2016 Tour de France, Info & Discussion

[HelloDolly]

Re: Re:

Yes, it'll be the Martin/Alaphillipe Fleche double act. Vakoc isn't likely to get to do anything other than try to set them up, unfortunately.

The only not completely obvious thing about Etixx's plans is if either Martin or Alaphillipe will try for GC. Or if they will only be trying to add even more stages to the inevitable Kittel haul.

It's likely that Dan Martin will go for GC. Can't see Balaphilippe trying for the white jersey with bardet barguil and co turning up

I think Martin is an outside bet for the podium if he rides a clever race, letting the big guns go when it is too much and limiting his losses while the likes of Pinot, Contador and Aru try to follow and blow up. TTs look reasonable for him as well, especially as there should be a big improvement in them since moving to Etixx.

I think Martin should be satisfied if he finish in the top 10

Agreed, he should be. But I think there is a chance he will do quite a bit better than 10th. He's shown glimpses of GC promise before, and any rider is going to improve significantly going to Etixx from Cannondale.

I'd love Dan Martin to finish high but I think his best bet if for stage wins...he could win a few
My problem with his GC ambitions is he could go great for the first 2 weeks but fade int he 3rd week as his health always effects him at the Tour ....so if he does GC he could end up with little but if he goes for stages he coudlendup with a good few

 

[PremierAndrew]

I'd be surprised if he's worked a lot on his TTing since moving to Etixx. When Dan Martin was signed up, Etixx gained a puncher who's decent on longer climbs too, not a GC specialist

 

[Kwibus]

Re: 2016 Tour de France Discussion & Info

Stage 2: will it be a stage for Sagan, GVA or another puncheur or will the real climbers be able to take it? It has 500mtr of above 10% if I'm not mistaken. If the real climbers want they can drop the puncheurs, but will they?

If I wasn't using an ipad I'd post the profile of the climb, but it's 3km long with the 10,5% between 1.5 a 2km to go. Other parts are all 5-6% with a km to go it's slightly downhill and with 500mtr to go uphill again averaging 6%.

So it's possible for climbers imo, but will it happen?

 

[PremierAndrew]

Re: 2016 Tour de France Discussion & Info

Stage 2: will it be a stage for Sagan, GVA or another puncheur or will the real climbers be able to take it? It has 500mtr of above 10% if I'm not mistaken. If the real climbers want they can drop the puncheurs, but will they?

If I wasn't using an ipad I'd post the profile of the climb, but it's 3km long with the 10,5% between 1.5 a 2km to go. Other parts are all 5-6% with a km to go it's slightly downhill and with 500mtr to go uphill again averaging 6%.

So it's possible for climbers imo, but will it happen?

If Froome is feeling good, he'll definitely go for it. If not, we can expect someone like Bardet to try their hand. Either way, it should be tough for the punchers, and really depends on whether a climber fully commits or just puts in a small dig

 

[sir fly]

Re: 2016 Tour de France Discussion & Info

Stage 2: will it be a stage for Sagan, GVA or another puncheur or will the real climbers be able to take it? It has 500mtr of above 10% if I'm not mistaken. If the real climbers want they can drop the puncheurs, but will they?

If I wasn't using an ipad I'd post the profile of the climb, but it's 3km long with the 10,5% between 1.5 a 2km to go. Other parts are all 5-6% with a km to go it's slightly downhill and with 500mtr to go uphill again averaging 6%.

So it's possible for climbers imo, but will it happen?

If Froome is feeling good, he'll definitely go for it. If not, we can expect someone like Bardet to try their hand. Either way, it should be tough for the punchers, and really depends on whether a climber fully commits or just puts in a small dig

I'm expecting something similar to Mûr-de-Bretagne. Although the climb isn't equally hard (or maybe exactly because of that), good knowledge of the ascent should be helpful.

 

[Eyeballs Out]

Re: 2016 Tour de France Discussion & Info

Stage 2: will it be a stage for Sagan, GVA or another puncheur or will the real climbers be able to take it? It has 500mtr of above 10% if I'm not mistaken. If the real climbers want they can drop the puncheurs, but will they?

If I wasn't using an ipad I'd post the profile of the climb, but it's 3km long with the 10,5% between 1.5 a 2km to go. Other parts are all 5-6% with a km to go it's slightly downhill and with 500mtr to go uphill again averaging 6%.

So it's possible for climbers imo, but will it happen?

If Froome is feeling good, he'll definitely go for it. If not, we can expect someone like Bardet to try their hand. Either way, it should be tough for the punchers, and really depends on whether a climber fully commits or just puts in a small dig

I'm expecting something similar to Mûr-de-Bretagne. Although the climb isn't equally hard (or maybe exactly because of that), good knowledge of the ascent should be helpful.

Sagan vs Matthews

 

[thehook]

FLO; If I remember correctly the year Evans won. BMC did the same thing. Just bring big engines and let Cuddles figure it out on the climbs.

I thought the same thing when I saw there roster announcement. Were would they get climbing support from. But then it hit me......TJ will probably be bringing Porte Bottles.

 

[Anderis]

Re: Re:

BMC: Brent Bookwalter (USA), Marcus Burghgardt (GER), Damiano Caruso (ITA), Rohan Dennis (AUS), Amaël Moinard (FRA), Richie Porte (AUS), Michael Schär (SUI), Greg Van Avermaet (BEL), Tejay van Garderen (USA) .
No Phinney and no Ben Hermans.

That's odd, I expected Hermans on the team.
Is BMC the team with the worst climbing support out of the big teams? Do you think Porte will sacrifice himself for Tejay's top 10 (or the other way around)?

It depends on who do you consider "big teams".

We already knew for a long time that BMC is not a match for Sky or Movistar in terms of GC in GTs, neither in terms of quality of leaders, nor domestiques.

But as for BMC, this is not that bad. Caruso has GC top10's in GTs already to his name. Moinard is also more a climber than anything else and a decent one (15th in 2015 Giro) and Bookwalter and Dennis can climb well occasionally.

 

[MatParker117]

Re: 2016 Tour de France Discussion & Info

Stage 2: will it be a stage for Sagan, GVA or another puncheur or will the real climbers be able to take it? It has 500mtr of above 10% if I'm not mistaken. If the real climbers want they can drop the puncheurs, but will they?

If I wasn't using an ipad I'd post the profile of the climb, but it's 3km long with the 10,5% between 1.5 a 2km to go. Other parts are all 5-6% with a km to go it's slightly downhill and with 500mtr to go uphill again averaging 6%.

So it's possible for climbers imo, but will it happen?

Think the Fleche types will go for it

 

[DFA123]

Re:

I'd be surprised if he's worked a lot on his TTing since moving to Etixx. When Dan Martin was signed up, Etixx gained a puncher who's decent on longer climbs too, not a GC specialist

I don't think we can really know his true GC level. He's spent his whole career up until this season on a pretty weak team in terms of getting GC results. Now he's at one of the elite teams in the peloton, I think he could make a big step up. TTing he will definitely improve - Etixx will have worked hard on his position and always improve their riders in that field. He'll probably swap TT performance with Uran.

Also his results this season, 3rd at Catalunya and 3rd at Dauphine - both in very, very competitive fields - suggest that he could do something in the GC.

 

[Anderis]

Re: Re:

He's spent his whole career up until this season on a pretty weak team in terms of getting GC results.

That team turned Hesjedal into a GT winner and Vande Velde into a top5 rider in TdF. It's also where Wiggins found out he could be a contender at TdF. Three riders who were not expected to achieve this kind of results before joining Garmin. I know they're horrible recently but Martin also rode for them in a period of time when they had a very good record in extracting some extra performance out of riders, so that's not really an honest assessment of situation IMO.

Although I can see Martin doing very well in GC anyway. He already rode very good Vuelta in 2014 with slight illness in 3rd week. He was also on course for something like 9th place in 2013 Tour until he got ill with 4 or so stages to go. And it's not impossible that he has improved as a rider since then.

 

[sir fly]

I'm little embarrassed to acknowledge that only a couple of minutes ago I've fully realised that stage to Le Lioran is already on the first Wednesday, and Lac de Payolle stage is inside the first week... That's really great.
Untill now (when I've downloaded the roadbook) the stages were lined in my mind something like - Le Lioran for the second Saturday or the Friday before, and Lac de Payolle like the second week opener. Really embarrassing considering it's 8 months since the route has been unveiled. But that makes my excitement bigger.
Really good route.

 

[DFA123]

Re: Re:

He's spent his whole career up until this season on a pretty weak team in terms of getting GC results.

That team turned Hesjedal into a GT winner and Vande Velde into a top5 rider in TdF. It's also where Wiggins found out he could be a contender at TdF. Three riders who were not expected to achieve this kind of results before joining Garmin. I know they're horrible recently but Martin also rode for them in a period of time when they had a very good record in extracting some extra performance out of riders, so that's not really an honest assessment of situation IMO.

Although I can see Martin doing very well in GC anyway. He already rode very good Vuelta in 2014 with slight illness in 3rd week. He was also on course for something like 9th place in 2013 Tour until he got ill with 4 or so stages to go. And it's not impossible that he has improved as a rider since then.

Fair point, but most of Garmin's GC success was quite a long time ago now. Since Hesjedal's win, they've been very disappointing. And Martin was kind of steered towards classics as his main focus, with Talansky and Hesjedal earmarked for the GC, so I think there is a lot more potential to come from him.

 

[Zinoviev Letter]

Re: Re:

He's spent his whole career up until this season on a pretty weak team in terms of getting GC results.

That team turned Hesjedal into a GT winner and Vande Velde into a top5 rider in TdF. It's also where Wiggins found out he could be a contender at TdF. Three riders who were not expected to achieve this kind of results before joining Garmin. I know they're horrible recently but Martin also rode for them in a period of time when they had a very good record in extracting some extra performance out of riders, so that's not really an honest assessment of situation IMO.

Although I can see Martin doing very well in GC anyway. He already rode very good Vuelta in 2014 with slight illness in 3rd week. He was also on course for something like 9th place in 2013 Tour until he got ill with 4 or so stages to go. And it's not impossible that he has improved as a rider since then.

Fair point, but most of Garmin's GC success was quite a long time ago now. Since Hesjedal's win, they've been very disappointing. And Martin was kind of steered towards classics as his main focus, with Talansky and Hesjedal earmarked for the GC, so I think there is a lot more potential to come from him.

I actually agree that Martin is one of the rare riders who has been around for years and a leader for years without it ever becoming entirely clear what his upper limit is as a GC rider. And I agree that this is partly down to the way Garmin approached things. BUT, that said, Garmin steering him towards being primarily a one day rider was the best thing that could have happened to him. They have been 100% proven correct by his palmares.

Just compare his career results to those of the kind of riders whose great ambition is to finish 5th at the Tour. If Garmin had set him to working mainly on being a GC rider at GTs he'd probably be a somewhat more developed GC rider. But how much more developed? It's impossible to say. It's extremely unlikely that he'd be Froome or Quintana's level. Maybe he'd be TJVG's level, maybe not even quite that. But as Garmin actually pushed him to develop he has a palmares that is significantly better than Gesink, JVDB2, Roche and Mollema put together rather than maybe being just a slightly better version of one of them.

I hope by the way that Alaphillipe learns the same lesson and doesn't ever become the kind of rider who dreams of fifth.

I hate the fact that so many riders who are never going to win the Tour are moulded into hanging on for grim death Tour placings robots. That Martin isn't like that is what makes him admirable.

 

[Kwibus]

Re: 2016 Tour de France Discussion & Info

Does anyone know if there are somewhere profiles like the Giro has? I mean the ones with a topside view of the map of the final kms, where you can see the corners.
The final kms profiles of the altitude on the TdF site are really crappy. On stage 4 there is an incline with 6-7km to go and the final km is also slightly uphill, but how much %?

Giro always gives us excellent profiles compared to the tdf.

 

[sir fly]

Re: 2016 Tour de France Discussion & Info

Does anyone know if there are somewhere profiles like the Giro has? I mean the ones with a topside view of the map of the final kms, where you can see the corners.
The final kms profiles of the altitude on the TdF site are really crappy. On stage 4 there is an incline with 6-7km to go and the final km is also slightly uphill, but how much %?

Giro always gives us excellent profiles compared to the tdf.

Try downloading from cyclingtorrents.

 

[RedheadDane]

And meanwhile Lars Bak has just put himself back in contention for riding the Tour.
You know... despite the whole broken shoulder, broken ribs, broken back, punctured lung, thing... :surprised:

 

[sir fly]

Re:

And meanwhile Lars Bak has just put himself back in contention for riding the Tour.
You know... despite the whole broken shoulder, broken ribs, broken back, punctured lung, thing... :surprised:

I'd let him choose the way he should ride if he wants to.

 

[vedrafjord]

Re:

Bora-Argon 18:

Shane Archbold (NZL)
Jan Bárta (CZE)
Cesare Benedetti (ITA)
Sam Bennett (IRL)
Emanuel Buchmann (GER)
Bartosz Huzarski (POL)
Patrick Konrad (AUT)
Andreas Schillinger (GER)
Paul Voß (GER)

Fingers crossed Bennett doesn't get sick this year. He's had a solid year so far, regularly placing high and beating some great sprinters without getting any big wins. He seems to be getting better at surviving the mountains too.

 

[Zinoviev Letter]

Re: Re:

Bora-Argon 18:

Shane Archbold (NZL)
Jan Bárta (CZE)
Cesare Benedetti (ITA)
Sam Bennett (IRL)
Emanuel Buchmann (GER)
Bartosz Huzarski (POL)
Patrick Konrad (AUT)
Andreas Schillinger (GER)
Paul Voß (GER)

Fingers crossed Bennett doesn't get sick this year. He's had a solid year so far, regularly placing high and beating some great sprinters without getting any big wins. He seems to be getting better at surviving the mountains too.

I don't really agree that he's had a solid year. Sprinters are paid to win and he only has one win. He needs to be improving from the five wins or whatever he had last year at this point in his career. That said, he doesn't seem to have been riding as many small sprinters races as previously and a lot less of them than say the French sprinters do. Hopefully he will step up in the second half of the season.

 

[yaco]

Re: 2016 Tour de France Discussion & Info

Stage 2: will it be a stage for Sagan, GVA or another puncheur or will the real climbers be able to take it? It has 500mtr of above 10% if I'm not mistaken. If the real climbers want they can drop the puncheurs, but will they?

If I wasn't using an ipad I'd post the profile of the climb, but it's 3km long with the 10,5% between 1.5 a 2km to go. Other parts are all 5-6% with a km to go it's slightly downhill and with 500mtr to go uphill again averaging 6%.

So it's possible for climbers imo, but will it happen?

If Froome is feeling good, he'll definitely go for it. If not, we can expect someone like Bardet to try their hand. Either way, it should be tough for the punchers, and really depends on whether a climber fully commits or just puts in a small dig

I'm expecting something similar to Mûr-de-Bretagne. Although the climb isn't equally hard (or maybe exactly because of that), good knowledge of the ascent should be helpful.

Sagan vs Matthews

That profile is too hard for Matthews - It's more suited to Albasini.

 

[vedrafjord]

Re: Re:

Fingers crossed Bennett doesn't get sick this year. He's had a solid year so far, regularly placing high and beating some great sprinters without getting any big wins. He seems to be getting better at surviving the mountains too.

I don't really agree that he's had a solid year. Sprinters are paid to win and he only has one win. He needs to be improving from the five wins or whatever he had last year at this point in his career. That said, he doesn't seem to have been riding as many small sprinters races as previously and a lot less of them than say the French sprinters do. Hopefully he will step up in the second half of the season.

I agree, it's been 'solid', meaning 'not amazing', and I thought he would have progressed more by now, but I think he's going in the right direction and just needs that extra 1 or 2% to start winning. He was third in the points classification in the Dauphiné which shows consistency.

 

[Samamba]

Re:

And meanwhile Lars Bak has just put himself back in contention for riding the Tour.
You know... despite the whole broken shoulder, broken ribs, broken back, punctured lung, thing... :surprised:

He's in!

Bak
Debusschere
Greipel
De Gendt
Henderson
Hansen
Sieberg
Roelandts
Gallopin

Roelandts in and Wellens out is the only change since last year. Super train for Greipel, but apart from Gallopin (if he has the form and doesn't target the GC) they have no one who can win the more harder stages.

 

[Hakkapelit]

Re: Re:

And meanwhile Lars Bak has just put himself back in contention for riding the Tour.
You know... despite the whole broken shoulder, broken ribs, broken back, punctured lung, thing... :surprised:

He's in!

Bak
Debusschere
Greipel
De Gendt
Henderson
Hansen
Sieberg
Roelandts
Gallopin

Roelandts in and Wellens out is the only change since last year. Super train for Greipel, but apart from Gallopin (if he has the form and doesn't target the GC) they have no one who can win the more harder stages.

Well, Wellens wasn´t he voted biggest disappointment by the belgian audience last year so no reason to take him again

De Gent has won a har stage or two in the past, but who knows what form he is in.

Dunno what to say about Bak, hopfully he hasn't fooled the medicala staff too mcuh into letting him ride

 

[Praying Mantis]

Links to the race regulations and roadbook in french have been added to the Original Post.

Also added "last kilometres" profiles where available.