Tour de France

Word in the peloton is that he's not happy with the TT bike/skinsuit that his providers have given him. 

Time trial won by leader Alaphillipe, to most peoples surprise, though quite why anything much in cycling is surprising I'm not really sure. People are pointing out he was never much of a time triallist before (Thomas, who is a time triallist, was faster than him by 4 minutes last year for example), but those little things long ceased to matter. Thomas wasn't much of a climber before last year and Froome wasn't much of a cyclist at all before one race in 2011 changed all that, so hardly any point in picking on Alaphillipe, who, unlike some of the Sky/Ineos lads, has actually won stuff throughout his career.

Dan Martin lost a good bit of time today, which used to be a normal thing for climbers in time trials in the pre-Sky era and not even remarked on, but in this era, it isn't enough to be good, or even competent at one discipline, you have to be among the best at everything to have even a slight chance at GC contention. 

He will probably have an influence on the winner of the TDF even though he won't win it himself, he's at the point now where he has to attack (it's his style to do that anyway) to gain time back, and he's well capable of shedding the biggest of names on a given day. It isn't so much that he will gain all the time back on Alaphillipe etc, but one of his attacks could well break one of the other GC contenders if they can't stay with him. 

Be a good stage tomorrow regardless, Ineos are in something of an unusual position in that they aren't controlling the race as it heads for the big mountains, so instead of their whole team merely marking the opposition like previous years, they will have to go out & attack them. 

Not necessarily disagreeing it is a farce to a degree, but the Olympics manage the rare trick of making cycling look clean, people still watch that in their multi millions too. 

In a few months time, we have the Egg world cup, where 6ft plus 20 stone men repeatedly crash into each other for 80 minutes, also something that didn't happen years ago, professionalism & training alone didn't make a lot of these lads that size, most of the doping bans in the UK are for Rugby league and Rugby union players- draw yer own conclusions.

People were marvelling last week at Federer & Nadal, but in what other sport that requires such physical exertion do lads their age dominate ? I can think of one similar one, cycling. Wonder have the 2 sports anything in common ? 

Spain's cover up of Operacion Peurto- it is known that footballers & tennis players were on the books of Dr Fuentes, but the Spanish authorities only concentrated on the cyclists. Why so ? 

It's fair enough to deride the TDF as not a fair sporting contest, in fact history tells us that this is pretty much inarguable, but at the very least, it is not really any better or worse than a whole host of other sports which most people are generally happy not to question for whatever reason. 

Apparently not bob, cycling bad, football good.....

I still feel Aliphilippe will crack and lose his lead, with him out of the picture you have 5 within 40 seconds. I reckon it could come down to the bonus points on the final climb the way this is going.