Martin

Stage 11 - sprint stage, some sunflowers, yadda yadda yadda Phillipsen wins despite not having a generational rider as his leadout man. For some reason, earlier today I had a vision of Fred Armisten playing Phillipsen in a movie, or maybe standing in for him on an episode of Unchained next season. Probably something I ate.

Stage 12 - like yesterday, but there are two fewer chances for some teams to win a stage than there were on Tuesday. It's a rolling, hellish stage. Sprinters will be out of it with at best 60k to go, but more likely with 130 to go. The 8th to 20th place GC guys will be thinking of a win. The classics riders like JA, Wout, Mads, and the third-best Slovenian rider, all here grudgingly for sponsor contractual reasons, will be trying to justify their existence and win some extra sugar and dairy free ice cream substitute for their teams. Soudal QS has nothing to show for this Tour and Jakobsen should have pulled the pin about three days ago, so I expect a full on Classics display from the Wolfpack. Then they can send everyone home like they did at the Giro, where by the end Serry and Van Wilder were alone on the bus and Remco had deactivated his Netflix subscription.on the entertainment system. JA for the win, I guess, or Wout.

I've used strategy, I've tried chalk. This year I'm going Diane.

@James Lange said:
I've never been able to get into it, but if there's fantasy I'm in.

Just watch the new Unchained series on Netflix. You'll be so confused that you'll need to watch a Tour from end to end just to make sense of it all.

Not a recognized metric measurement that I know of.

If anyone is interested, I'll set up the fantasy pool as soon as teams are announced and will try to recruit some new people.

I'm making an early prediction of the first stage for Michael Woods, because it's on Canada Day, I'm a homer, there's a Cat 2 at 30k, and a sharp Cat 3 10k from the finish to wipe out the sprinters.

These are also reasons for it to be a GC-ish sprint featuring between Pogie, Vingy & Gaudu. Oh, and the hard men like Wout, MVDP, Alaphilippe, Bling or Girmay, and any other GC hopeful.

My dark horse is Valverde, who, in retirement, will ride the stage on the bike path in cargo shorts then hop onto the road for the last climbs and win anyway.

@Aaron Webstey is still my main Canadian here, but Larry is a close second:

No one mentioned that I had to use the new handlebars to lose weight myself. But they are pretty to look at.

@Struang said:
Because I fell off my bike! Bone chips on my elbow now mean I can't stear a bike without shooting pain up my wrist and elbow

98% of triathletes can't steer a bike when they are healthy.

And there are lots of smugglers that could get you to Majorca and back on 'lower' passport controlled routes.

I feel like you are really grasping for excuses here.

I changed the handlebars on my bike and saved 60 grams.

I've had a couple of flats with tubeless. Sidewall cuts and the like. It's like flatting with a tube mixed with a messy scene from a porn movie when the latex sprays everywhere.

Or so I hear.