Thread: Tour de France

Originally Posted by chaingunsofdoom

The legs are near impossible to watch live since they're so long, so catching highlights is the best I can usually do.

Finding news about what happened to Cyclist X is sometimes hard too, like how did Mark Cavendish win 2 legs and then finish near-last yesterday.
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I am not sure how much you know about the sport so appologies if I am teaching you to suck eggs.

There are cyclists who are better at mountains and time trialling and they tend to be the one who challenge for the overall lead. They do tend to have to be good(Or better) at both fields to challenge for the overall GC. A mountain goat who can't time trial will only really have a chance at winning mountain stages or he might just be the helper for his team leader in the mountains, someone who can pace the leader or even help him maintain the pace with another race favourite. A time trialer who can't climb too well will only have a chance at doing well in time trial stages.

Cyclists like Cavendish who are sprinters will only really challenge on the flat stages and specialise in bunch sprints on the flats. Put them on a mountain and they just fade away. Some will even retire from the race once they hit the mountains but some will try and finish the mountain stages in order to try and win more flat stages particularly the finale in to Paris.

Puncheurs are cyclists who tend to be fighters and can attack on sharp hills or smaller mountains kind of like the 3 guys who finished on the breakaway victory yesterday. Hoogerland and Flecha who are on that video being hit by the car also fall in to this category.

There are domestiques too, basically dogs bodies who look after the team leaders, fetch water for them, chase down attacks or pace the leaders back up to the group if they have fallen or had a puncture. On the odd occasion a domestique might be allowed to attack or might be told to join an attack and might every now and then snatch the odd win.

There are other specialists but there is no point confusing the issue even more.