heywoodu

But in 2020 and 2021 he was still on the better sprinters. Not really with the kind of raw speed like the real top sprinters (the likes of Sam Bennett), but with good positioning and use of experience he definitely was up there in the fight for the podium spots. It really went downhill after 2021.....probably not a coincidence that's when he went from pretty good BORA-hansgrohe to TotalEnergies, one of those typical somewhat mediocre but well-willing French teams. As always, old boys Daniel Oss and Maciej Bodnar went with him, but yeah...they're not exactly the shining example of youth neither

This might make for an interesting thread: list athletes who were among the very best in the world consistently for at least a few years (let's say anywhere between 2000 and now), and then had a massive and quick - and preferably not injury-related - drop while still being active Surely the combined power of Totallympics can come up with some more examples

I just came here to post that today I learned he is apparently in the Tour de France, he was one of the 1500 riders who tried an attack in the early stage, but missed the timing entirely Oh well, even legendary cyclists eventually go towards their 40's and other than Valverde and Chris Horner, one generally doesn't see them often anymore by then, no shame in that

Thanks! Although for whatever reason, out of nowhere AllAquatics decided to start working

Apparently there is the Recast platform which World Aquatics uses, but where you've got to pay €12 for a week pass. Fine, but one can only pay with a credit card, apparently Come on, the one time I want to pay for a federation's subscription...

I was planning to start catching up from the beginning now....but AllAquatics only has 1 minute highlight videos of the events available as replay? (being the worst kind of highlight videos even, with only some accompanying music and no commentary) Surely the full events can be watched somewhere, but as AllAquatics is always a bit of a pain to navigate clearly, I might be missing it there....but where can it be found then? It shouldn't be too difficult, I'm merely looking for full replays of the open water events (and considering I was disappointed at the European Games at first and then that turned out to be mostly available after all, I'll be more cautious now and keep my hopes that these events can be viewed in full )

Absolutely Although yesterday was also a perfect example of how stupid sprint teams can be. Most of them waited with putting some manpower in front until it was way too late, some of them didn't even put anyone at the front at all. Besides, the lead group was tactically brilliant, very clearly going at something like 60% most of the time, knowing that the peloton didn't want to catch them immediately and keep them at around a minute. That came back to bite the peloton in the ass badly, because when they started moving, the lead group - and especially super engines Campenaerts and Asgreen - still had enough left in the tank to hold their ground Today can be interesting, there's a whole bunch of riders for whom today's stage would be perfect in theory, but all of them have a 'but'. Van der Poel, but 1) his team might be odd enough to go for Philipsen and 2) he'll need a teammate since everyone will constantly react to whatever he does, Cort Nielsen, but he has been nearly entirely invisible this Tour, Aranburu, but even in his Basque Country he was barely able to do anything, etc. Curious about the stage, in theory it is perfect for attackers, especially after the failure of the sprint teams yesterday it should give a lot of riders hope..

As expected, nothing for Philipsen. Abrahamsen gets a fine because he peed in public though. Because that's much worse.

Philipsen is literally trying to block attackers with 80k to go, because he doesn't want another attacker. Like, going in front of the attacker, pulling the brakes, trying to push him out of the road, etc. The umpteenth dick move by Philipsen. Probably he'll get away with 200 CHF fine or so, but he should easily get 100 points docked for the green jersey or so. Won't make a difference, but still it means a bit more than a tiny monetary fine.

How on earth can you think a place like that - right next to the road - will be totally fine to park your car and just leave for a few days?

I assume/hope either Eurosport and/or FISU.tv will be available again?

Pogacar successfully defended his white jersey and so can prepare for a trip to the podium ceremony, surely he's looking forward to that

Who knows, might also have been blocked by all those blindly drunk 'fans' who care only about being on TV with their pants on their ankles or something. At least the 174 photographers on motorbikes probably got some shots..

Goddamn idiot spectators and motorbikes. Again and again.

Whereas yesterday was mostly a matter of something insane by Vingegaard, today seems to mostly be a matter of total collapse by Pogacar. Landis-like, so let's see if tomorrow or Friday we get a comparable solo

And that's it for Pogacar.

Cute to see arguably the most anonymous few teams in the Tour - TotalEnergies, Arkea, Alpecin and Lotto Dstny - give it a try today, but yeah, the Pro Cycling Manager ride of Jumbo and UAE is making short work of the undoubtedly well-meaning riders of those teams Tiesj Benoot of all places dropping like 70% of the peloton on a 1st category climb

But come on, of all the thousands of athletes with iPhones, he is the only one with an unsolvable problem? And using a computer to keep the information in ADAMS updated was impossible as well, because of his MacBook or something? Not saying it's impossible, but....yeah, that doesn't sound like a great excuse...

In other words, it doesn't look so.....Nice. Sorry. It's a shame though, any big winter sports event in the Alps would be great, assuming it's a somewhat normal winter and not half green

Huh? Pogacar and Gaudu were basically the only ones of the top riders who did change bikes. There is a ton to unpack about Vingegaard's performance yesterday, but not changing the bike is basically the only normal thing of the entire ride

It wasn't, at all. Pogacar completely humiliated everyone, except for Vingegaard, who had an outright inhuman performance. Van Aert is one of the best time trial riders in the world and is in good shape on the climbs as well, yet he ends up well over a minute behind Pogacar. Pogacar's main mistake seems to have been the bike change, but other than that, he had an excellent ride. There was just someone else who threw down a ride we will still remember - one way or another - in 25 years from now. Van Aert, Bilbao, Yates averaged high 37 km/h today, Pogacar broke 39....then comes Vingegaard with well over 41 km/h on a stage like this. Arguably a more incredible ride than Landis in 2006.

At least Pogacar is someone who attacks if necessary, so today might actually have increased the chance to see something interesting in the last days.

I think the sarcasm was obvious And understandable.

Yeah, I didn't exactly mean it positive Tom Dumoulin on Dutch TV for the analysis, and his entire face and voice shows that he really wants to say something, but wisely chooses not to, other than "this is probably the most insane time trial ride in history"

This is probably the most insane ride since the 100km+ Floyd Landis solo in...2006? Or possibly some of those insane attacks by Ricco. Or Ullrich at Cap Decouverte 2003, Armstrong, Riis, Indurain.