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With the start on saturday, it seemed about time to start an appropriate thread. Other people's thoughts on this years race?

For me Froome looks good, with Porte going well too, a possible Sky one-two for the second year running? Sagan should sew up the green jersey fairly quickly, but we should see some good battles between Cavendish and Greipel, maybe Kittel too if he shows up in good shape.

I heard that this Vance or Lance american guy was really good...

He was certainly good at something.

Good at the same thing everyone else was good at given they had to go down to like 47th place to try to find a valid winner who hadn't been disqualified.

Everyone's on drugs anyway.

So, if he was doping to win, doesn't that mean that everyone who was running on his heels was also doping just to keep up?

That's basically what happened, in a race of enhanced human beings Armstrong happened to be the best of the enhanced.

Well yes, Lance cheated, and so did quite a lot of others. Hopefully (and it appears for the moment anyway) there are now considerably fewer dopers around.


Froome is definitely favourite, though Contador and Valverde are also strong, and have great teams.

Porte is nowhere near the top level, I doubt he'll even top 10.

I'm backing Rodriguez though, he is one of the best to watch.

Well, Lance is certainly paying the price for it. He is financially ruined, forced to pay back for advertisements he made and losing control of charity funds.

 ImotekhTheStormlord wrote:
Well, Lance is certainly paying the price for it. He is financially ruined, forced to pay back for advertisements he made and losing control of charity funds.

Given that he made all that money by breaking the rules, and generally behaved like a bit of a to anyone he took a dislike to, I can't say I've got an awful lot of sympathy for him.

I'd be very surprised if Porte doesn't even make the top ten, once you've got past Froome and the three spanish contenders you're getting to people like Evans, Van Garderen, Dan Martin (Nephew of Stephen Roche ), Quintana, Heyjedahl etc, and I reckon he's right up there with that group.

A little snippet from Wiki on the second (1904) race

"Cheating was rife and riders were beaten up by rival fans as they neared the top of the col de la République, sometimes called the col du Grand Bois, outside St-Étienne"

Massive cheating started right at the beginning it seems and a century later, nothing has changed.

The whole event is a joke and the shame of modern sports. They should just cancel the thing for a few years and few people would weep its absence.

 grrrfranky wrote:
With the start on saturday, it seemed about time to start an appropriate thread. Other people's thoughts on this years race?

For me Froome looks good, with Porte going well too, a possible Sky one-two for the second year running? Sagan should sew up the green jersey fairly quickly, but we should see some good battles between Cavendish and Greipel, maybe Kittel too if he shows up in good shape.

I'm really glad the dog didn't get hurt. Other then that they could all ride off a cliff. I can't stand pretentious bicylclists.