Tour de France 2022 - Hot Takes / Predictions / Spoilers Allowed (once the. Tour starts)

The number of Danish fans lining the course kilometer after kilometer was impressive! That and each town/house/business looked really well kept up. Neat and clean. Makes the USA look like a ghetto.

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When your population is less than 6M, it’s much easier to keep a whole country clean.

There are thousands of places way nicer in the USA than Denmark.

Forgive me for not reading today’s posts, I’m still 34km from the finish.

Just popped in to vent my frustration with Jumbo/pretty sure it’s just Tjes Benoot (SP?). He needs to go spend some time with his local Tri club.an can’t catch a bottle to save himself and is a danger.

Name them. :smirk: I kid. Being an airline pilot I do fly to all the major cities in the US and have flown around Europe the middle east and the far east. In my minds eye the US is really slipping. Lots of drugs, rude people and just trashy. I think I see the worst of it and that makes my opinion skewed so this is in no way an argument. When you get of the beaten path and away from the major cities we do have some gems.

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Just watching the finish now without sound. Is there any suggestion of relegation for WvA for deviation from his line?

I always say sprinters shouldn’t put themselves in those positions like Sagan did, but I don’t think you reach the World Tour as a sprinter without it.

Any way, how good are the fans!! Agree with the above about it being special.

Hope we see Magnus in the pinkadot full kit from tomorrow :crossed_fingers:. So cool to see his enjoyment.

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Nice to see a Giant :checkered_flag::checkered_flag::checkered_flag::checkered_flag:

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Jackobsen quotes after the stage left me flat.

Watched the last KM several times and I don’t see any issue other than he lost his own train in the left hand bend causing his own difficulty. Even with one win, the pressure on him to produce more is immense.

Doesn’t help matters that the team was perfect and prepared to deliver him right to the line.

A sprinters life sure ain’t easy.

Also, rest days stink!! We all know these guys are robots. Just keep banging out stages and keep entertaining the fans darn it!

The week’s stages are interesting. Some lumpy, some flatter, some cobblestones. I don’t think we’ll see the GC battle heat up yet, but the classics type riders ought to be banging heads all week long and the routes will likely produce bad fortune for some with GC aspirations.

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Sagan looks fit this year. The green jersey competition will be very good.

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I hate rest days.

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Still nothing more than a Cat 4 tomorrow, a bit bumper though.

Green Jersey. It is a one horse race in my opinion if Van Aert finishes the Tour, although anything could happen it’s going to need some kind of mishap on current form.

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IMO Caleb is the fastest accelerator in the biz. It’s amazing watching him lag and pop through the final few riders draft. If he gets a clean line and it’s not too hilly before and he follows the right wheels and nobody squeezes him he’s going to win tomorrow. :laughing:If the barriers had been wide enough for him to keep going he would have won the last stage by a bike length. Not too versatile though. WVA for the green jersey.

Nothing against Jackobsen but, I do wish Cav was racing.

I’m sure the US market is a rounding error but sucks extra for for a rest day to be on a holiday!

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WvA is at a disadvantage because his team has a GC contender. He is expected to work as a domestique. So he has to get most of his points from sprint finishes which there aren’t too many this year.
Sagan and Matthews have the advantage of jumping in breakaways. Plus Sagan can take his whole team and put him in the front on a stage like Stage 10 & 13. Jumbo vis,a will have to let them go in order to be not fatigued for the mountain top finish at the end.

By all accounts, WvA has free reign to pursue the Green Jersey but I could see him being used on stage 5 if there’s an opportunity for a split to Pogacar. I would take Laporte (and his imperfect leadout) + WvA over Sagan + the Total Energies team.

Plus Sagan appears well on his way to getting relegated at some point this tour.

He hasn’t done a single egregious thing. Everyone has been behaving. I don’t see what the issue is.

If WvA has free reign for the green, then JV is not in a serious hunt for the yellow. That would make all GC contenders very happy to hear that.

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I’d say Wout’s deviation in Stage 3 was worse than the bumping in Stage 2. Jakobsen and Sagan were both trying to get on WvA’s wheel. It was sketchy, but that’s sprinting. Closing someone off into the barriers is more likely to see a relegation… but the rules are always applied inconsistently. I don’t think many of the pure sprinters will finish this TdF, so I think it’s probably WvA or Sagan in Paris.

Stage 4 looks like another sprint :yawning_face: but then I think/hope we will see some action on Stage 5 (cobbles), Stage 6 (punchy final 15km) and then mountains on Stage 7. I would be very surprised if WvA and all of Jumbo are not hammering it on Stage 5 to try to put a dent in Pogacar there. I don’t know that it will work, but I think they will try it.

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WvA, He has got a free role (apparently, and it will help attack Pogacar), a free role more so in sprint stages, and it is not like it was in the 2010s. The points competition is now weighted to the final sprint and not the intermediates, this changed after 2019 (as was the same the two years Cav won it 2011 and last year.)

WvA is more likely to pick up the intermediate sprints on the very lumpy stages than Sagan, they will have to attack Pogacar and send people up the road.

A stage win and a few intermediates will be a very good Tour for Sagan, I can’t see him being a contender for Green, having said that he does look like he’s in the best shape since 2019. Matthews has been nowhere so far a doesn’t have a single point, that gives WvA a 107 point head start, he’ll pick up some intermediates but the finishes are so heavily weighted that won’t be enough.

Hope I’m wrong and there is a competition for green.

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Btw, where is the sunset team? I always enjoyed their stage hunting tactics