Tour de France 2015

Who's been paying attention, then?

What's the best site to keep up-to-date with what's happening on the tour?

http://www.letour.com/us/

I'm completely hooked, and moderately ashamed. Didn't catch any of today's stage though, partly because it's been usurped by the cricket on bbc radio and partly because I get the sense there's nothing meaningful in gc terms until the mountains now.

That was a lot of crashing yesterday, ouch!

You can never tell at the TdF, Troll - in most years, that'd be the case; however, it's not entirely unknown for a rider to gain an advantage during the flat stages and then maintain it throughout the mountain stages. Having said that, I don't see it happening this year because when Contador, Froome and Quintana start knocking the shit out of each other in the Pyrenees and Alps they'll change the GC completely.

My money's on Quintana this year!

I guess what I don't quite understand is what the point of the flat stages is, given that the race is set up so that only a climber can win.

Mind you, the windy stage in Zeeland was a lot of fun.

"I guess what I don't quite understand is what the point of the flat stages is, given that the race is set up so that only a climber can win."

Not necessarily, though non-climbers do need to gain either a serious lead early on and then keep up with the climbers (like Wiggins did; Wiggins was a good climber but doesn't compare to the pure climbers) or hold their own in the mountains before obliterating everyone if there's a late time time trial (as Cadel Evans did when he beat Andy Schleck). Unfortunately, many climbers are also good in the time trials.

The main point of the flat stages, other than making sure the Tour visits the flat parts of France and thus doesn't lose a big lump of income from those regions, is for the Points competition. The General Classification is only one of three main classifications, the others being the Points (for the sprinters) and the King of the Mountains. The rider usually considered the greatest King of the Mountains of all time, Federico Bahamontes, turns 87 years old today, incidentally. Like many climbers, Bahamontes hated descended (because they tend to be so small and light they can't maintain control of the bike when heading downhill) - during one Tour, after beating everyone to the top of the Galibier, he stopped at the roadside and had an ice-cream while waiting for his rivals to catch up because he didn't want to descend alone.

another Brit with the yellow jersey, thanks to a fall. will Chris be able to hold onto it?

http://www.theguardian.com/sport/2015/jul/09/tour-de-france-2015-tony-...

I doubt he'll want to hang onto it just yet - you're a marked man in the maillot jaune, so he'll probably be happy to give it up for a while and then try to get it back in the mountains!

I thought the team time trial was a nice change of pace.

A lot of cycling fans really hate team time trials, usually stating "they reduce a team to only being as strong as its weakest rider" as a reason. I quite like 'em, myself - they're a piece of piss to photograph too.

Today is the anniversary of Tom Simpson's death on Mont Ventoux in the 1967 Tour, incidentally.

Fantastic ride by Majka in the Pyrenees today!

Interesting bit of TdF trivia...

On this day in 1961, Jacques Anquetil won the Tour for a second time. On that very same day, 315km away at Laeken in Belgium, a 16-year-old named Edouard Louis Joseph Merckx finished his first ever race.

It's also Miguel Indurain's birthday - Anquetil was the first man to win the Tour five times, Merckx was the second, Bernard "The Badger" Hinault was third (he's the miserable-looking bloke you may remember from the stage at the start on Parker's Piece last year) and Indurain was fourth.

Nobody else has ever won five Tours, especially not anyone from Texas.

http://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/13m-Chisholm-Trail-revolutionise-Cambr...