The Tokyo Olympics courses are out and if it’s for 2020 it’s hardly 50/50 with the men’s course taking in more climbs, including skirting around Mount Fuji which could provide the image of the games… if the weather is clear. But for now the look isn’t good with the women’s course skipping these climbs and the peloton will be half the size of the men’s race too.
Tour de France founder Henri Desgrange toyed with format, teams, bikes and more all the time and his spirit lives on the annual suggestions after the Tour de France to make changes to the race and the sport as a whole. His successor Christian Prudhomme says power meters should be banned in racing.
But there’s a risk with the logical fallacy that “something must be done, here’s something, we must do it”. Banning the use of power meters sounds useful but probably isn’t and above all we should be wary of quick solutions.
Direct Energie have applied to the UCI for a World Tour licence for next year. The team has been in the World Tour before when it was sponsored by Europcar and its current sponsor has just been bought by French oil major Total meaning it’s theoretically got a line of funding that could make Team Sky feel jealous. Just one problem though: there’s no World Tour licence to spare.
Chris Froome and Tom Dumoulin both tried the Giro d’Italia and Tour de France double. Did it work out for them? Probably but this won’t make the Giro-Tour double any easier, in fact new calendar changes for 2019 and beyond make it even harder and this is potentially a problem for the sport.
How to compress three weeks into a single moment? The story of Geraint Thomas’s win is a more gradual matter, still if there was a day and moment it was at the ski station of La Rosière were Thomas jumped away, passed earlier escapee Tom Dumoulin, took the stage by 20 seconds, collected the time bonus and put on the yellow jersey.
The final stage and one that starts as victory parade and ends as the most glamorous criterium.
Geraint Thomas looks safe in the yellow jersey, he could even win the stage today but other steps of the podium are in play in today’s time trial with a course that puts the emphasis on trial.
The final mountain stage of the Tour de France and a very hard day out with a mix of high climbs, “hidden” ascents and then a tricky descent to the finish.
A coffee stop away from the Tour de France, to look at, dare we say it, a “French cultural thing“? Many foreigners and perhaps some French people too complain about the way coffee tastes in France but what if actually getting a coffee during your ride was the real problem?
A pause in the mountain stages, today’s stage offers a gourmet journey to Pau for the cyclotouriste. For the race a likely sprint finish but so many teams have won nothing in the Tour so far that the day’s breakaway is unlikely to belong to a handful of wildcard dreamers.