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Post by velodromed on Aug 27, 2023 16:06:07 GMT -5
It’s hard for me to not talk about World Tour cycling, so bear with me. I started watching the Tour de France when I was 18. 34 years later, I can say I’ve watch every single TDF, at least in part, since then. And yes, most ask about the Armstrong years and I was a fan, especially being from Texas. Those were amazing tours to watch. His fall from grace, and exposure of the depths of doping in my favorite sport, were hard to watch. See, I’ve been cycling my entire life, ever since I got my first tricycle, age two. It’s literally my first love.
It’s a far different cycling world now from those days. Extreme advances in technology, diet and training have replaced EPO and steroids. It’s pretty amazing. I know most every one has heard of The Tour de France. But there are two other grand tours (3 weeks long). The Giro de Italia, which is held in Spring of each year, and La Vuelta a Espania, held in late Summer of each year. There are also hundreds of single day and week long races each year. These races have been going on on over 100 years, with the only exceptions being the years of WWI, WWII and the 2020 Covid shutdown year.
World Tour Pro cycling is the highest pinnacle of the sport. These athletes train for over 16,000km each year and race another 15,000km and more. The season starts in January with the week long Tour Down Under, in Australia, and ends typically with the World Championship in October. I am born and bred American and have no idea how I became so interested in cycling. It’s been a major part of my life though. I had to finally stop riding in 2018 due to sever injury, but I’ll always watch these tours and dozens of other races in between. It’s my football, soccer and golf all wrapped up in one. I love cycling.
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Post by velodromed on Aug 27, 2023 16:23:08 GMT -5
Stage one began the race in a rarely use format, a 14km Team Time Trial. A TTT is where each 8 person team races against the clock. It was held in downtown Barcelona and began late afternoon, with the expectation that the final team would finish before dark, and there would be a huge party afterwards. They hadn’t had rain in months being the dry season, and didn’t expect any for at least another month or so. The team would set out on the 14km course (8.7 miles), 2 minutes apart and the twisty course of 16 turns would be burned through at speeds of 55km+ (over 35mph). The after party was going to be huge!!
Of course it rained like crazy. The streets which had been dry for months, became slick as ice with all the oils and dust on the surface. They had to extend the 2 minutes between teams, to 4 minutes. The last couple of teams raced in darkness and torrential rain. There were many wrecks, much confusion and it was chaos. A lesser know Dutch team, DSM, won the stage. It’s a young team with four of their eight riders being under 21 years old, and it was one of those young ones, Italian Lorenzo Milesi in his first TDF, that went across the line first, so he started stage two in the general class leaders Red jersey. What an amazing homer for a 21 year old rookie!! Tomorrows stage is a 181km course with a class 2 mountain (5 is easiest, 1 is hardest, above category is even worse) in the middle, and short uphill burst to the finish line. With rain expected yet again, it should be a good one.
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Post by rockjunquie on Aug 27, 2023 16:30:49 GMT -5
It's awesome to have a passion!!
My brother loves to bike, too. He has the same passion for it, but he has never been in competition. He just enjoys it. He probably gets in abt 100 miles a week in the city.
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Post by Pat on Aug 27, 2023 16:53:49 GMT -5
I’ve always liked biking just for the fun. 😄
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Post by velodromed on Aug 27, 2023 17:26:26 GMT -5
It's awesome to have a passion!!
My brother loves to bike, too. He has the same passion for it, but he has never been in competition. He just enjoys it. He probably gets in abt 100 miles a week in the city. Nice!! I raced mountain bikes, amateur sport class, and for fun at the Velodrome in San Jose, CA. I wasn’t great, mostly a mid pack rider, but I definitely enjoyed the rush of racing. Back then I would typically do around 100 miles/week up in the mountains. I loved the climbs and was always happiest when in ‘the zone’. There were times, when I was training for eight and 12 hour races, that I was riding hours every day. It took its toll on me though. I wrecked too much lol.
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Post by velodromed on Aug 29, 2023 9:07:35 GMT -5
Stage 2 was uneventful, so we will jump to yesterdays stage 3. Aug 28th, Stage 3- 158.5km (98 miles) from Súria to Arinsal in Andorra. Mountain stage with a mountain top finish. This stage was highly unusual because traditionally, the first few days of a grand tour are flat stages geared for a sprit finish. Then they lead into a couple of hilly days and then into the high mountains, typically on the first weekend of the race. To have a high mountain stage with a mountain top finish line for stage 3is unusual. As with many bike races, all the drama happened on the final mountain climb to the finish. Last years winner, Remco Evenpoel of Belgium, sprinted up the last couple hundred meters taking the stage win. He celebrated heavily as he crossed the line, beating his chest with an arrogant frown on his face. But during his display of hubris, he failed to realized that, being a mountain top finish, there was very little room after the finish line to stop. So the egotistical idiot plowed into a the crowd, knocking down a poor lady and over his bars into the ground straight onto his face. He was a bloody mess. Of course, as is usual for him, he blamed everyone except himself for the accident. Evenpoel Is part of the new generation of world tour cyclists. Young (23) talented and unfortunately, extremely narcissistic. He has the worst attitude of all the new stars, more like a pro American football star than a cyclist. Evenpoel is in the red leaders jersey today, stage 4. Which means his team is expected to do the majority of the work on the flats. It takes a lot of energy to be the leader of a grand tour. While all the other riders go back to the hotels to shower, eat, get their massage and go to sleep, the leader has to stick around for interviews, additional drug testing and in general, they get far less sleep and rest then the other riders. This is why traditionally, teams that have General Class hopes (those striving to win the race overall) try to avoid getting the leaders jersey before the middle of the race. Today, during stage 4, Evenpoels team will spend over 100km at the head of the peloton, which is French for platoon, or the main group of riders. When you lead the peloton, you use far more energy the those sitting back in the pack. The first rider takes the brunt of the wind. The second rider has a 10% easier ride because he is sitting in the first riders slipstream. The third ride has an even easier time. It gets easier and easier the farther back in the main pack you be are. Those within the peloton are literally using less the half the energy because the slipstream is so strong. There is a trade off though. It’s much more dangerous, with the high speeds and riders being inches apart. It’s pretty crazy how it works.
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Post by velodromed on Aug 31, 2023 12:01:27 GMT -5
SEPP CUSS THE AMERICAN IS DESTROYING THE RACE!! REMCO, THE LEADER WAS DROPPED, HE CRACKED LIKE AN EGG!! RODLIK AND VINGEGGAARD NOW ATTACKLEAVING REMCO IN THE DUST !!! WHOO HOOO!!!!
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Post by velodromed on Aug 31, 2023 12:30:26 GMT -5
Wow… what an amazing mountain stage. I like seeing the overbearing and egotistic Remco Evenpoel put in his place. The American Sepp Cuss from Boulder, Colorado won the stage. He is the best mountain ‘domestique’, which is the helper that assists the leader of the team on the climbs, in the world, as well as one of the nicest people in the peloton. For him to win such a massive stage as this is amazing. Rodlick and Vinneggard , this year’s winner of the Tour de France, are now within striking distance of Evenpoel. All the work that Evenpoel and his team put in the first five days to gain a 45 second lead has been nearly wiped out in10 minutes. This is such an amazing race!
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Post by velodromed on Aug 31, 2023 12:36:40 GMT -5
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Post by velodromed on Aug 31, 2023 12:40:12 GMT -5
Evenpoel did a great job today of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory! There are still two weeks left of the race, but still, this was a great day!
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Post by velodromed on Aug 31, 2023 20:56:05 GMT -5
I have well figured out by now that there are no cycling fans here. But it hasn’t stopped me before and it probably won’t stop me now. This is one of my greatest passions after all, so I always take a chance that maybe there’s someone else out there, some other lonely obsessive would tour cycling fan American waiting to find another one just as crazy… Tomorrow’s a flat stage so you won’t hear from me until the next mountains stage. Unless there’s a crazy finish or massive crash, then I’ll not be able to help it.
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skmcconnell361
starting to spend too much on rocks
Member since August 2023
Posts: 122
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Post by skmcconnell361 on Aug 31, 2023 21:20:23 GMT -5
The Tour de France is the only cycling event I try to keep up with, but that is hard here, no channels cover it.
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dillonf
fully equipped rock polisher
Hounding and tumbling
Member since February 2022
Posts: 1,604
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Post by dillonf on Aug 31, 2023 21:20:36 GMT -5
It's always great to see an American win on the world stage!! Thanks for sharing.
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Post by velodromed on Aug 31, 2023 22:23:46 GMT -5
The Tour de France is the only cycling event I try to keep up with, but that is hard here, no channels cover it. Really cool thing is Peacock covers it every year and it’s free to access. Actually, the Vuelta is on Peacock also. GCN+ is my go to for all the other cycling events. Have to pay for that though, think like 60 bucks a year, which is completely worth it to me. Peacock also announced that they will post to the Giro de Italia next year, so all three grand tours will be in one spot. If you’re not sure how to access Peacock, let me know what services you use. I’ll ask my wife. She is a very techi person by trade and figured out how to set me up. All we have is a Roku TV.
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Post by velodromed on Aug 31, 2023 22:24:47 GMT -5
I have well figured out by now that there are no cycling fans here. But it hasn’t stopped me before and it probably won’t stop me now. This is one of my greatest passions after all, so I always take a chance that maybe there’s someone else out there, some other lonely obsessive would tour cycling fan American waiting to find another one just as crazy… Tomorrow’s a flat stage so you won’t hear from me until the next mountains stage. Unless there’s a crazy finish or massive crash, then I’ll not be able to help it. (Yay!! I was wrong! There are a few cycling fans Sorry I was being negative but I do not feel good today…)
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Post by velodromed on Aug 31, 2023 22:32:14 GMT -5
It's always great to see an American win on the world stage!! Thanks for sharing. Yes it is!! We have around half a dozen really strong young Americans out there kicking ass on the world tour scene, and Sepp Cuss is the best of them. But I don’t just just like the Americans. There are so many incredibly talented riders out there of Belgium, Dutch, Spanish, Italian heritage and so . The grand tours, and cycling over all, really suffered hard after the Armstrong years and the of age of extreme doping. It has taking a long while to recover. But these last 5 years, where these young kids, literally 19 and early 20s, are coming out with skills beyond belief… and how they are using technology, scientific diets and training to reach heights of physical prowess, way beyond what they were doing with the illegal drugs, is amazing. The entire face of world tour cycling has changed in just five years, and it is so excited and so refreshing. This is over a 100 year old sport, so it got entrenched in tradition for way too long.
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Post by velodromed on Sept 2, 2023 22:08:48 GMT -5
It’s been a hell of a race so far. With this new era of young cyclists, be the young age, or the aggressiveness that goes with youth, whatever it is. The last few grand tours I’ve seen have been kick ass. Here’s how it used to be. Cyclists hit their peak in their late 20s to early 30s. They spent their young age racing junior circuits. If you were good, you would join the world tour circuit in your early 20s to mid 20s. Somewhere during this last decade, that slowly begin to change. More and more young riders were appearing, and some of them had skill. Then Peter Sagan hit the scene some 12 years ago at the age of 21, and nobody could match him in the Sprints. I had a level of skill that was rarely seen. He won the sprinters jersey at the Tour de France for seven years, which is unheard of. And then, five years ago something happened. All of a sudden there were a lot of young men with that skill level, except even better. The combination of diet technique, technology and intense training regimens did some thing that cyclists has only been able to achieve by doping previously. It’s nearly impossible to dope nowadays with the intense testing year around and biological passport, which shows any unusual changes in a riders system. Several years ago a 21-year-old kid Slovakian kid named Tadge Pogacar hit the scene. He won the Tour de France at age 21 and the year after that, which is unheard of. All of a sudden these kids are coming out of the woodwork everywhere. Teams begin massive scouting expeditions. Looking for any teenager with skill. Even searching zoom competitions during the Covid. The current Tour de France champion, Jonas Vineegar, was one of those kids discovered by the top team in the world, Jumbo Visma, because of an online stationary cycling zoom race. Jonas won his second Tour de France this year. I’m sitting here watching this race, and I am completely blown away by what’s going on. After watching cycling for almost 30 years, I have realized that I am watching a complete and utter revolution in sport, unlike any other ever seen. There’s not many sports that have been around for more than 100 years. There’s not many sports that have stuck with it a solid tradition for so long. There is not any other sport that is played on the world stages of the open roads, in front of the public. It’s been a little bit disconcerting at first, I wasn’t sure if I liked it. But now I’m loving it. These bike races, that let’s face it, can sometimes be boring. But this last couple of years they have been more exciting than ever! Where else can you watch 172 writers race every single day for three weeks on the open road to France or Spain or anywhere, covering thousands of kilometers. There’s no time out. There’s no substitutions. I remember when Gerant Thomas broke his pelvis in the first week of the Tour de France two years ago, and he went on to finish the damn race. With a broken pelvis!! That is tough beyond. How about the 26 year old American Sepp Cuss, who just won the stage the other day and was chugging champagne. Not even a month ago he had a 70 mile an hour crash on the day before the last day of the Tour de France and landed on his face. His face was destroyed, blood streaming off of him, and he finished the race as well as the final stage and 11 place over all, I think. Afterwords when he was being interviewed, his response was, I’m having a blast! I think I’m going to race the Vuelta a Espana in a few weeks. And here he is, four weeks later, at the top of his game again with a few bandages still on his face from that awful wreck… Well, guess what! He won the leaders jersey today! He is leading the Vuelta in grand fashion. He’ll probably lose it at some point because his job technically is to assist the two best cyclist in the world that are on his team. But for now he is flying high. And tomorrow’s going to be another mountain top finish. We’re here hopefully will be able to fly even higher. What’s really funny though is that his team asked the organizers to not give him the big bottle of champagne! They don’t want him repeating his 12 1/2 second chug in the middle of such an important race. These guys have less the 3% body fat (Sepp is 6’, 130lbs) , they get drunk real quick. So I will be awake and cheering at the top of my lungs at 8 AM Sunday morning. GO SEPP GO!! ALLEZ ALLEZ VENGA VENGA!!!
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