Tour de France 2018 stage 9: Arras > Roubaix 156,5 km

[woodburn]

NBC goes to commercial just before first cobbles ... misses Bardet flat. Now leaders about to go on second sector ... another commercial. Worthless.

 

[bob.a.feet]

Moscon behind also

 

[bob.a.feet]

Bardet again needs a bike change

 

[silvergrenade]

Re:

Moscon behind also

Wonder what happened there

 

[TMP402]

Re:

Moscon behind also

And he didn't look comfortable to me at all.

 

[bigcog]

Moscon almost back on

 

[Vasilis]

Bernal is very much to the front

 

[woodburn]

Craddock still at back of peleton. Beast.

 

[Eclipse]

Bardet back in - convoy coming back helped a lot

 

[Finn84]

Bardet now on the back of the peloton.

 

[silvergrenade]

Re:

Bardet back in - convoy coming back helped a lot

Told ya!

 

[Tigerion]

Oh for the love of........sunofa..........*tirade that gets would get me banned from the forum*
Bloody collerbones

 

[Dekker_Tifosi]

Bora keeps the pace high on the cobbles but so far nothing happened.

Still these were easy beginnings. Hard part still to come

 

[luckyboy]

Thanks Carlton Kirby for informing me of the great work of Gaudu and Molard in helping Bardet... Definitely not Dillier (with his Swiss stripes on the damn jersey lol) and Latour

 

[saneguy]

Most GC guys okay in the first two sectors. Next sector is going to be an interesting one though

 

[Broccolidwarf]

Bora sitting in front with 7 guys, so far dominating the peloton

QS and BMC behind them

 

[TourOfSardinia]

After his fall Richie was able to sit up, and move to the side of the road, but he held his right shoulder and was unable to remount his bike. A full medical diagnosis has not been released by the team.

cross finger for LPR

 

[Zinoviev Letter]

Zakarin mechanical

 

[bigcog]

Zakurin out back

 

[silvergrenade]

Re:

Bora sitting in front with 7 guys, so far dominating the peloton

QS and BMC behind them

Too far from the finish to put the hammer down

 

[Finn84]

Sagan only rider in the peloton who was interested in intermediate sprint. 6 points (or 5 if the punctured LottoNL rider is between the break and peloton).

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Re:

Could the reason for all the crashes be the fact that the top GC contenders and mountain domestiques ride so few races in a peloton each year? I mean, this stuff happens in amateur races all the time but you would assume the pro peloton would be able to avoid it. Or is it just the tdf bringing out the extremes of competitiveness and nerves?

They ride plenty of races in a péloton, but because they typically avoid the Classic races that they are not suited to, a lot of the flat races they spend in a péloton are relatively low hazard.

The particular issue with the Tour is that it is so important, so until there's been a GC shakeup of some kind (a real one, not just a few seconds here and there), everybody's still got something to protect. If you don't sort out early who's a contender and who's a pretender, so that the latter re-appraise their goals and start stagehunting, contesting secondary jerseys and similar, and they don't need their domestiques to fight for space at the front, then you've got a dozen teams all fighting to put their men at the front all week, and the result, like in 2011, is that all that you get for a week and a half is crashing. People forget just how dreck that race was until the final few stages.

 

[DNP-Old]

Bardet changing bikes again.

 

[markene2]

Zaka puncture

 

[Bot. Sky_Bot]

Re:

Most GC guys okay in the first two sectors. Next sector is going to be an interesting one though

But 11th sector - 4 stars in PR classification