heywoodu

Not surprisingly Landa was taken away by ambulance. Hopefully he'll be relatively fine, this made the stage go from bad because insanely boring to worse. Also bad for the race in general of course, one of the few always attacking GC riders.

And there's Nizzolo's 11th second place. Win for Ewan, meh.

Damn, nasty crash especially by Landa... Definitely out of the race.

No Euro for Dutch captain Virgil van Dijk, who hasn't yet recovered from his knee injury given to him by Everton goalie Jordan Pickford's idiotic attack on his legs.

Not in favour of either side since generally both sides seem to have an unhealthy overdose of retaliatory testosteron in these situations, but from a neutral and specifically technical point of view: the Iron Dome is an amazing feat of engineering It's of course always sad that those talents have to be used in a military way, but it is some piece of work. And close to 50 deaths already by now

There's actually a statue of Caesar along the road today after roughly 130km

These final kilometers could pose some danger though, after falling asleep all day, a sprint finish with some turns (they might have forgotten how to take turns) can be a bit dangerous for those not paying attention.

Something awesome like yesterday followed by this, that's just an outright crime against cycling humanity Good luck finding a more boring stage even in the desert

I've seen this on the news here at least, in the same segment that showed an apartment building being bombed to trash in Gaza either before or after this (some say before, some say after, it seems). Usually - at least on the news here - they show the things coming from both sides. Also, it was literally the first thing I saw when opening some major news sites.

Not burning their fingers on the intense fire between shooting rockets back and forth on one hand and occupying land on the other hand and saying one wrong thing and one of the two (or both) sides will see you as enemy for ages

The advantages of being in a succesful breakaway in the first serious stage in terms of climbing (so all the sprinters and their helpers drop down) And don't underestimate Valter, he has been widely seen as a big talent for quite a while now. Very strong Catalunya this year (in a very strong field) and an incredibly steady and strong Giro d'Italia last year already, 27th in the GC but more importantly, he basically didn't have any weak day at all. He might have set himself up for a top-20 finish today.

And will have one hell of a birthday tomorrow

Where is He?!?!

Nice little climb, damn.

Today is The Day. All of Belgium has taken the day off or, in case their boss didn't allow it, quit their jobs. Today is the day when He will grab power and never let go for the next fifteen years. Anything less than a majestic victory for Him and Belgium will go back in mourning. The hypetrain has been unstoppable for almost four years now, but any chance of braking the train will be gone after today.

Everyone having to walk to get groceries seems rather...worse than people going by car

How are restrictions being followed in India? Are people at least listening to that, sort of, or is it more like Brazil's situation, where things skyrocketed because a large majority doesn't give a crap and does whatever it wants to do anyway?

Wow, what a win Always +1 for solos like that, and also now every World Tour team has a win this year

And rightfully so, one might add.

And if I'm not mistaken, he gave 'Winning stages' (or something similar) as reason, with 'winning the GC' being an option as well but he didn't find that very realistic

I think we have one on the forum (although that's for Beijing 2022, but at least in terms of personal investment I think that's the closest we have on here), @brunamoura Assuming @Jesús isn't reading here anymore, sadly, and neither is that female shooter who I believe posted here shortly before Rio for a short bit?

Yeah, that makes sense, banning Japan from hosting any event in any sport forever ! Damn, what an exaggeration that would be.

Today could actually be pretty interesting. This, and a whole lot of rain: Should be an excellent chance for someone like Sagan, if he is in decent enough shape to survive the climbs, which the likes of Merlier, Groenewegen, Viviani, Gaviria and Ewan most likely won't. Sagan, Ulissi, Bevin, those kind of riders.

Imagine the world titles being decided on the Wall of Kigali, oh man. In terms of atmosphere it would be (by far!) the best big cycling race in history

Meanwhile João Rodrigues gave W52/FC Porto it's biggest win ever, by taking the GC in the Volta ao Algarve after a fantastic final stage. It would definitely have been Ethan Hayter's win, but he fell in the ITT yesterday, held on to yellow, but then broke in the last kilometer today and ended up 9 seconds shy of the win. Rodrigues definitely didn't steal it though, he was the force that started the attacks on the final climb again and again until it worked. https://www.procyclingstats.com/race/volta-ao-algarve/2021/stage-5 The team won plenty of Tours of Portugal, but that's not nearly as big as this one. Although it's often quite fun to watch as well, one generally sees things there which are...interesting, in terms of magic performances