- Feb 20, 2010
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Well, the Spanish did orchestrate a popular convenient home win 39 years ago. Bitterness around it persists to this day.
- Aug 3, 2015
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Well, the by far strongest rider won. Its not like Marion Rousse pulled a 2012 Tour route out her sleeve cause Pauline was a tempoclimber, nor did she pull out a 2012 Vuelta route out cause she was a puncheur. No doubt about that. Its the stuff that Pogi does to Jonas when he feels particularly agitated and motivated and just wants to settle the score, so kudos for that. I can see why everything else besides the actual race can feel orchestrated, but the race itself was a test across varied terrain and a bunch of very hard stages towards the end that could only lead to the strongest rider winning.
- Feb 20, 2010
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Yea, she still had to be the strongest, and as mentioned Thévenet and Longo are two of the most local major names there are there, so could easily have got there on short notice if asked after the Madeleine stage to make a bigger deal of it. There's plenty to mitigate. But like I say, it was already a nigh on perfect outcome that just got a little bit more perfect... and then just a little bit more perfect...
- May 17, 2013
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I don't understand the conspiracy theories that I'm reading here. Moser/Fignon and the helicopter
For me, it was a great Tour, and of course a great weekend. I had forgotten what it's like in France when a French rider wins this bike race. I guess you had forgotten too ..Can you elaborate? I was just finding media on major cycling events around '88. US acknowledgement was nil for most sports not on our networks.
- May 17, 2013
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The Spanish did a bunch of Vueltas to suit their riders, yes, muritos a gogo when Purito and Valverde were the best in this exercise, Le '12 Tour, was all about the £, there are more and I get the point. Except that here, PFP wasn't the pre-race favorite...
What PFP did is what you often cite, how riders get to know a climb so well that it doesn't get as hard as it should be. Pauline scouted La Madeleine inch by inch when others only climbed it once or twice. She spelled her plan as soon as the route was revealed, yet no one could stop her. Demi didn't let her win, neither did Katarzyna...I bet they realize how good they got it with Pauline gone from road races for a decade.
We often get misled by her good looks, her tears, the birdsong voice, but PFP is an absolute killer on a bike. And she's smart: no stone was left un-turned. The plan was public domain, Pauline executed it.
Overreaction in France can be good: money will fill the coffers and hopefully make the Tour Femmes a perennial event like the mens' Tour. It's long overdue. And bring kids, boys or girls into cycling in France. If so, thank you Pauline Ferrand-Prevot...
Don't understand how you square this? Some silly broad brush BS about French in general acting a certain way is fun for a TV show or movie using French stereotypes but in today's real life example you have a woman who washes more talent out of her hair than most riders will ever have.They're French. Chauvinism is a French word for a reason. Of course they're going to milk this for all it's worth.
The fact that ASO or the UCI can't orchestrate a French win in the Tour seems pretty obvious, otherwise they would have done so for the men's Tour somewhere in the last few decades
Although she is a petite blonde with perfect teeth, adorable English accent in race interviews..
She is an absolute beast on a bicycle!! Look at her record!! She can and does destroy people, her last @8 kilometers of racing today should, rightfully be a subject of French national pride..
I personally think she won because she is absolutely f-ing awesome, but if it was to give arrogant and adoring French folks a reason to cheer!! By all means.
If you love bike racing what she did to get yellow and what she did once she was wearing it was beyond beautiful!!
Only thing she could have done was to slaughter an animal and eat the raw organs at the finish, but otherwise she rode ,alone, defended everything thrown her way, and when it counted she turned into a monster!!
..and for the record she rides a bike with a style like the bars, seat and pedals are repelling her, !! Ugly as exists!! And her lack of grace and fluidity are doubling down on how good she is..!!
Viva la France!!
Her style on the bike is painful to see.. Her effectiveness and tactics are absolute poetry!! For anyone who didn't see them today's last @40 k and yesterday's highlights will make you a fan if you were not one already...
Love France, French folks.. French food..yes French beer!!
If you need some examples of chauvinistic behavior.. I can give you hundreds in just last few weeks!! Don't know what thread!!? And they didn't come out of France..
And if you don't like France, get your bike and book @10+ days in Morzine in Summer or skip the bike a book @7 days in Morzine in winter!!
Get back to us with your opinion update!!!
Astonishing part of the world!!
Paris Roubaix and now this?? I am impressed obviously!!
Cookster15
Moderator
- May 14, 2011
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Descending is a skill which can be learned and it should not take long to build confidence if she works at it. Gigante needs to go away and practice long technical downhills on a suitable road as much as she does climbing. Eventually the confidence and judgement will come. Pick such a climb and do repeats. Over and over and over.
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The last paragraph is one of the key things here, though, I think. I don't think that France would have necessarily had that long to wait for a first women's Tour winner if PFP hadn't come back - they have got a ton of talent coming through the ranks, and as we both acknowledge, routes have been tailored around an organiser's intended winner for decades. But you can only be the first once, and the fact somebody who is already a media darling in France returns and immediately wins the two biggest French races dropping all the rouleuses on the cobbles and all the climbers on an HC ascent to become that first French rider to achieve that feat is just like, so perfect a story, like she was in a rush to get those accolades before anybody else could. At the same time, training that one climb over and over may have told her how to manage her efforts, but it won't have given her the legs she had yesterday. She still had to deliver on the plan. I know that she's capable of stuff at least approaching this so that it's not unprecedented; I was butting heads with the people who were questioning her ability to deliver a performance like that by highlighting her performances in the Giro back in 2014. But after today's stage I'm sorry, but the whole package just sowed the seeds of discomfort for me and though I can't put my finger on quite what it is that has me feeling that way, I'm just not as happy about the whole thing as I feel I should be.
Don't know nationality for all FDJ team, but had lots of riders in top ten.
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Spotted a lot of young girls at the sidelines, cheering her on. It's fantastic for female cycling in France.
- Feb 20, 2012
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The Argentines did it too in 1978. Bitterness around it persists to this day
Clearly it’s cute, but there’s no question she had prepared meticulously for the tdf to a degree that few other riders wiuld.
Roubaix, they all looked at each other when she rode off the front. Dozens of races a year see the same pattern. Who dares wins, sometimes……
And Tdf, to be fair there was no Annemiek in the race. Demi is as LS says the best climber, but I’m not convinced she’s been at her best this season and who knows what that nasty fall took out of her on Stage 3. Kasia got lucky last year and in my view has always been perpetual bridesmaid material, and possibly a bit on the decline now, ELB was sick, Anna VdB is not the same rider as before her retirement. Puck and the rest of the Fenix team seemed oddly off the pace. There are some decent younger prospects but they’re not quite there yet.
PFP was always a class act. I think MTB was and always will be her first love - and gives her that experience of managing her own effort. But I think she spotted an opportunity with a relatively weak climbing field and Visma backed her for it, allowing her to invest in the prep. I’m sure ASO was rooting for her too, but hey, that’s sport and showbusiness.
Roubaix, they all looked at each other when she rode off the front. Dozens of races a year see the same pattern. Who dares wins, sometimes……
And Tdf, to be fair there was no Annemiek in the race. Demi is as LS says the best climber, but I’m not convinced she’s been at her best this season and who knows what that nasty fall took out of her on Stage 3. Kasia got lucky last year and in my view has always been perpetual bridesmaid material, and possibly a bit on the decline now, ELB was sick, Anna VdB is not the same rider as before her retirement. Puck and the rest of the Fenix team seemed oddly off the pace. There are some decent younger prospects but they’re not quite there yet.
PFP was always a class act. I think MTB was and always will be her first love - and gives her that experience of managing her own effort. But I think she spotted an opportunity with a relatively weak climbing field and Visma backed her for it, allowing her to invest in the prep. I’m sure ASO was rooting for her too, but hey, that’s sport and showbusiness.
- Aug 13, 2024
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Agree! Anna VdB is still doing what she's always done though - the level is just higher now so those kind of things don't work anymore.
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- Feb 20, 2010
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Labous and Muzic are both French, and are perfectly good GC candidates in their own right (both have been as high as 4th in the Tour GC, Labous back in 2022 and Muzic last year), but not premier grade ones when they're on the same team as Vollering, so both are riding in service of a Dutchwoman. The Bunels and Begos of this world are not ready yet, and the likes of Kerbaol are somewhere in between those two groups.
PFP is a pre-established French star, a media darling and somebody that the general public is already aware of and supportive of. It is better for French cycling that she be the one to crack the code rather than somebody who doesn't already have public name and face recognition value that the media have to invest time and effort to get to know and encourage the fans to get behind. Similar to how Bradley Wiggins and Geraint Thomas both won Sports Personality of the Year awards for their Tour de France wins while Chris Froome won four, one Vuelta (his 2011 win could not have been taken into account that year because it was still Cobo's at the time) and one Giro, won all three GTs in a 12-month period, and never won that award; Sky clipped Chris Froome's wings in the 2012 Tour because Wiggins was the better story to sell back home in Britain, and the British public never took Froome to heart the way they did Wiggins or Thomas. Not only does she fit that same template of being an already-established popular figure, but PFP is a personal friend of the race director. That's why the winner of the race being not just a Frenchwoman, but PFP specifically, is another layer of the convenience, even though given Labous and Muzic were riding as helpers, she was also clearly the most likely French rider to take the prize off of this year's startline anyway.
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This was the infamous "stolen Vuelta". The penultimate stage was a medium mountain stage around the Sierra de Guadarrama, with around 40km from the rather middling Puerto del León to the finish at the DYC distilleries in Palazuelo de Eresma; expected to be a stage for the break with Robert Millar (apologies to deadname, but I think it's inevitable when discussing their active career) holding a slender lead from Pacho Rodríguez (who is Colombian for the record, but was on a Spanish team), and Pello Ruíz Cabestany just over a minute behind, but nobody else within five minutes. Noted baroudeur José Recio was in the breakaway when Pedro Delgado, 6th on GC, rode across to him from far out. Delgado was over 6 minutes down, and 5 minutes away from the podium, so little incentive to chase, and with only a flat stage to follow, it was thought as a rather hopeless hail mary. Except the gap kept growing, and kept growing until somehow Delgado was in the virtual lead and the GC guys had expended a lot of their domestiques, while Delgado had done the classic deal with Recio, offering the stage in exchange for collaboration, and they were working well together up front.
Turns out that the organisers had been putting false time gaps on the boards meaning that Millar and co. had not realised how far up the road Delgado actually was, until suddenly the chalkboard said Delgado was miles out in front, like he'd gained five minutes in no time at all, and Millar panicked. Having expended his own domestiques and having alienated many of his rivals with arrogant comments en route to the race lead, he asked around for support and got none, Pacho Rodríguez claimed to have said something along the lines of "who came 2nd last year, do you remember? That's why" when asked by Millar why he wasn't contributing to protect his 2nd place.
At the time, much of Spain was very much in favour of this; obviously Delgado was a more popular rider in Spain, and Millar had hardly been making many friends in the Spanish péloton or with the Spanish press. The Vuelta was also emerging from an era where they were too keenly aware of their status as the runt of the GT litter and had been all too easy for the overseas teams to bully, as they were often offering significant concessions around their preferred overseas stars, with examples such as when Ferdinand Bracke was given a time penalty for an illegal feed, so Peugeot threatened to withdraw their team from the race and a hapless commissaire was forced to pretend he wrote the wrong race number down, even though Bracke was pretty recognisable, wearing the race leader's jersey at the time, and the guy that eventually got the time penalty, a random Spanish domestique, was in a completely different group not being monitored by the same commissaire anyway. The Spanish teams would usually self-destruct through in-fighting or they would be busy squabbling amongst themselves and allow outsiders to triumph (indeed this was a large part of Éric Caritoux's victory the previous year), so as a result, after years of the foreign teams banding together and bullying the Vuelta's organisers into favourable circumstances, there was a fair bit of triumphalism about the way the Spanish teams and organisers had managed to come together for once to engineer a home success, which only served to exacerbate the controversy. The fact that Britain would then have to wait another 27 years for a Grand Tour winner (eventually reduced to 26, but obviously we didn't know that at the time) ensured the story stayed alive for decades.
PFP did not drop all the rouleuses on the cobbles. Vos and Kopecky were way stronger than her in Roubaix, but she just happened to be a teammate of one of them and profited from that rivalry by slipping away.
As for this Tour, and especially this last stage which seems to have left you with a sour taste, I think you should focus your ire on FDJ. Unless you think they're in on the plot to make PFP win this Tour, which to be quite fair almost seems like it. Because they ride so utterly stupidly. They're the new SD Worx... apparently it's Vollering who brings her questionable tactics wherever she goes.
I think in hindsight the spat between FDJ and Visma earlier in the week is pretty telling. Both FDJ and Visma have a bald ex-Rabobank rider as their DS. Lars Boom was a lazy athlete who did everything based on talent and not determination, Van Emden was more or less the opposite. Boom never says anything slightly interesting or smart, Van Emden is a contrarian who likes to stir things up a little. I know who I'd rather have as my DS.
It seems FDJ management doesn't like to be challenged, and then you get what they currently have: the strongest team in the Tour by far... who never, and I mean literally never, use that strength to challenge their opponents in any way. Never use their numerical superiority, never use the specific qualities of their riders. It's just kumbaya every day, oh we're all such great friends, oh what a great athmosphere we have in the bus. Yeah, we don't manage to win a single stage, but who cares when we can launch our newest campaign of platitudes and AI-generated motivational quotes.
Didn't watch a lot of this TDFF, but those crowds on the road were so great to see. Even yesterday on the first part of the stage with 90 km to go it was absolutely packed on each centimeter next to the road. Women cycling is really on the up.
Any data on the TV viewership numbers?
Any data on the TV viewership numbers?
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It's classic Pauline - picks a target and prepares for it meticulously. That means training camps and less racing. And despite all her MTB success, she never won the season long World Cup Overall - she would miss races to go on training camps to prepare for her target.
I recall her finishing 2nd over 2 mins behind Loana Lecomte in a French Cup race in the summer of 2022.......Six weeks later she'd turned that around, and won both XCC & XCO World titles in dominant style.
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Froome was twice dumb enough to win the Tour the same year as Andy Murray winning Wimbledon. Muzzah having a personality on top of that just seals the deal.
The thing with Froome was also that he was born in Kenya, schooled in South Africa, and only really rode under the British flag for funding/Team Sky reasons. Not that this always prevents you from being accepted by the British public – Kevin Pietersen springs to mind – but it does hinder connection, especially in a more niche sport like cycling. And even with Pietersen, he wasn't particularly well-liked.
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You cannot win sports personality without a personality. As a sportsman Froome was very good of course. The fake politeness was very odd. I still have no idea who Froome is as a person.
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