Sagan also doing the hard work for the green again. Funny how a stage like today pretty much decides the points classification.

I really don't have much faith in Valverde making it through three weeks. Don't think I've ever seen him do a GT without a bad day. Just hoping Movistar are willing to use him to put pressure on Froome. Keep him riding aggressive early and let Quintana sit on Froomes wheel and see what happens. If anything.

2 random facts from today that I found pretty funny

1) Froome claims a french fan threw a glass of urine at his face around 50km after the start of the stage

2) Eduardo Sepulveda (Bretagne-Seche) has been disqualified from the tour because he ... stepped in a car and was given a life for about 200 meters. His bike chain broke and his team car had missed him and was ahead so he casually took a lift in AG2R's car.

Stages like today (and yesterday) are why no one even stands a chance at beating Sagan for green for years to come.

The penultimate sprint stage of the tour. The cat 2 climb might allow a breakaway to win. Giant, Katusha, and/or Tinkoff might want to try to prevent a sprting finish. But Lotto and EQS will surely want to keep the peloton together:

A lot of the doping hate comes from the cultural similarities between Froome and Armstrong. Armstrong was one of the most hated cyclists ever not because he was a doper but because he was a gigantic **** and a ****ty person. Contador doped enough to beat him and even got caught, but he's fun to watch, clean he'd destroy a clean Armstrong, and he's a salty stubborn working man's type some of us can relate to. I'd rather see him win than self-righteous beacon of clean cycling bull****ters like Froome. Cummings yesterday catching those idiots at the end was fun to watch, Froome isn't. They're all cheating a bit, but some are indecent about it and ruin the spectacle, making it hard to believe. Froome doesn't do anything Indurain didn't do, but Indurain had the sense to not speak English, stay quiet, appear humble. None of this victimization bs about someone throwing urine at him. No one threw urine at Indurain. People liked him.

Seems too harsh on Froome, not sure what he's done to anybody. Don't know how you excuse anybody throwing urine at any rider, just makes me sad.

Yeah wtf @ the Froome hate. He's like a choir boy ffs. He should have got off the bike and hit your man a good dig.

Didn't Cav get the same treatment couple of years ago? At least this urine throwing sounds terribly familiar. Obviously no excuses for it and such a weird thing to do. Pretty demented combo to be that bothered by the sport and still go to the roadside to do something like that.

And not sure the Froome hate is actually Froome hate. Sky and cycling have made themselves an easy target over the years and he just happens to be the current face of it. It's not like fans haven't been treating all the top guys poorly for over a decade now. Just got to hope it isn't getting worse or the stage to Alpe d'Huez will be really worrying.

Pretty sad for cycling as a whole when all you have as motivation for turning yourself inside out to win a grand tour is getting piss thrown on you and very little respect for your achievements. Not much in the way of inspiration for young kids watching to take up the sport.

Froome was mister nobody 4 years ago, that's the biggest reason he's hated. He won nothing, raced in ****ty african races, and suddenly became 2nd of the Vuelta behind lolCobo, you must admit that's quite hard to believe.

Add the fact that what Geraint Thomas (the track and cobble rider) does is not possible and Porte being an ******* and you have everything to hate that team

you have no clue about cycling if you dont get why people hate froome

Strong group today with sagan, pinot, rogers, bak, yates, geschke, hesjedal, kwiatkowski and trentin. Katusha only team chasing but already 1:50 behind. Should sagan survive the col de l'escrinet, he is pretty much a lock for the win and the overall green.

Gap is only 1'40" with 58 km to go. Sagan's group will almost certainly get caught.

Oh, Cav and Renshaw is in the back group about 8 minutes down. Greipel for the stage win, I guess?

Or kristoff after all the work his team did. Also degenkolb still in the group. Not sure who of the sprinters has the best legs after the mountains.

FFS, what part of we don't care about your doping conspiracy boredom , do you not get?

Have a day off.

coquard was super close to wiping out after getting bumped by sagan about 200m out. you see the first wobble, catch, then another rapid shudder. he was pissed. only found french articles on it, but looks like he had harsh words for sagan in post race interviews.

What a strange thing to say. Are you saying he's clean?

Froome's first language is English so he's unlikely to speak any other tongue to the media. Indurain did speak his best English to the relevant media but it was not the language of the peloton in his day and the Anglo-Saxon media was less interested than it is now.

Indurian salt of the earth - yep maybe. Contador? I take it this is in jest?

that isnt remotely close to what he's saying.

Yeh I know. You misunderstood my question.

Comparing Lance and Froome seems a bit silly. Don't think the guys have much in common outside their chosen profession. The similarities are more about coming off as arrogant outsiders ignoring the old rules and traditions while acting as if you're the best thing that ever happened to the sport. Just better, smarter and showing everyone else the way the sport should be done. With Sky that's mostly a team effort. The team does the hard work to alienate fans and piss people off. Success just seals the deal and puts the spotlight on Froome.

In comparison Contador is traditional old cycling. The good and the bad. Rides to entertain the fans and follows the old traditions.


Degenkolb seemed really aggressive earlier too. Pretty much pushed Sagan out of Greipels wheel. Guess there being so few stages that suit sprinters makes them more aggressive. Never been the biggest fan of sprint stages but feels like this year isn't really giving them enough opportunities.

It's better like this. Used to be more stages that were just flat all the way that would always end up in a massive sprint and the same sprinter ended up winning 4-5 stages in the tour. Having the top speed over a few hundred meters isn't worth enough to let those guys too many stages. Glorifies them too much when a bunch of the work is being done by the team to put him in best conditions.

No doubt about that. The team was developed in order to infiltrate the Tour de France, make an Olymoic track cyclist world famous innit mate and to breed a new kind of cycling fan that hates "UK postal service" with a vengeance despite the fact that there is no vengeance to be had.

Greipel already has 3 wins, with 1 more sprint stage remaining.