Tour De France 2021

I am a Tour junkie going back to '87 or '88. I have never seen 90% of the peloton fall down at once, ever!
The main GC contenders look like they got a decent finish today. Pulling for Primoz and Team Jumbo this year.
 
Love those "Dreams Come True" stories. What a finish for Stage 2 !
 
Stage 3 : More B I G names hitting the deck hard. First time team at the tour, Alpecin, still in front.
Whew, I could use a boring day for sprinters stage 4.
 
Stage 4: Another incredible story, Cavendish wins the sprint finish! #31
 
Wow yeah that was a Big Time reemergence win for Cavendish after being off the tour for the last couple, WAY TO GO CAV!

 
Stage 5: The Yellow Jersey of Van Der Poel turned himself inside out to keep the yellow .
He did it by 8 seconds! Pogacar wins the the stage and gets closer to the yellow.
Note: 0ne more individual time trial on stage 20, just like last year. Lots yet to happen.
Pulling for Cav again for stage 6.
 
Stage 6 : Wow....just wow ! This Tour is a Cavendish show so far. Those GC guys better
start thinking where they can get time on Pogacar. Its going to have to be a
different strategy other than waiting till the last hill on a mtn stage. Primoz is
needing to do something very special to get back a minute and a half and soon.
 
Stage 7 : That breakaway was the suprise we needed to shake up the GC. Even though the yellow jersey
may only be in the yellow another day or 2, he got time on the favorite Pogacar. Primoz gave up
more time and really does not look vibrant. His tour win possibility has all but faded. Mtns
tomorrow. It will be interesting to see how well Van Der Poel does in the Yellow.
 
Roglic is out of contention unless a miracle happens.
Van der Poel and van Aert were pretty impressive once again. The cyclo-crossers are quite the allrounders but they're likely gonna lose the lead on the first mountain stages.
Pogacar is well ahead of all the other classement riders. Carapaz broke away from the peloton today but was caught on the last meters.
Nibali is only 29 seconds behind Pogacar, Lutsenko and Uran are within 90 seconds of the him but Carapaz, Thomas, Kelderman and the other favorites are all 96 seconds or more behind Tadej.

It's still early but I'm gonna say Tadej is gonna do it again.
 
Stage 8:The Pogacar warning siren just went off. Reminded me of my bike riding days , when I
would see someone passing me going uphill,pegged to their saddle, hammering a strong
caddence, you could try and hang with them for a few minutes but your legs would
soon be a 3 alarm fire . That is what Pogacar did to the field the last 15K's. I know there are
2 weeks left but goodness, that was a dominate stage. Poor ol Primoz. His last place
finish with the grupetto sealed this years Tour as done and dusted. That heavy crash a few
days ago really took a lot out of him. More big Mtns tomorrow.
 
Stage 9 : Ben O'connor puts in an amazing ride to win the stage and is now in second
place in the General Classification. Pogacar is still the GC leader by 2 minutes 1 second.
Much needed rest day for tomorrow. As somewhat anticipated, Primoz and Van Der Poel
have abandoned the tour.
 
Hotrod said:
Stage 9 : Ben O'connor puts in an amazing ride to win the stage and is now in second
place in the General Classification. Pogacar is still the GC leader by 2 minutes 1 second.
Much needed rest day for tomorrow. As somewhat anticipated, Primoz and Van Der Poel
have abandoned the tour.
Click to expand...
Pogacar is 5:30 ahead of 3rd after week one, it's incredible.
Van der Poel was planning to exit after week one to prepare for the Olympics. Not sure if I like that. A rider that starts a tour like this should also have the goal of finishing it.

Looking forward to another sprint in a little less than an hour.
 
Stage 10: Holy Crap !!!!! Cavendish wins his 33rd!!!!! Perfect lead out , perfect sprint.
Cav could set a new record of 35 stage wins this tour. Talking about cruel and unusual
punishment, how about 2 times back to back up and down Mt. Ventoux . There will
be a lot of pain in stage 11. Most Tour De Frances , a 5:30 time lead is the ball game.
This years Tour has given lots of suprises. I am not sure this one is a given yet.
 
4 more stages are likely to end in sprints so Cavendish has plenty of opportunities.
Like I said I'm baffled, I didn't know he was in the Tour, I actually didn't even know he was still racing. This is gonna go down as the comeback of the year along with Marc Marquez.

Surely not gonna miss tomorrow's stage. Climbing Mont Ventoux twice in one day must be incredibly painful for the riders.
 
Stage 11: Good guy Wout Van Aert wins one of the most brutal stages ever. The whole
time I wondered what this stage would have been like if a healthy Primoz Roglic was here to
ride with Wout. Pogacar stll finished only 1:36 behind and still in the yellow. Yeah, Tony Martin
is tough as nails but that leg really looked bad, I am sure he said ,thats enough. Julian Alaphilippe
finished 12:18 in back of wout, I was hoping he could have keep the front wheels but his
blistering pace at the beginning took its toll.
 
There is plenty of excitement even though Pogacar is so far ahead. Van Aert is incredible, he can win sprints, time trials and mountain stages, I thought that type of rider was long extinct.
We also saw that Pogacar is human, Jonas Vingegaard got like half a minute ahead of him on the final climb, he was caught by the group including Pogacar, Uran and Carapaz on the downhill.

They said on Eurosport that Martin lost two teeth in his crash.
 
From the Tour De France main website :

"Peter Sagan is a non-starter today. He gave a press conference prior to the start to explain that his knee is in pain. He crashed on stage 3 along with Caleb Ewan who was forced to quit on the spot (broken collarbone). It’s the first time for the Slovakian to abandon the Tour de France. It’s also the first Tour in which he hasn’t worn the green jersey."
 
Stage 12: German Nils Politt wins his first Tour De France stage! Very popular win since he
is on the Bora team that lost Peter Sagan today due to a sore knee. Cav will have a few more
chances at the world record of most Tour De France stage wins. The wind blew apart the peloton
early and Cav did not have the legs after 2 Mt Vonteaux's yesterday to go catch the break away.
 
Stage 13 : Well that was not a cut and dry sprint finish. Cavendish got a bit buried with
4 or 500 meters to go, then he finally found some breathing room and put the hammer down
for the last 100 meters. Its been a while since we have had that many biikes go down a brushy
wooded hill in the crash of the day. We are very lucky not to have any very serious life threating injuries
even though we ended up with 3 abandonments from it. It looked like 10 -15 bikes in the woods
from the one quick overhead shot I saw. Hilly for Saturday and big mountains Sunday.
 
Stage 14 : A quiet spleepy stage where the break aways stayed away and Bauke Mollema peeled
away with 40K to go and won the stage solo. 22 year old Pogacar still in the lead by a little more than
4 minutes. High mtns tomorrow.
 
Stage 15: Its Sepp Kuss from Durango Colorado , first American to win a Tour De France stage
in 10 years! The 26 year old Kuss was one of Pimoz Roglic's top lead out domestiques and did
a lot of work for Roglic in last years Tour De France . Pogacar still in the lead by 5:18 and looked
as fresh as a daisy at the end of the stage today. Rest day tomorrow and a hilly stage Tuesday
with more mountains Wed, and Thurs.
 
Hotrod said:
Stage 15: Its Sepp Kuss from Durango Colorado , first American to win a Tour De France stage
in 10 years! The 26 year old Kuss was one of Pimoz Roglic's top lead out domestiques and did
a lot of work for Roglic in last years Tour De France . Pogacar still in the lead by 5:18 and looked
as fresh as a daisy at the end of the stage today. Rest day tomorrow and a hilly stage Tuesday
with more mountains Wed, and Thurs.
Click to expand...

The American Flying Eagle! Cool to see a TDF mountain stage win by an American again, Kuss clearly one of the elite climbers in the tour.

Pogacar handling all of the attacks with ease, even setting the pace at times, in complete control of the yellow jersey. His Stage 8 win sticks in my memory for the time gap he enjoys, stellar performance that day, and absolutely luv that he's been doing this without the team support that past gc winners have had, refreshing to see.
 
Stage 16: Love first time winners, in anything really. Here is the first time winner
of a TDF stage Patrick Konrad with Bora.
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No changes in the top handful of GC riders. Big Mtns tomorrow.
 
Stage 17 : The GC cream came to the top in this brutal mountain top finish. Carapaz had
the most significant attack with in the last Km but Pogacar would soon overtake the lead in
the last 500 m and took the stage win. Last mtn stage tomorrow and then its time for
the Cavendish show Fiday and Sunday. Saturday will be the last individual time trial.
The Olympics have taken away some of the riders this year which is unfortunate. I heard a
report that a lot of the riders that left for the Olympics are doing it to try and adjust their
minds and bodies to the time change of Japan.

Kudos to Lachlan Morton. Thats a cool story.
 
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Today's finish was almost identical to yesterday's. Pogacar is making it look easy.
He is also going to win the polka-dot jersey for the second time.
Hotrod said:
The Olympics have taken away some of the riders this year which is unfortunate. I heard a
report that a lot of the riders that left for the Olympics are doing it to try and adjust their
minds and bodies to the time change of Japan.
Click to expand...
Who do you have in mind? I don't think any of the usual suspects are missing.
 
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