castex says the coronavirus is four times more prevalent there than a month ago, reports the BBC(link is external).

France suffered 5,429 new cases in the last 24 hours – the highest number recorded since April – and there are now 21 départements classed as red zones (which means more than 50 new Covid-19 cases per 100,000 inhabitants in the last seven days).

Most red zones are around Paris or in holiday regions on the Cote d’Azur – where the Tour de France is due to begin on Saturday.

I was just contemplating starting a Tour de France thread so we can have one before the race gets cancelled.

We can enjoy the Phantom Zone. (My NBC Sports subscription for cycling just hit yesterday so I guess we'll see if it'll be for two days or something. Still, fun catching up with the Dauphine at least.)

France reports 7,379 daily cases in new post-lockdown record
France reported 7,379 new confirmed cases on Friday; the most in a day since its lockdown ended and just shy of the 7,578 high set on 31 March.

how many stages do we reckon they'll manage... first week max ?

Ladies and Gentlemen, less than 24 hours until we hear this 🚨🎶🤣pic.twitter.com/EzmQ6oeepJ

— ITV Cycling (@itvcycling) August 28, 2020

have we got a TdF thread yet? Eurosport audio absolutely borked so far lol

There’s no way this makes it all the way to Paris - TdF 2020

Cycling journalist José Been tweeted something along the lines of "anyone following me voting for Trump please unfollow me"

Trek's Quinn Simmons tweets:

Bye 👋🏿

— Quinn Simmons (@QuinnSimmons9) September 30, 2020

In response, Simmons' employer Trek suspends him:

Trek-Segafredo response to public comments made by Quinn Simmons pic.twitter.com/ygqYjy8FWz

— Trek-Segafredo (@TrekSegafredo) September 30, 2020

You love to see it.

Also today

In 2017 when we had Tsgabu Grmay on the team, many riders and staff would call him the N word..I got pissed so much every time they did it, but they though it was fun. I think they had no idea what it meant. But that's not an excuse. There was one rider though, I asked honestly..

— Janibrajkovic (@janibrajkovic) October 1, 2020

brajkovic's confessional witness work is actually feels more impressive to me, as it reflects a bit more of the actual lived-space vs performative twitter assholery (not that twitter assholery isn't revealing or accurate).

nah actually suspending that dipshit is likely better, that's realest, sorry.

Yesterdays (great) LBL, a triptych:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EjfykmSWkAMaY-H?format=jpg&name=small

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EjgGcq8X0AUreRf?format=jpg&name=small

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ejjk9ykWkAAR3UD?format=jpg&name=small

Oh dear

RIP G, crashing in the neutral zone is a hell of a way to go out

That was all very bemusing, down to the hilarious finish of course.

g hit a coke can, right? as crashes go, it seemed not toooo terrible, he had swerved, slowed, and had a foot down, but him not moving much afterwards-- ooooh not good. is he starting tomorrow i wonder

He didn't start. It was a drink bottle, yeah. Very harsh as he was as good as when he won the TdF, or even better this year. Ineos will be wishing this season is over asap.

imagine riding 150km with a fractured hip and finishing only 12 min behind, cyclists really are tough

I saw some fan video of him hitting a bidon and it’s hard to watch, he so nearly held it.

He did the whole of the Tour that started in Corsica (2013? 2014?) with a broken pelvis

Re: Quinn Simmons: No more USA pros from rich-guy Colorado families please. Just turn over all the USA cycling development money to the Williams bros. Funny how Trek and Spesh have traded places on the 'Evil / Good' spectrum.

Imagine how much cooler USA cycling would be if Lance had not turned into a GC guy and remained a Valverde-style one-day Puncheur and the next gen USA star after him was Rahsaan Bahati... sprinting for the Green Jersey vs McEwen and Cav on the Champs. Instead of what we got, which was...Teejay :(

Its like horner (ca) and floyd (pa/ca) and hamilton (ma/?) never happened innit. One of them won a gt even.

v atmospheric ending to the stage today, some ride by Ganna too

i am missing the giro but the availability and pricing on this shit doesn't work. the old pirate shit i could do in the 00s and early 10s is too fraught and annoying. i thought about like vpn and gcn but fuck that lifes too short and i pretend to be a grown-ass adult so... post youtubular highlights when you feel it!

fwiw i had v positive interaction with flobikes concerning how their billing structure worked last year, and they did me right. still, i ain't buying a years worth of flobikes. they could bump a month to month up to $25 (from $13) and i might do a few of those, buuut as is, nope.

VPN + RAI free to air is the way to go IMO, although I haven’t had a a chance to watch anything yet. I should have a chance to to watch some today.

Anyone give any insight into why there is a pedelec category at the MTB worlds?

To provide Ad copy for bike brands.

As I suspected

lol i just threw the rai feed up, it looks like today happened...at night, holy shit, ha. thanks for the encouragement to just go for rai, Ed.

saw a reported de gendt take: "I had just closed 2'40" with a Movistar backpack. Then I was like: everyone can win, except you. When Filippo Ganna went, I would rather he won. I then made it a goal to ride on Rubio's wheel, so that he didn't get forward." haha!

Juju nearly made the same mistake in Brabantse Pijl yesterday as on Sunday (celebrating too early), only this time Van der Poel had gravely misjudged the sprint. Visible sigh of relief from Juju after the finish line.

De Gendt otm btw

Yates out of the Giro after testing positive for Covid
the rest of his team have tested negative so far but it must be pretty unlikely that no one else has it

also Paris-Roubaix cancelled boooooo

Shit, I hope Yates doesn’t suffer long term consequence of this.

Also boo on roubaix, an October roubaix and the forts running of the women’s race was a pretty exciting prospect. I’m still surprised the tour got to the end though and I’m not sure I entirely believe how few positives there were for the rona.

Getting thru tdf was pretty impressive to me.
Could be luck, but at that scale seems also an example of good compliance by riders and staff of personal discipline wrt bubbling.

Or could be a lil crafty deception, bit that is hard to pull off at scale, too.

RIP 20 roubaix. 🙁

The whole Mitchelton-Scott team and TJV's Steven Kruijswijk out of the Giro w/ the rona. Simon Yates already left earlier. And this is just after the first week... :-/