La Vuelta a España 2017

Hope Alberto Contador gets on the podium on his farewell grand tour.

Will miss him in the bunch - just a brilliant all round rider

Does anyone know if Peter Sagan is riding ?

Tabby cat posted:

Hope Alberto Contador gets on the podium on his farewell grand tour.

Will miss him in the bunch - just a brilliant all round rider

Does anyone know if Peter Sagan is riding ?

 

Peter Sagan news : >

http://www.cyclingweekly.com/n...ur-de-pologne-341882

Thanks Debs,

The link is for the Tour of Poland which is 3 weeks or so old.

Will try to find out and post on this thread.

Bora-Hansgrohe

Confirmed

BENEDETTI Cesare
BUCHMANN Emanuel
KOLAR Michael
KONRAD Patrick
MAJKA Rafael
PFINGSTEN Christoph
POLJANSKI Pawel
SCHILLINGER Andreas
SCHWARZMANN Michael

Read more at http://www.cyclingweekly.com/n...#zezOf8cw0jJU2wM3.99

Mr Sagan is not listed in the Bora team so guess he's not riding the Vuelta

Debs

Tabbs

Just had a quick look at the team list for the Tour of Britain [Sept 3rd to 10th] which doesn't seem to include a Bore-Hansgrohe team so guess he's not riding that either.

I think the Tour of Britain may stimulate more interest in this forum than the Vuelta, but i find Vuelta does help antidote TdF withdrawal symptoms. The team time trial this Saturday will be fun to watch imo, but who do they award the 'red jersey'  to after Stage 1... the entire winning team? : )

Debs

I think the Vuelta is undervalued, it's a great race because of the amount of stages in the mountains and the sometimes fierce uphill experiences.

naim_nymph posted:

I think the Tour of Britain may stimulate more interest in this forum than the Vuelta, but i find Vuelta does help antidote TdF withdrawal symptoms. The team time trial this Saturday will be fun to watch imo, but who do they award the 'red jersey'  to after Stage 1... the entire winning team? : )

Debs

The TdF and La Vuelta are great adverts for the stunning countrysides of France and Spain. In contrast the Tour of Britain just emphasises what a complete shitehole this country is. 

There are some aspects of the UK that may be very concerning...I didn't realise that the countryside was one of them !!

From a keen cyclist.....

Have a good evening Nick

I encourage Nick get out of his shite hole more, some of my neighbours in my village are rather glad our European neighbours and further a field love coming to my part of the world to enjoy the English country side, rivers and coastlines as holiday makers... .and cyclists.. as I live on national cycle route 1....

naim_nymph posted:

Tabbs

Just had a quick look at the team list for the Tour of Britain [Sept 3rd to 10th] which doesn't seem to include a Bore-Hansgrohe team so guess he's not riding that either.

I think the Tour of Britain may stimulate more interest in this forum than the Vuelta, but i find Vuelta does help antidote TdF withdrawal symptoms. The team time trial this Saturday will be fun to watch imo, but who do they award the 'red jersey'  to after Stage 1... the entire winning team? : )

Debs

Thanks Deb's you saved me an internet search with regard to Sagan.

Concur with your comments about The Vuelta.It does give us another grand tour fix.Pleased they moved it from May to August.I have always loved The Vuelta ,especially the mountain stages.I suppose the TDF is the biggest one on the calendar with the world's media circus and just getting a stage win for any rider is so prestigious but for me The Vuelta is just as gripping to watch.

Hope Sagan can win the World Championship road race for the 3rd time that would be awesome 

Freeview 24  ITV4 ...for Stage 2 highlights starting now! : )

19:00 - 20:00

Just been watching it - tomorrow in the mountains might be more indicative of how things might turn out. I didn't get to see all of day 1. My recording of the highlights consisted of a lot of darts and part of the cycling. Then the catch-up version on the ITV hub failed part way through!

Clive

General Classification - after Stage 3

1		FROOME Christopher	No21	TEAM SKY	8h 53' 44''
2		DE LA CRUZ MELGAREJO David	No11	QUICK - STEP FLOORS	+ 00' 02''
3		ROCHE Nicolas	No36	BMC RACING TEAM	+ 00' 02''
4		VAN GARDEREN Tejay	No38	BMC RACING TEAM	+ 00' 02''
5		NIBALI Vincenzo	No151	BAHRAIN - MERIDA	+ 00' 10''
6		CHAVES Johan Esteban	No41	ORICA - SCOTT	+ 00' 11''
7		ARU Fabio	No131	ASTANA PRO TEAM	+ 00' 38''
8		YATES Adam	No48	ORICA - SCOTT	+ 00' 39''
9		POZZOVIVO Domenico	No89	AG2R LA MONDIALE	+ 00' 43''
10		BARDET Romain	No81	AG2R LA MONDIALE	+ 00' 48''
11		YATES Simon	No49	ORICA - SCOTT	+ 00' 48'

So just after just 3 stages Chris Froome is in the Red Jersey!  

Will be interesting to see the Sky Team defending it over the next 18 days : )

A bit sad to see Alberto Contador over 3 minutes down, and in 30th place. Maybe he will give up on the GC and look for an optimist stage win, although i do wonder if he's up to that now....

Tuesdays stage 4 was fairly flat, and gave no change to the GC leader board - with the exception of Pozzovivo who crashed, and unluckily just outside the 3 km zone resulting in a 3 minute loss to send his 9th position plunging down to 33rd. Quick-Step tactfully dominated the last kilometre with Matteo Trentin breaking away to secure the win.

Wednesday stage 5 was very hilly, a large breakaway of 17 most of which stayed away to the finish. The 3 km uphill summit finish with 15% gradient climbing produced a big shuffle up to the top ten GC.

Race wise I think the Vuelta is the most exciting big course. It has quite a number of thrilling stages. Unless GC riders are very soon sorted by the leader. In such a case it becomes too much focused on stage winners.

Contador was looking in form yesterday, and they reported on ITV4 that he might have been unwell earlier on, so perhaps he is going to shake things up. Anyhow, Froome is looking stronger than he did on the TdF, although Chavez is lurking!

Fantastic hilly stage 6 yesterday. It was Van Garderen's turn to reap bad luck with two crashes, the first a bit nasty looking, the second pushing the limit cornering while catching up. He drops two positions on GC from 2nd to 4th but in the circumstance did exceedingly well to only loose 20 seconds on Froome.

Todays 207 km Stage 7:  starts uphill but plateaus out lumpily for the duration.

It's presently raining [at this very moment in time] with a 14 man break at 7:13 up the road with 130 km still to go.

....however i still think they're gonna get caught : )

Yesterdays uphill finish of Stage 9 was won impressively by Chris Froome!

Froome is dominating the Vuelta, it's a rest day today, a third of the race run but there is still a long way to go to Madrid.

Contador is playing catch-up. Every Stage sees him a few positions up the leader board, and he's now up to 13th on GC.

General Classification after Stage 9:

Get's a bit boring with Froome being so much better. Hope to see some fireworks later.

Nice the way Froome has made marginal time gains all last week and brilliant his show of form on yesterday's cruel up hill finish.

Perfect first week for him but still 2 weeks left.

Hope Contador gets on the podium....will miss him in the future - liked his out of the saddle climbing style and the pistol winning salute on a stage win.

It looks as if Froome has managed his form so that he was strong enough to win the TdF - essentially on time trials without being dominant enough for a stage win. On the Vuelta his form seems to be relatively stronger, but I think the question is whether he will get tired at some point and lose form. An alternative interpretation would be that he held back on the TdF with a view to competing in the Vuelta. However, the TdF and Vuelta combined is a huge demand on the body. 

Stage 7 was interesting with a 14 man break let go up the road while the main bunch enjoyed an easy sort of non-race ride day. For a while the race leader in the 9 minute plus breakaway was little known Jetse Bol [Manzana Postobon Team]. The breakaway finished over 8 minutes ahead of the red jersey bunch which gave a massive lift to Jetse Bol's 32nd position at CG +8:55 to 7th position at +46 seconds! However the following two stages saw him loose time again - he now sits in 20th position at GC +5:53.

Would have been brilliant to see Bol win the red jersey - even if only for a day, i don't think Chris would of minded : )

Stage 9 imho this was the stage and dream finish gift for Contador, and i really wanted to see him burst away and take the win...

but it didn't happen : (

Debs

It's looking very good for Chris Froome now - 1.19 over 2 nd placed Vencenzo Nibali and 2.23 over Estaban Chavez.Really can't see Froome losing apart from a crash or a form horror day....Come on Chris !

Geraint Thomas will be riding the Tour of Britain after his fractured collarbone bone in the TDF.So more Sky dominance here....yawn !

It is just a shame that the Spanish TV coverage is so poor, or at least those bits brought to the highlights show. The coverage from the TdF is superb, particularly the live stuff and even the highlights show is very good. So the lack of quality in the Vuelta highlights must be down to the raw Spanish coverage. GIGO applies.

I've just finished watching the highlights of today's stage 12. What a superb bike race. And when Alberto Contador is on form, he is the most exciting bike racer to watch. He will be sorely missed.