Former World U-23 Road Champion Marc Hirschi electrified the Tour on Stage 9
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The race up the Peyresourd was like an uphill version of a Belgian Classic, all the strongmen just trying to kill one another
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All it took was a small, Category-3 climb right at the beginning of the stage for the Hulk to set things right.
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The teams with podium designs need to marshal their forces, keep their powder dry for that last week when the true fatigue sets in, and can ill afford using those soldiers up in any action that doesn’t directly benefit their ultimate goals
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Roglič, according to a report in L’Equipe, is now at the end of a five-year, meticulously crafted plan that began in 2015 when was a neo-pro on the Dutch team, at a mere $47,000 salary (how these men race for peanuts!).
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It was a wild, headwind sprint and with the sprinters marginalized in the climber-heavy teams, there were no real lead-out trains to organize the finale. The “Pocket Rocket”, Caleb Ewan, risked losing in order to win.
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Kristoff has won two of the greatest single day races in the world, Milano-Sanremo and the Tour of Flanders, and now will wear the Yellow Jersey of the Tour de France. By anyone’s measure, just those three make a major career.
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Athletes are often portrayed and viewed as assured paragons of confidence. In fact, they are, in the same way as actors, film directors, anyone who performs for a living, often bundles of insecurity, never knowing if they are one injury or conflict away from the end of their careers.
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The Mercier featured here was built for Jean-Pierre Genet, the longtime Mercier stalwart and right hand of Raymond Polidour.
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I’d take that even further, having the teams all pitch in to hire someone like my friend Jacques Michaud, a Tour stage winner and longtime director, of whom every pro has complete confidence, and others like him, to inspect entire courses, perhaps even the mornings of the races.
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Who would have ever thought that the presence of Chris Froome in a race would elicit pity in the public? The sight of the man who has won every Grand Tour suffering and struggling as he was in France was a poignant one and had to contribute the greatest counter-performance in the history of the Sky/Ineos juggernaut.
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“As you know John”, a highly successful European sprinter friend said, “ If you get a reputation as a ‘Gentleman Sprinter’ in the Benelux or Italy, the racers will eat you alive and you’ll never do anything”.
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He was a cruel man. At the 1963 Pro Road World’s a mix-up in the final sprint – contested and argued to this day in Belgian cafes – his teammate Benoni Beheyt somehow ended up first on the line, his hand on Van Looy’s hip. Fending off a hook? Pulling Van Looy back to win? The arguments will never cease. What was certain was that Van Looy spent the rest of his career trying to ruin Beheyt’s in every way possible.
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That men’s race must have been an exercise in terror. First race of the year, everyone fresh and nervous, the “Bianche” – or ancient white gravel roads that the race was created to help preserve – now loose and dusty in summer as opposed to the hard-pack the riders normally encounter in the traditional March date, making navigation treacherous. And goodness, was there carnage.
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This is the moment for the UCI (world governing body of cycling) to step in and in fact act like a professional sports organization – which, I’m afraid, they are not – and take a hard look at pro racing finish chutes, taking into consideration the wild speeds the racers are able to hit today.
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The very different training possibilities among pro racers is a crucial factor to be addressed. While some, such as Belgian Oliver Naesen, have put in 365-kilometer (228-miles) outdoor training rides, others, restricted to their homes are using the – brilliant- home training platform Zwift, basically video game racing that builds resistance from hills and wind into the training experience.
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Any thought of holding the Tour is based on the hopes – and prayers – that there will be, in three-month’s time, much more developed testing protocols, that the social isolating will have had a positive effect, and that scientists and doctors will have developed mitigation strategies to help us all out of this.
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One quote in particular always stayed with me: “The Tour de France has done more to create the national identity of France in the 20th Century than any other event, including the two world wars.”
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