heywoodu

Do let me know if you find yourself close to Epe, because then you'll also find yourself close to my town (and we have a pancake restaurant too, two even!)

Hindley lost only a bit more than a minute to Geoghegan Hart in the previous ITT though, and that one was double the length of Sunday's. I still think Kelderman is the favourite, mostly because tomorrow is not nearly as hard as it would have been without the changes and nothing compared to yesterday, and he's definitely the better time trial rider of the three. If he doesn't give up more than half a minute tomorrow, I think he'll take it. If not, Geoghegan Hart is my favourite since he's a better ITT rider than Hindley (though not by that much), and Hindley doesn't look strong enough to really put some time into him tomorrow in the not all too hard climbs. Then again, don't forget it wasn't Geoghegan Hart who broke Kelderman yesterday. It was an utterly alien Rohan Dennis, who went from being mediocre to leading them up the Stelvio faster than anyone ever before.

There's De Posthoorn, which is slowly closing in on it's 300 year anniversary (it's from 1736), most of which time it served as a cafe, restaurant, hotel and similar roles - mostly together. Fun fact: it was founded as what would be translated to 'The Orange Tree', a reference to the royal family. These references were however strictly forbidden by the French occupying authorities in the late 1700's, and so the name was changed to it's current name, translated loosely to 'The Postal Horn'. It's heydays were in the 1920's, when it was so popular and famous that guests who couldn't be placed in Het Loo Palace were often brought here.

Ah, right, I hadn't thought about children of course still being obligated to 'go to school', even when 'going to school' is online now

What's the reasoning behind this? If anything, this leads to more people on the streets since teenagers can only leave their parent's property with an adult.

Delegation location 2 - Epe As we'll often do in terms of hosting delegations, we'll go slightly to the north of Apeldoorn, in this case we find ourselves in the town of Epe. The area has been inhabited for thousands of years and this is the area where one will find grave mounds dating back to the Stone Age, up to six thousand years ago. There's tons of Celtic fields around here as well, mostly dating from the Iron Age. Epe's name most likely comes from an early Germanic word, apa, meaning something like 'the way the water goes' - one can wonder why, since there's no significant river or lake around. The Germanics were a weird folk, is the only logical conclusion, but we digress. Epe might be fairly small, their inhabitants have been rather succesful in sports: the rapid footballer Marc Overmars, triple track cycling world champion Teun Mulder and multiple times Grand Slam doubles champion Jacco Eltingh find their roots here. Take care when driving around outside of town: wild boar roam around and outsiders often don't take this into account when driving, leading to some severe accidents - you do not want to hit a boar or even a deer. Burial mounds near Epe, some are quite visible like these, dozens and dozens of them are more hidden in the forests around If you like your pancakes, go to De Ossenstal right here in the forest, afterwards one can go for a delightful walk around and perhaps spot some wildlife Delegations in Epe Argentina Germany New Zealand United States

Delegation location 1 - Apeldoorn First off is, of course, our host city of Apeldoorn. There's plenty on offer here and especially fans of royalty will find themselves at home. Apeldoorn is home of Het Loo Palace, which nowadays is more of a museum than an actual royal home. It's closed for renovations, but we got special permission to not only look around...but to actually houst some of our delegations right here! One can wonder around the palace gardens or take a trip to the popular Apenheul, a zoo specifically for monkeys - 'apen', in Dutch. The interesting thing is that a lot of the animals wonder around relatively freely, especially the squirrel monkeys are known to get close and, if given the chance, steal your stuff! One can of course have their opinions about places like this, but the fact is thousands and thousands of children have gotten an interest in animals they'd otherwise never even have heard of, and they support a ton of research in trying to preserve these beautiful species. For those not wanting to spend too much time in the gardens or Apenheul, there's always the bikes on offer, free to use for all delegation members. It's a matter of minutes until you're in the forests of the Veluwe, where it's just...enjoyable! The gardens of Het Loo Palace Go for a nice walk in the nature around Apeldoorn, you've got time to spare until TOISC! Delegations in Apeldoorn France Spain Lithuania Poland

How so? I'd say it's a whole lot easier for big and relatively well-funded teams like INEOS or Jumbo or Movistar to have the scientific knowledge to stay right under the limits of what they could get caught with, unlike mini teams like Vini-Zabu who basically need to get all of their money from some random riders attacking during their free Giro d'Italia wild card rides (same for the French and Spanish mini teams in their respective GT's).

Aaaaand that's how you end any possibility for a rational discussion, great job.

Yeah, there were many stories like this. No wonder it got entirely out of hand outside of Wuhan as well.

The majority or riders unprofessional enough to be caught doping, I'd say

That last two kilometer was madness, especially the last few hundred meters. Did the organizers not see that idiotic stage in the Tour of Poland with a downhill sprint?

Riders in need of a contract strike again!

Eleven chased Josef and in the end Josef won, history repeats!

Come on Cerny!

Fairly expected move by FDJ one might say, they've got zero reason to help in the chase.

Tens of thousands of daily cases left and right and still growing incredibly fast, countries even using their armed forces for more or less obligated testing, freedom to do this or that limited all over the world...and then reading this from early January, 'a mystery virus which has affected 59 people in China isn't SARS' https://www.sciencealert.com/claims-of-sars-outbreak-in-china-are-untrue-but-there-is-a-mystery-virus?fbclid=IwAR1L0hOc3NahyENQnBzQ476A-RA4HrUyeK1IPLRlTpfuSm1qC3MX7-6E3Z4 Reading late December/early January news items is an interesting experience.

I mean, a huge part of this mess is on the riders (not all riders, of course), but Mauro Vegni's yelling and stomping his feet with his face cartoony red like the old angry man you'd see in Bugs Bunny or something is just hilarious.

Team Mihai.

Of all people, Adam Hansen - who is supposed to do freaking Iron Man's after this - leads the charge.

Why not just drive to 10km before the finish and go from there? It's not like the end result is going to be any different

Which is awesome. At least I'd find it awesome, I remember how excited I was when Olympia's Tour (an U23 race) had a stage finish in my little home town (and a year later even a stage finish, a whole time trial and a start!), roughly 15 years ago Jukka Vastaranta won the sprint, I see Matti Breschel, Niki Terpstra, Thomas Dekker (lol), mountain king Kenny van Hummel, 2016 sudden surprise Sergey Firsanov and a year later among others one of my all-time favourites, Robert Gesink in the results, cool

I'll have time to listen tonight, but I can almost guarantee I've heard more cringe-worthy things in a few years of following the Brazilian 'team'

I didn't mean to offend the place where they start, I meant that the start location seems to have changed 87 times today so I meant it like "Who knows where they'll start" Apparently by now it's sort of decided then, excellent!

And then the stage went back up to possibly 180km, then riders were standing around in the rain on the roads waiting for the bus of their teams to turn around and pick them up for a 100km stage and now it seems to be 112km from godknowswhere to probably the original finish location. What an epic mess. Also Wilco Kelderman's luck: finally he has a big leader's jersey and his one glorious day to show it is washed away in a sea of rain and chaos