heywoodu

Hello

The most odd thing is the apparent randomness in events. Rules like this should be for all event or for no events, but not for some events. Still one of the most unfortunate situations in recent sports history, on all sides. The worst are the people who bashed Semenya into the ground (online, the heroes) as if she was/is a cheater, which is rather simply not the case no matter one's opinion about the situation in general.

If it was, it wouldn't be a big deal. This is TAISC man!

It's in Brazil, I'm used to things being an hour or two later than expected after 9 years of experience with Brazilian people

That's 3 out of 3 for former World Tour rider Reguigi against Burkina Faso's best, amazing

They had Stefan Schumacher in that race, who finished dead last

A stage, not stages. And yes I didn't say he won nothing, just that he never was one of the best who won a lot. Two serious wins, two decent wins and five....'ok' wins.

By the way, with Kroon's confession, after 12 years we now have a full bingo card for the top-10 And behind that we've got the likes of shady Italians Paolo Bettini and Eddy Mazzoleni in 12th and 14th, Juan Jose Cobo from the most shady Saunier Duval team ever in 15th, Igor 'one year fly and abnormal blood values' Astarloa in 16th, Maxim Iglinskiy in 17th, Iban Mayo (EPO) in 18th, Chris Horner of shady Saunier Duval (who later won the Vuelta as a great-granddad in terms of age) in 19th... How fun, of the entire top-19 (!), 11th placed Fabian Wegmann seems to be the only one who doesn't have either a simple positive doping test or at the very least the stench of a huge shithole around him

May I just say, I like the 'points template' (the voting posts, so to say)

Most often Jeroen Vanbelleghem, a Belgian who usually does the Nordic combined in the winter and is one of the main commentators for cycling in the rest of the year. Sometimes Kroon works with José Been (TourDeJose on Twitter) being the main commentator, but more often she works with another former cyclist (Bobbie Traksel).

Well yeah, Reguigi is like the only semi-decent (proven) rider in the entire race, he should be ashamed of himself if he doesn't win every single stage while sprinting backwards

The non-existing chemistry with the commentator is always fun and cringeworthy too. Kroon talking about the beautiful nature during a stage for minutes on an end and the commentator staying completely silent for a while until it's not so painful anymore to bring up something completely different. Or Kroon spending (literally) 5 minutes talking about buying a 180 dollar pair of swimming shorts in Oman or something (true story), followed by the commentator with an audibly painful time of trying to come up with anything to say.

Kroon? Many?

Yep, somewhat interesting way that happened: Kroon would work for the AD newspaper as analyst during last year's Giro, and to get the job he would confess his doping use publicly. Due to personal reasons he couldn't accept the job, but now, a year later, the journalist with who he would make the analyses of the daily stages revealed it anyway "because I can't stay quiet when I know something like this" Now Kroon didn't get the job + had no choice but confessing publicly + won't get money (because he burned the journalist by saying he only wanted Kroon to confess so he could write another book, like with Thomas Dekker). Oh well, nowdays Kroon is mostly known for being a co-commentator on Eurosport and having anecdotes about stuff like angry dogs during his trainings or "ah, rider X, I've been in his team for some years...*minutes going by*....so then we drank a beer.".

One-day fly Four hill fly Thomas Diethart has retired. http://www.fis-ski.com/ski-jumping/news-multimedia/news/article=thomas-diethart-announces-his-retirement.html Still unbelievable that I saw him win the 4 hill tournament live in Bischofshofen and after that he had a 4th, 6th, 8th and 9th place in the next two months as only other top-10 results of his career

What's 'Swaziland'?

The first stage of the Tour of Senegal was cancelled, because there was no doctor African cycling Another chapter after the Tour of Cameroon was cancelled when half the field had already arrived. Reguigi won the second stage, beating basically nobody with any decent experience

I honestly thought he had retired a while ago...didn't see much (or remember much at least) of him after that one year where he had absolutely insane times in the first 2 months of the year.

Booooooo president of Uganda, booooooooo. https://www.rt.com/news/424513-uganda-oral-sex-warning-president/

Yeah, a quarter of a season for doping, compared to often two seasons in normal sports

Haha, 4 weeks suspension for doping (NFL player)

Quick-Step this year

Vanendert

Luckily we're almost at the finish in one of the most beautiful places ever, the ever colourful Saint-Nicolas in Liege

Wow, what a comeback from Cheruiyot. 1:40 back at the halfway mark, 1:16 at 30km, and she passed Keitany at 35.5km