Jaysus cycling! (6 Viewers)

just saw the video from outside the 'alleged' driver's gaff. Little scrotes out joyriding. Fucks sake.

If it's the same video posted above it's not the alleged driver's gaff.

"He's not the driver. He's just some random kid who threw fireworks at us when we was walking peacefully. I was there." - poster on reddit
 
If it's the same video posted above it's not the alleged driver's gaff.

"He's not the driver. He's just some random kid who threw fireworks at us when we was walking peacefully. I was there." - poster on reddit
oh right, thanks for the correction. I saw it on twitter and it referred to the video as being outside the driver's gaff.
 
just picked this up. paid 50 quid for it; a falcon, almost certainly a westminster. 531 frame; handlebars would have originally been drop bars, so a bit of a shame to not have the original brake levers and bars. drivetrain has been replaced too, but it'll keep me busy over the winter. frame needs to be stripped and repainted.

IMG_20200903_194208.jpg
 
the rust around the chainstays is fairly pronounced, and there was a lot of what looked like OK paint at first on the rest of the bike which is quite flaky. i just took a powerhose to it and a good bit came off easily enough.
apart from that, i think some of the parts were relatively protected by the sheer amount of crud on the rear section - the stuff baked onto the rear hub was about 2mm thick. 36 spoke wheels front and back so i hope to keep them. the rear will need to be rebuilt though if i do.

one thing i forgot to check yesterday when buying, if the stem was seized, but that came off OK. in fact, it's been coming apart easier than i expected. the seat tube is stubborn but not seized. just need to get it and the chainwheel/BB off to have it fully disassembled to clean up everything and see what can be kept and what's junk.
 
Holy. Fucking. Shit.

That was an amazing Tour.

I have just been watching the last stage, mouth open. That was unreal.

This Pogačar chap does appear to be quite good at the pedaling of the velocipedes. He wins: the white jersey, the polka dot jersey and the yellow jersey. Sammy Bennet wins green.

Well done to the Tour de France, that was astonishing shit. That's probably the most amazing Tour I've ever seen.
 
Reading what UAE were saying about Pogačar before the Tour is hilarious in retrospective. They're talking about a "developing a talent for the future", just wanting Tadej to "experience" the TdF, that they would love if he got a top ten position but they didn't want to put any pressure on him by setting unreasonable expectations, etc etc.

Dude just rocks up, sits on the back of the Jumbo Visma superteam train, and then blows the fucking doors off the thing. Jumbo just spent years, and countless millions, on this thing. They've thought through every angle, got every rider, killed the Sky/Ineos monster, they've dominated the Tour completely. Everything is going like clockwork. Then this.

I was thinking Remco was lining up to be the next big thing, but it's Pogačar who's going to be scary for the foreseeable future. Something about this guy; he had fuck all team, he's a baby, in the interview he said he couldn't even hear the radio on the climb so he didn't know what was happening. So his response was: fuck it - we go full gas.

Class.
 
I found it hard to get excited about stage 20 on Saturday.

I've been aware of Pogacar for two years and knew he had huge ability.

he won the Tour de l'Avenir in 2018 and his coach Andrej Hauptman the early
2000's sprinter roadman is the also the head coach of Slovenian cycling and the
guy credited with masterminding the rise in Slovenian cycling in general.
there has been many solid Slovenian pros since the 90's but they were nearly
all average and won surprisingly little of importance until recently.

as a neo pro Pogacar kicked arse from his earliest races last year.
when Pogacar started the Vuelta in 2019 i thought he could get a top 10 and
maybe a stage but he got on the podium and won 3 stages - I'd never seen
anything like it.
no way I would even let a 20 year old neo pro ride a grand tour...

quick digression:
Quickstep's own 20 year old prodigy Evenepoel absence after the awful crash
at Lombardy (when he was race favourite) benefited Sam Bennett - but there
has been a feeling for a while that Pogacar is a superior GT rider but we just
don't know yet...

I thought Pogacar could get a top 5 in the 2020 Tour but when so many fell by the
wayside (especially some Colombians and the French) his chances improved.
he got caught out in an echelon but easily regained most of the time with solo
attack near the end of a quiet stage.
but then his wing men Aru and Formolo both had to quit.. Pogacar was now on his
own in the mountains. he could only follow Roglic's wheel and hope after that.
the Jumbo-Visma team by contrast were immensely strong - all recognised stars
in their own rights.

stage 20- Saturday 19-9-2020:
I thought Roglic was a dead cert to win the Planches des Belles Filles stage
with his team mate Dumoulin the best of the rest.
(anyone know was Roglic sick ? saddle sore ? any idea at all ?)
then 'The Iceman' began to panic for once.
but even if he had finished second, 23 seconds clear of Dumoulin's TT time,
Pogacar would have still won the Tour.
TP beat Dumoulin and Porte by 81 seconds - well over 2 seconds per km.
one of the best TT's in cycling history BUT I can't fathom how that is possible.

sorry to be so cynical but it looked very suspicious.

Roglic was very respectful and took huge defeat with good grace.


out of interest:
in 2003 I read an article about gene doping being on the horizon...
what is the state of progress on gene therapy these days ?


in 2006 after Floyd Landis' comeback on the Morzine stage over the Joux Plane,
I said on Thumped it was the best Tour I'd ever seen.
I changed my mind a few days later.

the final stage of the 1989 Tour came to mind immediately. I still don't know how
LeMond rode so fast. yeah, it was only 24 km but for at least 20 years afterwards
it was the fast Tour TT ever.
everything else Greg did in his career looks legit to me but I can't get my head
around beating everyone by over 2 seconds per km.
Fignon finished third that day and lost 58 seconds.

this time it was partly Roglic not meeting expectations but in 1989 Laurent rode
well and got hammered.

I'm delighted for Sam Bennett - winning two stages was expected. he could have
won more but I never saw him as a Green Jersey winner.
I followed Sam's career since he was 16-17. a bad training crash about a decade
ago caused him a lot of problems and he ended up having to spend several
years too long at An Post. he was offered a stagiaire contract with FDJ one year
and was injured and never got to race for them.
a long journey to get to this point. glad to see the media here have covered this
properly - looking forward to seeing the papers today.

he joins Kelly (1980) as the only the second Irish bikeman to have won a brace of
stages in a single Tour
Sam is also the 98th rider to complete a set of stage wins in all three grands tours -
Shay Elliot is the only other Paddy.

Parisien rider Kevin Reza was disappointingly the only black rider at the Tour this year.
the only black European rider who's ridden the tour I know of, Kevin was racially
abused at the Tour de Romandie three years ago by Sky rider Gianni Moscon
(probably the most detestable rider in the current peloton for multiple reasons).

apart from Kevin leading a Black Lives Matter protest at the start of the final stage
the race was not in sync with other sports on this and hadn't done anything until
yesterday that I noticed.

a lot of the progress bringing through black cyclists seems to have stalled a bit.
and Kevin being the only black pro I can think of from Europe is a shocking
indictment of how a predominantly rural sport and a highly establishment sports
event are viewed by a lot of people in France.
put it this way - the Tour goes to many pretty villages but it never goes to St Denis.
 
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s'funny, i really like cycling but find watching live sport deathly dull. though i do like reading books on it, occasionally about events i had no interest in watching at the time.
 
yeah, sometimes things seem more exciting written down when you
know where they stand in history.

it was amazing the Tour got to Paris in a pandemic with no real problems.
i'm half expecting to hear Covid positives were covered up or something...
 
s'funny, i really like cycling but find watching live sport deathly dull. though i do like reading books on it, occasionally about events i had no interest in watching at the time.
some of the cycling writers and authors are some of the most talented writers I've ever come across. That definitely helps.

I've gone off pro-cycling after being fanatical about it for years - lost interest, ironically, because of Sky - and only dipped in and out of this year's race. But, I devour cycling books. I love them, especially biogs of riders from a bygone age. And, unlike in other sports, or walks of life, I prefer when they are biogs, rather than autobiogs. They tend to be more warts'n'all when someone else writes about a cyclist.

In saying that about the books, I only read one by a British cyclist (Millar's first) and will never read any others. Nor will I ever read anything by David Walsh (last I read by him was Seven Deadly Sins - he should have packed it in after that).
 
last one i read was william fotheringham's book about 'a sunday in hell', he was in ireland to promote it and do a Q&A on it after watching the movie, but it was the original movie, subtitled, rather than the english language narrated one, and it was much better as a result. the english language version does not subtitle some of the interactions of the spectators which can be very funny.
fotheringham's book about eddy merckx is very good too.
 
switched from running to cycling to save my knees. still unfit. had a course in fitzwilliam square last week so cycled down. stopped for cans at hearts corner on the way home. a total bollix having a backpack of cans and 2 bikes locks coming up the hill to finglas after the botanic gardens.
 

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