heywoodu

What a swim for Titmus By the way, does an all-time ranking exist somewhere in swimming? Like World Athletics has this one, where one can see the fastest/best athletes ever (with only everyone's best performance) and the fastest/best performances ever (with multiple performances for athletes): https://worldathletics.org/records/all-time-toplists/sprints/100-metres/outdoor/women/senior Does something similar exist in swimming? So if someone swims, say, 3:56.80, we can say "that's the Xth fastest time ever"?

This whole thing feels like one of those cases where at first it seems like a nonsense decision, because firing someone because of a hand gesture which is very widely known to mean 'Ok' is obviously bullshit, but then at some point a can of worms is opened and the dude turns out to be an actual far-right extremist and violent incel supporter and such Who knows.

Vingegaard had nothing to lose, there was no way he was going to lose 7 minutes (yet he kept looking behind nervously as if Pogacar could somehow close the 7 minutes any moment). He did have something to win, a nice stage (entirely without any risk for his yellow jersey). To do that, his only chance was to go full on the climb and try and break Pogacar there, he had 6-7km to do so. Not doing anything and almost going for a sur place was basically just Vingegaard telling Pogacar "No, I do not want to stage, please take the stage win". It feels a little like a typical ending for the Tour, which was won by easily the strongest rider/team, but also an equally boring rider. I am fully aware the result is the only thing that counts in the end, so one can hardly blame them, but let's say as a fan the heart rate does not go up a single beat when watching Vingegaard and 'Jumbo-Sky'/'US Postal-Visma'/etc. Sort of a Louis Meintjes in course tactics (wait, wait, wait, wait, finish), just a ten times stronger version

Meanwhile in the Tour de Wallonie today, Filippo Ganna did the leadout for Elia Viviani in the bunch sprint....but Viviani was so mediocre that he didn't manage to pass Ganna....and nobody else did neither, so Ganna won a bunch sprint (and a desperately sprinting Viviani didn't know what to do so just raised his hands in 'victory' for Ganna )

Well, that was an anticlimactic last real stage Mostly thanks to Vingegaard not doing anything except for following, following, following (again) and then trying for 3 seconds until Pogacar expectedly outsprinted him. With Pinot, Pidcock, Barguil, Gall, Yates and Yates in the front there was so much potential for a fun last 10km....too bad it was extinguished by Vingegaard (and to a lesser extent Pogacar, although in his case not attacking was at least logical). On the bright side, the passage of Pinot on the Petit Ballon was absolutely, breathtakingly amazing Such a shame they went for it behind him, but wow, what a moment.

Feels a little like Dani Martinez in the same team last week or so: clear concussion, but they let him ride a full mountain stage after that and then pretended to take their responsibility and pull him out...

It's not gonna happen, but how awesome it would be if Pinot finishes his career with a win in his last ever Tour de France mountain stage in his Vosges, where the atmosphere is going to be electric

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...