Men's Road Cycling UCI World Tour 2022 (La Vuelta Ciclista a España)

[heywoodu 16,036]

36 minutes ago, Federer91 said:

Hmmm, what protests exactly? Environment again?

That's planned for the Amerongse Berg I believe, yes. All the other stuff with upside down Dutch flags is farmers protesting, which has been a whole big deal in the Netherlands since this summer. Something with them having to stop expanding and start getting smaller because they are massively polluting everything with their non-stop growth, mega farms and nitrogen emissions. Especially where I live (rural) you'll see a lot of those upside down flags, mainly in the smaller villages around there's places where almost literally every lamp post has one  

 

Which is mostly annoying, but less annoying than the blocking of roads and highways they've been doing for a while.

[heywoodu 16,036]

Julius van den Berg (berg = mountain) getting the first mountain jersey  

 

Not that we really saw it, thanks to the typically Spanish TV directing  

[Grassmarket 4,064]

5 hours ago, heywoodu said:

I kind of thought of also going to watch today's stage, since it finishes in Utrecht again (one hour by train) and it passes through Amersfoort (same train, but 45 minutes or so) which is where I work - or at least on the rare days I don't work at home. I definitely would have if it was a time trial or something, but the finish will be impossible to really see and in Amersfoort you'd lose half the day for literally 20 seconds of 'whoosh whoosh whoosh whoosh' as the peloton passes by and that's it  

Yeah, but you get free hats, shampoo samples & stuff.

[Jinzha 702]

1 hour ago, Federer91 said:

Hmmm, what protests exactly? Environment again?

Actually the opposite this time. Farmers are protesting because they don't want to stop destroying the environment...

[heywoodu 16,036]

57 minutes ago, Grassmarket said:

Yeah, but you get free hats, shampoo samples & stuff.

Hurray, more useless stuff at home  

[OlympicIRL 5,745]

Bennett wins stage 2 and 3.... awesome to see him back on winning ways!

[heywoodu 16,036]

1 hour ago, OlympicIRL said:

Bennett wins stage 2 and 3.... awesome to see him back on winning ways!

Van Poppel is also happy to finally see his rise to arguably the best leadout in the world be rewarded with his sprinter actually finishing ahead of him  

[heywoodu 16,036]

Today we're in the Basque Country  

 

Not meant like that by the organizers of course, but it's sort of an hommage to doctor Iñigo San Millán, the doctor of Tadej Pogacar and Juan Ayuso (and others) at UAE, who is from today's start location Vitoria-Gasteiz and often spends time in today's finish location, Laguardia. The doctor who publicly said he would immediately leave a team if he ever notices anything suspicious going on, yet he was one of the brains behind the epic Saunier Duval time (you know, Riccardo Ricco, Leonardo Piepoli and the likes) and he immediately got back to work with the same doctors and managers as soon as Saunier Duval was caught and done  Including getting himselved involved with some Operation Aderlass shenanigans and such. Lovely, trustworthy fellow, really hammers home the image cycling tries to show the world of the people from their dark days not being involved anymore 

[heywoodu 16,036]

Evenepoel does what he was expected to do, plus more: blasting away the field in today's time trial, stage 10. And with that, really solidifying his position as top favourite for the Vuelta win.

[Jinzha 702]

I didn't expect Evenepoel to do better than Roglic here. Definitely fulfilling his potential superstar status early if he already wins his first grand tour.