Lanterne Rouge posted a very nifty, high resolution calendar of the 2024 World Tour race schedule.
Also made calendars for each quarter.
Smattering of topics I found interesting:
- TdU - promising debut for Isaac Del Toro after his l’Avenir win last year. Bummer though that he was gobbled up by UAE instead of an upstart team. The rich get richer.
- TdU - speaking of, glad to see a smaller team take the win. Welsford dominant in the sprints but like always, doesn’t signal much for the summer
- Cyclocross - Mdvp rode into a pole because he thought it was padded. Poor guy, but the gif is gold
Between the pole and Wout knocking off his saddle on the remount, my “Even the best make dumb mistakes” speech to myself that I give myself at least 4-5 times every race has enough to last all next season!
I think Welsford is doing track at the Olympics instead of the TdF?
Not sure what his full program will be but that would make sense. My main point was that historically there’s no strong correlation between sprint performance (or GC performance for that matter) at TdU and at the marquee events in the European summer either way. Not the same competition there and certainly not the same preparation of the people who are there.
Not knocking him, he was 
this week.
Correct…here is a profile of his bike.
Was never gonna happen…he is the 2020’s version of Joseba Beloki. He’ll never be the same.
This neat, but it just makes me miss GCN+ even more. 
So in the US, you would be describing Walmart.
Got ya. I was just resonating off the “your son, mother, and grandmother get their product here” reasoning. I now think what you’re saying though is that you can get the cheap stuff AND the good stuff from Decathlon, it’s just all with their branding.
I think it’s probably closer to REI than Walmart.
Decent enough, quality, gear that you can buy when you first want to get into a sport and will last you long enough to get to a reasonable level
Gotcha. That’s true based on my personal experience with Decathlon too. However, not so much for the “kids, mothers and grandmothers” aspect. That’s definitely Walmart 
I think the Canadian equivalent in terms of nostalgia would be Canadian Tire, but with more REI/Mountain Equipment Coop quality.
I personally was not expecting to like the Van Rysel they’re in this year as much as I do, it looks hot, nice build and complement choices and the rest of their gear looks pretty great too!
I agree! They did well.
I believe that Decathlon does its own research and product development. At least for their top tier products per product line. They don’t just slam their logos on some products from random manufacturers.
They bring quite some handy innovations to their products and are relatively quick to follow movements from their competitors.
It is not all fantastic though, because some of their products might lack in sustainability but they do claim to be committed to an -20% reduction in absolute CO2 emissions by 2026. Also I don’t know how they compare to other companies in the industry.
On their current roster Gall looks more likely than O’connor. Younger and had a bit of a breakthrough season in 2023. Lots of young French riders on the team that I don’t know much about, so could be some potential stars there.
Oooof.
Yet another example of their marketing team trying to promote their product by mining controversy.