Well, I’ve only been watching the daily extended highlights on SBS for the scenery and the highlights. I watched the TDF the year before Cadel won.
So this year, it gave me something extra to talk with my neighbour about. I’d never heard of the Slovenian, Tadej Pogačar, but he dominated the Tour de France for his 5th victory.
The Spanish tour, Vuelta a España, started in Monaco and heading to the Pyrenees and Andorra. On stage 7, heading through the Albufera south of Valencia on the Mediterranean coast, a fertile area where the rice for paella has been grown. Pogačar had been leading 2 of the categories, and wearing the red jacket, looks as if he ran into the guy in front him and fell, concussing himself and breaking his collarbone. Out of the race.
Been some scary moments, often with the peloton being too widespread and the spectators too close.
Road cycling is an extremely dangerous sport with disaster lurking around corner. You have fearless people doing 100km speeds descending mountains, crazy sprinters fighting for inches of space travelling at 70 kms of space or climbing a steep mountain surrounded by passionate supporters. Finally, I am surprised there are not more severe injuries when you are crashing at high speeds with merely a helmet and a skin suit for protection.
In the TDF in the Alpe d’Huez, one of the more notorious peaks (so good that two separate stages ended there), firstly the spectators were far, far too close, reducing the road to the width of a single bike, and secondly, there was a section on the edge of a precipice protected by a waist-high wall and netting about 3 metres high…one rider bumped into that wall and he was only able to regain his balance 2 or 3 metres from the end of the netting. Straight over the cliff if he couldn’t.
In the Vuelta yesterday, there were six separate crashes including Pogačar, and most there were 2-3 casualties. Not all put out of the race but there was lots of blood and lots of Bandaids.
