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Tour de France 2020 | Stage 1 (Nice - Nice, 156 km)

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It seems Rafa Valls has abandoned the race. He was taken to the hospital after the stage and taken to the hospital with a broken femur.
For Movistar Rojas suffered a blow to his back plus bruised his arm. Soler hurt his knee. Both are planning on starting tomorrow. Their other riders who went down only suffered minor bumps/bruises. The has officially said 5 of their 8 riders went down and Erviti apparently crashed 3 times although says he's alright.

Valverde posted a comment on twitter and in it he says there were some areas where it was almost impossible to stay on the bike. He was one of the riders who managed to not crash today. There are several other riders on twitter saying today they were riding on a skating rink.


edited due to confirmation on the correct injury for Valls.
 
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It seems Rafa Valls has abandoned the race. He was taken to the hospital after the stage and sounds like a broken collarbone.
For Movistar Rojas suffered a blow to his back plus bruised his arm. Soler hurt his knee. Both are planning on starting tomorrow. Their other riders who went down only suffered minor bumps/bruises. The has officially said 5 of their 8 riders went down and Erviti apparently crashed 3 times although says he's alright.

Valverde posted a comment on twitter and in it he says there were some areas where it was almost impossible to stay on the bike. He was one of the riders who managed to not crash today. There are several other riders on twitter saying today they were riding on a skating rink.

Maybe if every other rider just crashes and Valverde just stays on his bike, he will win the Tour 2020.
 
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Maybe if every other rider just crashes and Valverde just stays on his bike, he will win the Tour 2020.

There are still riders out there with worse form than he has as well. De Gendt actually confirmed that in a response on twitter. He said he didn't crash just had bad legs and lost some time because he didn't want to add a crash and possible injuries to just having bad legs.
 
There are still riders out there with worse form than he has as well. De Gendt actually confirmed that in a response on twitter. He said he didn't crash just had bad legs and lost some time because he didn't want to add a crash and possible injuries to just having bad legs.

Yes, I only meant that it seems to be most important to stay upright in this Tour.

Totally unrelated: I love Caleb Ewan! His smile, which is already amazing without a mask, shows the whole time while he's speaking with mask :mask:! (Pinot does not stand a chance with all his goat photos. He looked grumpy today. :expressionless:)
 
Yes, I only meant that it seems to be most important to stay upright in this Tour.

Totally unrelated: I love Caleb Ewan! His smile, which is already amazing without a mask, shows the whole time while he's speaking with mask :mask:! (Pinot does not stand a chance with all his goat photos. He looked grumpy today. :expressionless:)

I agree, it appears staying on your bike is even more important this year with all the insane crashes going on.

He does seem to always be smiling and it's evident when he has the mask on as well.
 
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Today's stage would have been perfect for my favourite cyclist: Pedro Delgado. He could have sauntered up to the start line, 2 mins 40 secs late (as one does). Then, he could have casually made up the time without worrying about riders crashing in front of him. The pace set by the peloton was truly moribund.
 
Congratulations to Alexander Kristoff, for the stage win and for seizing the opportunity to wear maillot jaune. A lot of mechanical issues and crashing going on on stage 1, due to bad weather. Sort of a miracle more riders didn't abandon the race. Still a lot of them will be starting stage 2 bruised and in less optimal condition. Considering stage 2 will be a hard stage, they will feel the consequences of today crash for sure.

Disc brakes on road cycles still look like a badly designed prototype, whenever a tire needs to be replaced. A handyman with some special tool needs to emerge and to take over, imagine he would forget to charge the battery.

Good call on making the gentlemen's agreement and to pace things down, concerning safety. Some of you are saying, on how some specific rider could go all in on the descent. In my opinion that would almost certainly end up in some wall. Astana tried and quickly paid the price. In addition if one of the favorites, likely more, would crash, personally i would find little motivation to keep following the Tour closely. As what would be the point. Watching sprinters on stage 2 going after it?

Roglič kept positioning himself good on stage 1. After he said to pace down, that was settled then. He is respected in the peloton and today he used his influence wisely.
 
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Personally strongly disagree with all the "gentlemen's agreements" in a race, which normally involve some self-appointed masters pretending to speak for the whole peloton and calling the race off... Thumbs up to Astana, I don´t see why Jumbo and Ineos have to dictate where and how the race should be raced. Calculating risks in dangerous descents has always been a part of cycling and Tours have been won and lost racing in very harsh conditions.

I mean, this is the Tour the France, these guys are professionals racing with the very best materials and team support one can possibly get... in my view, there simply is no excuse for today. It's a disgrace and a lack of respect for the sport, the public and for those who have done their very best to organize this race under such challenging circumstances
 
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They tried and they failed. Hence nobody was obligated to comply with the gentlemen's agreement. It just meant that not complying with the gentlemen's agreement, you made an agreement with a wall. Your choice, your consequences.

Totally agree. Astana risked and lost and it's their choice, so not much more on my side to comment on that.

My heartburn is with asking for a gentlemen's agreement, like JV did today, quite publicly. They too could have made the choice not to risk a fall, but of course their day was much easier after everyone but ASTANA, more or less voluntarily, agreed not to race. This, to me, is unsportsmanlike and a big lack of respect to the public.

And of course, the rest of the teams have also let me down with their lame attitude to let others dictate how the race should be raced, so in my view it's not only JV to blame for this charade
 
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It's not worth it, broken bones, teeth missing, abandoning the race, on stage 1 of a GT. It was obvious, accelerating only by a few km/h, to result in a wall.

They made the right call.

Sure, one should just not try to impose that "right call" on others. That call has to come ultimately from the race organizer.

Teams should be free to make that call and take no risks on descents, no one is forcing anybody to descend fast or slow.

And it's also quite disturbing to see how dissent is very much not welcome when it comes to improvised neutralizations of the race, with Luke Rowe saying Astana looked quite stupid. That was out of line to say the least and to me goes to show how these "gentlemen's agreements" really work
 
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Occasionally a bike race is won or lost in unexpected scenarios. That's how outsiders sometimes get to win races.
Today we could have ended with a much more interesting GC, even possibly with a big name having crashed out of the race, I get that, but that's happened many times in history and in my opinion one has to live with that in the Tour or any other race, for that matter
Having big favorites with a significant disadvantage to make up for from stage 2 would be much more attractive than having big teams control the race and determine how things happen, with top GC guys hiding behind 4-5 teammates until stage 15 or 16 up to Col de la Loze...
I totally get why JV or INEOS would want a neutralized race today, it's the attitude from teams like Movistar, Arkea or BORA that is much more shocking to me... Today was their chance to put the big teams under pressure and they chose not to.
 
Occasionally a bike race is won or lost in unexpected scenarios. That's how outsiders sometimes get to win races.
Today we could have ended with a much more interesting GC, even possibly with a big name having crashed out of the race, I get that, but that's happened many times in history and in my opinion one has to live with that in the Tour or any other race, for that matter
Having big favorites with a significant disadvantage to make up for from stage 2 would be much more attractive than having big teams control the race and determine how things happen, with top GC guys hiding behind 4-5 teammates until stage 15 or 16 up to Col de la Loze...
I totally get why JV or INEOS would want a neutralized race today, it's the attitude from teams like Movistar, Arkea or BORA that is much more shocking to me... Today was their chance to put the big teams under pressure and they chose not to.

Most of Movistar's riders crashed at one point or another on today's stage. They had no interest in racing on a skating rink. Their view was anyone trying to do anything was more likely to crash out of the race than do anything useful. Which one of their riders do you think was even going to do anything?
 
The main problem was the number of occurrences. Riders where crashing all over and it is safe to assume the trend would continue. That is if nothing would be done about it. Kudos to the strongest teams, for acting responsible and keeping a few dozen of riders in the race.

P.S. If the stage would only be considered to be dangerous, but the number of occurrences would be low, we would see racing as usual. Anyway, off to stage 2, where likely GC contenders will need to stretch their legs a bit. I guess as a reward, for acting responsible today.
 

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