The cities of Leeds and Sheffield, two major places of the industrial development during the 19th century, will play a central role in the Tour’s stay in Yorkshire. Their history in sports often put them in the limelight thanks to the football clubs of both cities that have conquered a total of eight league titles. While in far lower divisions, Sheffield FC will remain forever the first football club in the world… created back in 1857! In terms of cycling, destiny seems to have struck. Brian Robinson first British stage winner on the Tour and Barry Hoban who won eight others are both from Yorkshire. Time has come to now turn to 2014.
Day out in London
A short 155 km stage to the British capital, which gave the Tour de France an unforgettable welcome in 2007. A prestigious stage which will take the peloton alongside the Olympic Park and London's most famous landmarks before finishing opposite Buckingham Palace. Of course, with everything pointing towards a mass sprint, the spotlight will back on Cavendish. Will he be at the top of his game? I think so. But one thing is for sure: the crowds will turn out in force, as large and fiery as seven years ago.
Now to France
A short 155 km stage to the British capital, which gave the Tour de France an unforgettable welcome in 2007. A prestigious stage which will take the peloton alongside the Olympic Park and London's most famous landmarks before finishing opposite Buckingham Palace. Of course, with everything pointing towards a mass sprint, the spotlight will back on Cavendish. Will he be at the top of his game? I think so. But one thing is for sure: the crowds will turn out in force, as large and fiery as seven years ago.
A Dangerous Day for all
The time has come for the famous stage and its nine cobbled sectors, which promise, dare I say it, a "battlefield". It all starts in Ypres, Belgium, a city notorious for the gas attacks launched in it. It would have been unacceptable for the Tour not to commemorate the Centenary of the start of World War I in its own way... However, we will focus on the race, which promises to be a spectacular showdown. I do not expect Froome to thrive on the cobblestones but, who knows, he may want to prove us wrong... For him and many others, this is a stage riddled with dangers. The cobblestones will be a hinge moment in the race.
One for The Brave
I have already talked of teams built around sprinters... Well then, I would not be surprised to see a breakaway stick on the day after the cobblestones stage, as we continue to commemorate the centenary on the roads of the Battle of the Somme and the Chemin des Dames. Yes, this is a stage for the brave, with lots of twists and turns towards the end, so the wind could also play a role... If attackers happen to come up short, a power sprinter may prevail on the long, leg-breaking false flat on the final straight. Last year's Kittel and Greipel would have had lots of fun here.
One for the Punchers
It is not just the 234.5 km distance which will make this stage hard to control. There will be two tough climbs in the run-up to the finish. The gradient on one of them, five kilometres from the line, hits 8%. With this course, will the sprinters' team take the reins of the race and risk seeing their leaders blow up on the last slopes? It remains to be seen. With two weeks of racing left, some teams may have started dosing their efforts by the time we reach this point. All in all, I expect to see quite a tactical stage culminating in a thrilling finale. The peloton should reach Nancy in pieces.
Next... Preview part 2
Spoiler
No i did not copy this from letour.com
Note: This one will go a lot better than the Giro one as i have already done this and all i need to do is post the results.
Another famous stage, this time to La Planche des Belles Filles, where Chris Froome took his maiden stage win at the Tour in 2012. If it ain't broke, don't fix it, so we are going for a short but challenging stage again! Spectacular fireworks await, with a sequence of seven mountains over 130 kilometres, including the Col des Chevrères (with sections hitting up to 15%) and the final climb up La Planche des Belles Filles (with a 20% gradient on the last ramp), which will feature in the Tour for the second time. By the time we cross the finish line, I cannot say whether we will know the name of the winner in Paris, but we should have a list of those who are out of the running for good.
A Very tight Race
The stage after the first rest day. Does this herald the start of a new race? Perhaps... It depends on how things go. I expect it to be a very tight race, with the big favourites within three minutes of each other. Not enough to think the race is done and dusted, but still a sizeable margin in the general classification. This is why we avoided widening the gaps with a time trial, for example, and we sought instead to create undulating stages to promote attacks. This stage could be one for the likes of Peter Sagan.
A Repeat of Yesterday
A second transition stage which will come down to a tug-of-war between breakaway specialists and the sprinters. It is worth noting that, although this Tour de France will have lots of short, bumpy stages, it has also got something for the green jersey contenders. They will have at least eight opportunities to duke it out, including this stage from Bourg-en-Bresse to the Beaujolais hills in Saint-Étienne. Who will triumph in the old capital of cycling? Looking back on last year's Tour, Kittel has the edge, but I and others think Cavendish can still go very fast. He raced too much in 2013, but he has been smart enough not to repeat the same mistake this season.
Here come the Alps
The course profile may suggest otherwise, but this is a real mountain stage which the favourites would be wrong not to take seriously! We packed all the difficulties into the last fifty kilometres, including a climb up the little-known Col de Palaquit towards the final hour of racing. With 14.1 km of fluctuating gradients, this will be anything but a joy ride. More than enough to spark an important selection ahead of the final climb up Chamrousse, an 18.2 km mountain with an average gradient of 7.3%.
A long transition stage to round off the second week of the Tour. It appears unlikely that the sprinters will be thwarted in this majestic finish opposite the Nîmes arena. But you never know... Last year, betting on anything but a mass sprint in Saint-Amand-Montrond seemed lunacy. But then, the wind blew the race apart! Thus, a stage which looked like nothing special went down in history as one of the most thrilling in the last decade. It all goes to show that the outcome of a stage is not cast in stone, so watch out if the oft-present mischievous wind starts to blow...
Six Hours on the saddle
The longest stage of the 2014 Tour comes right up the second rest day. With 237.5 km on the menu and the Port de Balès as a dessert, the riders will spend about six hours on the saddle.
The last few years have shown that riders who make it to the top with a margin of 30 to 40 seconds can rest assured of keeping it until the finish and taking the win in Bagnères-de-Luchon. The odds are on the attackers' side, thus. Sure, this does not look like the toughest stage in the Tour, but remember that this is where Andy Schleck lost the yellow jersey due to a mechanical in 2010.
The Pyrenees
At 125 km, the shortest stage comes just after the longest. To be honest, it will be a hectic 125 kilometres, since it is all up and down from kilometre 50 all the way until the summit finish on Plat d'Adet. Even the leaders will find this a tricky stage. And the riders in the autobus... For them, it will be a stage of trials and tribulations, with a tight elimination time which will force sprinters to spend the entire stage à bloc. Several green jersey contenders could end up having to pack their suitcases after this stage! The final podium will start to take shape. Without a doubt, the highlight of the race.
Final Day in the Mountains
At 145.5 km, this stage is also quite short. Compared with the previous one, riders will probably see it as an opportunity to catch their breath. True, the elimination time will be more generous. Yet they would do well not to underestimate the stage. First of all, they will have to climb the Col du Tourmalet, always a challenge. Next up, the final climb up Hautacam, which has earned a hallowed place in the history of the Tour. We hope the Tourmalet is used as a launch pad for attacks and does not go to waste. If so, pretenders to a podium spot or even the overall win could use it to claw back some time.
What happens in the organisers' dreams? The final winner is decided in this 54 km time trial. But I think the gaps will have opened naturally in the three weeks since the Grand Start in Leeds. I said it once and I will say it again: even without a second time trial, the 2013 Froome would have crushed the opposition on this route... But will the 2014 Froome be as strong as last year's? It all boils down to this. If so, he will certainly be in the mix to win the stage, whose solid course is more tailored to men in great form than to true specialists like Martin, Wiggins and Cancellara.
The record for most appearances is held jointly by George Hincapie and Stuart O'Grady with 17. In light of Hincapie's suspension for use of performance enhancing drugs, before which he held the mark for most consecutive finishes with sixteen, having completed all but his very first, Joop Zoetemelk holds the record for the most finishes, having completed all 16 of the Tours that he started.
In the early years of the Tour, cyclists rode individually, and were sometimes forbidden to ride together. This led to large gaps between the winner and the number two. Since the cyclists now tend to stay together in a peloton, the margins of the winner have become smaller, as the difference usually originates from time trials, breakaways or on mountain top finishes, or from being left behind the peloton. In the table below, the eight smallest margins between the winner and the second placed cyclists at the end of the Tour are given. The largest margin, by comparison, remains that of the first Tour in 1903: 2h 49m 45s between Maurice Garin and Lucien Pothier. The eight smallest margins between first and second placed riders are as follows.
sutty68 wrote:
By the way, did you copy this from letour.com
No
Yeah, sure. How would you explain having exactly the same text for some parts of your posts as the sites below? No problem in copying something, but admit it and do not appropriate it to yourself. Not cool.
EDIT: Just saw few spoilers there. Well, you could still tell it normally, instead of trying to point it out on ironic way. Edited by admirschleck on 04-07-2014 16:07
sutty68 wrote:
By the way, did you copy this from letour.com
No
Yeah, sure. How would you explain having exactly the same text for some parts of your posts as the sites below? No problem in copying something, but admit it and do not appropriate it to yourself. Not cool.
sutty68 wrote:
By the way, did you copy this from letour.com
No .... but he did copy it from Wikipedia! (No doubt improving the layout for this website though.)
Nice to see Adamb being active on this site with a DB and a story, hope this last longer than the Giro one!
Cheers! I've finished with the DB for a while going back to story's for a bit now. It will go better than the Giro as I've already finished this I just need to post all of the stages and stuff.
Do You like a good bit of gossip? Well, according to local cyclists, there's a point on Mount Ventoux that's marked at exactly on the toughest part of the climb; the 'Goldilocks' moment with around 1.3km to go where there's a slight change in gradient and the mountain road to the bare summit gets even steeper It's too faint a change in gradient to detect on any map or even on television footage. But coming as it does after precisely20km of climbing, it's just where the legs are reaching there limit, as the lactic acid begins to overwhelm them. But with just under a mile left to the peak, it's too far out to sprint for the line. In short, If you're racing up Ventoux it's the perfect place to attack. So can you guess where Chris Froome put in an acceleration to take him away from his adversary Nairo Quintana and to that most beautiful of victories, a stage win on Mount Ventoux - The first Brit to do so - While wearing the yellow jersey in the 100th Tour de France? We don't need to tell you the awnser.
Alberto Contador
If There were's one man who Chris Froome should fear in this years Tour it's Alberto Contador. In fact it's hard to see how the two-time champion (let's not forget, his third title was stripped from him) could have enjoyed a better build up to the 2014 race. He finished second at the Tour of Algarve, won Tirreno Adriacto, came second at the Tour of Catalunya, and then won the Tour of the basque country - all though stage races in which the 31 year old proved he is in strong shape. on last years form one would have to assume there can be no beating Froome in a straight flight uphill; however on this year's evidence the gap between the defending champion and his Spanish adversary is much narrower than the Briton would like. Even if Froome proves to be stronger of the two, that won't stop Contador from attacking; his audacious downhill move on treacherous descent to the town of Gap in last year's race which Froome followed, nearly brought the pair down in a field. If that had happened, Nairo Quintana could well have stood atop the podium in Paris. But it didn't and with the young Colombian not taking part in this years race the more experienced Contador and his Tinkoff Saxo Team are likeliest to be the ones harassing the peleton in the mountains. Contador's biggest problem comes at the end of the race and the 54km individual time trial from Bergerac to Perigueux. Realisticly even if the Spaniard is in yellow going into the stage, he'll need least a minute's margin over the defending champion ( and Tejay Van garderen) to prevent the TT specialists from nicking his lead. Contador is well aware of this. He needs time and - fortunately for cycling fans - he needs to go on the attack
Vincenzo Nibali
Inside the gentle, affable-seeming Italian beats the heart of a true bike racer. Vincenzo Nibali isn't in it for the points or for a solid spot in the top 10. He's probably not even in it for the money. For Nibali It's all about the win
Sometimes his tactics leave you scratching your head in disbelief, but when they pay off they are a joy to watch. Nibali's speciality is catching his opponents off-guard on technical, trick descents. Perhaps the tactic lacks the panache of an uphill surge to distance an opponent, but the Tour can be won or lost on the way down, just as it can going up. bear in mind that concentration and focus begins to wane towards the end of the three week slog.
Tactically questionable or not, Nibali has the pedigree to win through passion. Indeed he has victories in two other grand tours to add to his range of near misses in the one day classics including Milan San Remo and the climber's Classic Liege Bastogne Liege.
With such versatility, Nibali is one of the sports greatest all round athletes of recent years. He can Time trial and he is one of the few riders to have beaten Chris Froome in a stage race since the Brit hit his Grand tour winning form in 2012. In the sheets of rain and nasty climbs of the penultimate stage of the 2013 Tirreno Adriacto.
Victory in Paris would put him in a club featuring only five other riders who've won cycling's three Grand Tours. All that he is Missing is the Tour.
Alejandro Valverde
At 34 years old and with the next generation snapping at his heels. Alejandro Valverde faces a now or never scenario; 2014 will in all be his last Tour.
On his day there are few riders capable as Valverde. Victories in many of the sports toughest one day are testament to his climbing strengths and ability to punch out and unbeatable uphill sprint at the end of six hours in the saddle.
And although through the yearsmight be catching up with him, he has enjoyed his best start to the season since before he served a two year ban. For his involvement in the peurto blood scandal. His chequered history divides opinion, but there can be no doubting that he races in an exciting way, and he will excite in July.
Sprinting has changed. It changed during the 2013 Tour de France and Marcel Kittel and his then Argos Shimano team were the ones who changed it. Kittel won four stages, Cav won two.But it wans't because Marcel Kittel was faster than Cav it was because he Sprint train was faster.
That's How sprinting has changed. It's become a battle between the lead out trains rather than a battle between men to see which sprinter is fastest. This was plain to see during the 2013 tour on the Champs Elysees, Where Marcel Kittel's lead out man took a few bike's length a head of sprint rivals Cav and Greipel, which made the difference of Kittel taking the stage.
But this year Cav wants revenge and he won't sleep until he has. Cav won't be one of the favourites for the Points jersey as rival Peter Sagan is more of an all rounder and can get up there for more points. But Cav wants his Champs Elysees crown back.
Marcel Kittel
Predicting who will be the best sprinter before the Tour de France is difficult. more difficult perhaps than picking an overall winner. The Tour's sprint dynamic - the way the sprints pan out - is different to other races. Plus, when Tour guides like this are written there hasn't been a race where all the main are there, and all on their on game. One thing is certain, judging by the race's won so far this year. Marcel Kittel hasn't got any slower.
Kittel's Tour de France career is a near carbon copy of Cav's. Kittel made his Tour debut in 2012, but was forced out on stage five with a virus. He came back the following year and won four stages. Mark Cavendish made his debut in 2007, but crashed out, then came back in 2008 and won four stages. Cavendish was 22 when he won his first four, Kittel was 24, but Kittel wore Yellow.
Andre Greipel
He won stages in the 2011, 2012 and 2013 Tour de France, so chances are Andre Greipel will win at least one this year. He isn't a s fast as Mark Cavendish or marcel Kittel, but he cannot be written off in a sprint. Greipel has a long burn of speed; he's tough and adaptable and very, very durable. And that makes him unpredictable and hard to beat.
Greipel might wait for the sprint or he might try to force breaks. He's difficult to plan for Also if his team are up to itor if he can get in Another's lead out line. Greipel has great timing. He has beaten Cav and Kittel head to head.
Peter Sagan
Peter Sagan isn't as fast as Mark Cavendish, Mercel Kittel or Andre Greipel. He isn't really a bunch sprinter, but he can sprint, and his sprint is as fast after 200km plus of tough hills or rough roads as it is faster. 150km on the flat.
Sagan is a classics racer, somebody who specialises in single-day races and is a contender in the biggest and best. But that kind of racer is always a potential green jersey in the Tour de France. He's won the sprint contest for the last two year's.
Next... My TeamEdited by Adamb on 04-07-2014 23:40
Tour de France 
Italy 
Spain 
Switzerland 
Denmark 
Peter Sagan 
