Le Tour

[Rene Artois]

Saturday, 5 July
Stage one: Lille Metropole – Lille Metropole, 185km

185km down… 3,135km to go!

Anyone else ‘in to it’?

I love the cycling and the French countryside.

Anyone else entered their fantasy team on the TdF website?

[billpuntonsghost]

Yes, the French countryside is beautiful,God’s creation is a wonderful sight.

1 user thanked author for this post.

Rene Artois

[Iron-awe]

Why do you have to bring your imaginary fantasy being into almost every thread on here bill?, you are so boring it’s pathetic.

[Rene Artois]

8 riders per fantasy team.
Each stage you can nominate one of your riders to win the stage and secure a bonus.
A good day for me today.

[Iron-awe]

Is God on one of the teams or are his hands full making the French countryside more beautiful?

[Northumbiron]

billpuntonsghost wrote:

Yes, the French countryside is beautiful,God’s creation is a wonderful sight.

Christ on a bike!

[Deereyme66]

Preferably not one of them nudist cyclists!

[Rene Artois]

Stage 3 finished a short while ago. It ended with Merlier pipping Milan in a photo finish – winning ‘distance’, probably a centimetre; two at most.

Yesterday’s yellow jersey, who was today wearing the green jersey (top sprinter) was wiped out by a couple of muppets who were trying to make a name for themselves at the intermediate sprint.

Philipsen suffered a suspected broken collar bone in the crash and is now out of the Tour.

There was another crash with about 3.5km to go and a third one on the final turn in to the finishing straight.

So, I lost Philipsen in the first crash and another of my riders, Remco Evenepoel was brought down in the second crash.

A low scoring points day for me today in the ‘fantasy tour’ due to the carnage.

I’ve dropped down to 1,056 in the world from yesterday’s ranking of 196 in the world.

A disaster of a day for me.

Wishing Jasper Philipsen a speedy & complete recovery. He must be absolutely gutted – as he looked to be on fire and a massive contender this year.

[Iron-awe]

Where did God finish or did his chain snap?

[Deereyme66]

Heard he nailed it

[Iron-awe]

Ah I see, hope he wasn’t too cross about the opposition not believing in him after all.

[Rene Artois]

Stage 4:
4 of my 8 riders made the top ten today.
I had: 1st, 2nd, 6th & 7th
A good day on the roads for me – back up inside the top 200.
Yesterday killed me!

[Rene Artois]

Stage 5, Individual TT

Stage five winner – Odds
Remco Evenepoel 1-6
Jonas Vingegaard 9-1
Tadej Pogacar 11-1
Edoardo Affini 28-1
Wout van Aert 40-1
Primoz Roglic 50-1
Matteo Jorgenson 50-1

I’ve got Remco in my team of 8 riders.

[Rene Artois]

A good day at the office for me today. My guys collected 983 points and moved me up to 77th in the world in the fantasy game.

I had the 1st, 2nd & 8th placed riders today.

I picked up 96/100 bonus points for my guesstimation of the winning time. I went for 36mins 30secs – the winning time was 36:42… so I lost 0.3 pts per second of difference.

If only 2 of my riders hadn’t being brought down in two separate crashes whilst being serious contenders on day 3 – then I might have been right up there.

Oh well.

[Rene Artois]

Stage 6 (Thurs 10th July) a 202km stage from Bayeux to Vire Normandie.

A difficult stage to call the winner – 6 categorised (1 x 4 & 5 x 3) climbs to ascend on the Normandy flatlands!

Theoretically, there are a few that have the ability to win it; however, the TdF isn’t an individual race, it’s a team event. Teams follow orders, protecting & assisting their team leader or specialist (dependant upon stage) in pursuit of the win.

The mighty POG is now in Yellow (& also polka & green) and has a commanding 42 sec lead over EVENEPOEL and he’s 59 seconds in front of third placed VAUQUELIN.

Bayeux born Kévin Vauquelin (age 24) is going to be highly motivated to win his ‘home’ stage and try to reduce his overall deficit to POG.
The Arkea team comprises 5 French and 3 Spanish riders – they (Arkea) are ‘planning’ on winning a stage, is today the day? If they can get a couple or 3 of their riders in a breakaway group then they may just do it.

Vingegaard & Van der Poel aspire to make a similar move in order to try and claw back some of the time they lost in yesterday’s TT.

However, POG and his merry men will have their spotters, blockers and altruistic domestiques on point to ensure he retains yellow and his time advantages.

It has all the ingredients of a great stage!

Now I never knew that…

[Iron-awe]

If I knew how I’d post Tour De France by Kraftwerk, that would get the legs pedalling faster.

[Rene Artois]

Iron-awe wrote:

If I knew how I’d post Tour De France by Kraftwerk, that would get the legs pedalling faster.

Good call !

I’ve just shot myself in the foot.

After yesterday’s TT I decided I wanted to sell one of my big guns and bring a different rider in.

Unfortunately, I accidentally clicked on the wrong rider thus selling someone I wanted to retain.

I then tried to buy back the player I’d just mis-sold – but he wasn’t available for some unknown reason.

Cost me 150 credits (50 credits per sale/purchase) of my 400 game credit allowance to buy back the player I ‘didn’t want’ back.

I only wanted to make the swop as I wanted to bring the talented Vauquelin in to my team. I was prepared to sacrifice my 2nd highest points score in order to make the ‘transfer’ – the lad I wanted to ‘sell’ had a bright start last year and then dropped down the GC… I’m thinking the same will happen this year. He looked awful in the TT yesterday, hence my decision to hit the eject button.

Hopefully the lad I’ve accidentally sold has a stinker today. Then I’ll try to buy him back tomorrow. That’ll cost me another 100 credits… ouch!

NB – I need to retain some credits in case I lose a rider due to injury (already lost one), as you only score points for a complete team of 8 riders.

[Rene Artois]

Iron-awe wrote:

If I knew how I’d post Tour De France by Kraftwerk, that would get the legs pedalling faster.

1 user thanked author for this post.

Iron-awe

[Rene Artois]

I also brought JOHANNESSEN in to my team in my transfer melee this morning.

[Rene Artois]

It’s a hard stage today – or, did yesterdays TT take a lot out of some of the riders?

With 60 miles and 4 climbs still to go, they are currently in 6 distinct groups.
The last group currently being 10 minutes behind those at the head of the course.

[Iron-awe]

You know old Kraftwerk certainly brought something uniquely different to modern music but they hardly set the place alight with their effervescent stage presence , lol.

1 user thanked author for this post.

Rene Artois

[Rene Artois]

Wow, what a great stage!
Congratulations to the Irish lad, Ben Healy… what a ride that was!
Awesome!

[Rene Artois]

After today’s little jaunt (2nd longest stage on this year’s tour); Van der Poel pulls on the Yellow again… he now has a 1 second lead in the GC over Pog.

At least they’ll get a cooling sea breeze during stage 7 tomorrow.

[Rene Artois]

Everest = 8,850m

TdF vertical gain = 51,550m

6 and a bit Everests ‘climbed’ over the 21 days!

I lost another rider today, João Almeida.
He was involved in a crash on Friday; he completed Saturday but abandoned today.
Why? – he broke ribs in the crash on Friday!

Proper men of steel.

[Author]

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