Tour de France 2017

Chapeau Chris, A talented rider and champion and also a comes across as a gent.

Enjoyed this tour Eurosport have shown every stage from the flag drop and just seeing the break form was excellent.

Vive Le Tour

Echo all of that but i've watched the C4 coverage, again every second they have shown and its been excellent viewing and analysis.

Without a doubt my favourite 3 weeks of sport now and i include football in that.
 
I’m gutted Bardet didn’t win. The French, whilst most other teams were riding “charged” in the 90s and beyond, kept it clean; their riders got annihilated and it looked like French cyclists would never challenge again. It was put down to laziness, lack of new approach etc, etc, but the reality was simple: they rode, almost to a man, clean. The French have every right to feel aggrieved and every right to give Sky grief. Sky came on the scene, boasted of a new mentality, marginal gains, no needles etc. And it was utter bullshit. Froome and Wiggins have both used TUEs in the past. And whilst it’s all “within the rules” I’ve no time for them, not on a personal level (I happend to find Froome a very erudite, polite man who comes across very, very well when Interviewed), but on a professional level.

A Bardet win would have been a win for cycling. Clean cycling.

Couple of things:

How did TUEs help Froome? Did they give him a significant advantage? When did he last take a TUE?

If Froome is the doping cheat you claim, how do you explain Bardet pushing him so close? Someone who is clean can match a rider doped up to the eyeballs? Really?
 
I absolutely acknowledge his Tour pedigree. But, and this is just my opinion, I can't call him a "champion". In Hinault's 4th year as a pro: won the tour (including 3 stages) and Vuelta (5 stages) double; 2nd at Paris Nice (March), 11th at Flanders (April) 3rd at Lombardia (October); French National champion. Following year his 5th as a pro, won SEVEN tour stages and the overall, won Lombardia, 2nd at liege, 7th San remo, etc, etc. That, to me, is what a champion does. Froome's 4th year as a pro: zero wins. 5th year, two wins. Fignon, won the tour in his 2nd year as a pro. In his 1st he was bronze medallist in French cyclo-cross. And without the team Froome has at his disposal. Please don't misunderstand me, Froome is an excellent cyclist. But he is so far away from the top table. No monuments, no classics, not Giro, no Vuelta, no world champs, no track medals, no hour record, one or two small stage victoroes but a million miles from Fignon, Hinault, Coppi. And a billion miles from Eddie (mind you, who isn't?).

You keep talking about these great cyclists like Merckx, Roche and Fignon. All of them doped.

Merckx failed four tests, Roche was a known doper too while Fignon was shoving the white stuff up his nose, yet you have a pop at Froome for TUEs.
 
Echo all of that but i've watched the C4 coverage, again every second they have shown and its been excellent viewing and analysis.

Without a doubt my favourite 3 weeks of sport now and i include football in that.

I agree. I can sit and watch a stage all day long, and have done with many of them. I struggle to watch a football game that does not include City. The coverage from ITV4 has been brilliant.
 
You keep talking about these great cyclists like Merckx, Roche and Fignon. All of them doped.

Merckx failed four tests, Roche was a known doper too while Fignon was shoving the white stuff up his nose, yet you have a pop at Froome for TUEs.

My main beef is with the lack of cycling Froome (and most top ten riders) do these days. Froome is absolutely a brilliant Tour de France rider, but he's simply nowhere near the level of Fignon, Hinault, Merckx, all of whom won right across the season. Fignon, you're right, gave in to the colombian marching powder, and, as he alluded to in his autobiography, he knew there was widespread drug taking in the peloton those days, but it was nothing like the EPO-fuelled days that came to pass in the 90s and beyond. He had to watch very mediocre guys fly up the hills. I remember well the 83 and 84 tours, which, for me, were amongst the best in my living memory. Fignon rode with such flair, such panache. And his battle with Lemond in '89 was simply brilliant: two guys, trading the maillot jaune across 3 weeks, no squad of domestiques burning off the peloton a la Sky these days.

Sky have been utterly brilliant at pushing the envelope to its absolute legal limits. It's the "we're doing it a new way, a clean way" bollocks that irks.

Anyway, it's clear you love your cycling, you know your stuff and it's good to debate with knowledgeable people. The coverage this year has been superb, something we could only have dreamt about when Phil Liggett giving us 5 mins of actual racing was the fare back in the day. Maybe we'll start getting a few classics on terrestrial. We won't be watching Froome though :-)
 

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