Recent content by Devil's Elbow

Van Empel officially done, I think I'm cooked.

AlUla Tour (ew), the three Valencian one-day races (which overlap TDU), Challenge Mallorca, in some years GP La Marseillaise (this year it and the final Mallorcan leg are on Feb 1). So quite a bit actually. And of course, San Luis/San Juan (IMO more important for globalisation) until recently.

Virtually all the big sporting events being in either Europe or North America means that almost nobody in Europe, North America and by extension Latin America and Africa is going to watch a sporting event in an unfavourable time zone (except for the World Cup and the Olympics), and races in...

This was announced a month ago, right?

Difficult finish times for anyone in Europe, uninspired routes, and for a large chunk of the 2010s it was basically an Aussie/Greenedge open championship because nobody else bothered to show up with any sort of form (the 2017 edition might just be the worst WT stage race of all time). The latter...

I'll never be the biggest fan of TDU, but it's hard to ignore the fact that the race is more prestigious and attractive now than in the years of endless Porte-Impey tussles.

I also can't think of a single other climb of this size that is as conducive to fracturing the peloton in the first 500 metres by virtue of good positioning, courtesy of the little descent before it. So that should help the chance of the race being blown up there.

Going through the whole thing: stages 6, 12 and the final weekend are legitimately exciting, the rest of the route definitely isn't. Andorra should have been harder and there are too many easier days, especially given that some of the flatter stages are in areas where you could have done...

Going by the transfers, it seems like they flipped the order of some of the Andalucian stages at the last second? Would also explain why the Loja stage is a full week earlier than rumoured.

Only the first 8 stages, I get internal server errors trying to access the rest. A sterrato climb with a descent finish on stage 6, who blackmailed Javier Guillén into agreeing to that and where can I thank them?

The Paris-Nice route was just announced, it looks very good despite the watered-down final stage (should be a one-off, it's because of municipal elections). Stage 5 is particularly great.

You are going to keep gaining on me so long as Aerts and Van Empel continue to do nothing courtesy of off-the-bike issues. The former might still salvage something from this season, the latter I've basically given up on.

And then Ruben Amorim will turn into 2012 Ronald Koeman.

Vine has been very open in the past about his main driver as a cyclist being money, so unless Jayco are willing to spend stupid amounts to add another Australian big name to their roster I doubt he'll be overly fussed about not getting to do the Tour.

In Ayuso and Skjelmose, they have two of the most fragile egos in the sport involved in said puzzle, and one of them already blew his lid at the media day. So it's only a matter of time before said articles sprout like mushrooms.