Watching the peloton - Professional Road Racing thread 2026

Rás Cnoic said:
Onley out, no surprise after the awful crash at Alp Rhone, was lucky apparently he wasn't badly - life changingly - injured in that ravine. It means Ineos won't have a leadership dilemma like Bora, though not a reason they'd like. Onley is having a nightmare of a season from 4th TdF last July to now. To add to it all, Kevin Vauquelin has been sick this week and is not confirmed to start, leaving potentially Arensman as only GC contender and Ganna for stage hunting I guess. Not a great way to back up their start of season promise to "get back on the podium" and impress the new sponsors and their distracted by Man Utd boss, Sir Petro chemical Oligarch. If Vauquelin starts he may have the first week to get up to speed, remarkable how they can recover in the race.
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Godon has a shot at some stages.
 
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Cyclingflash ranks the top three GC as Tadej, Remco, and Jonas in that order. That, and the pseudo-TTT first stage ought to fire up Visma.

The TTT in the first stage will be run as a TTT, but each rider will be scored separately. This essentially makes the race a 20km leadout train, with each team setting up their GC contender for the climb in the last 800m. They say that Visma is the likely winner, but I'm not so sure. If there's a stage for Remco, this is it.
 
Seixas just offered €13M contract by Q36.5. Probably won't be the only offer. Cha-Ching!
 
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Another good one, with in-depth discussion of what's left of Visma's TdF team:


Great news: Moving today to a rental while remodelers replace 75% of our floors. (Could have had an S-works Creo 2 with flat-bar conversion in every color for that.)

Feared that we might still be there when the TdF starts — probably without Peacock Premium access for full stage replays. But learned today that we'll definitely be back home before then. Yay!
 
Jeremy McCreary said:
Another good one, with in-depth discussion of what's left of Visma's TdF team:


Great news: Moving today to a rental while remodelers replace 75% of our floors. (Could have had an S-works Creo 2 with flat-bar conversion in every color for that.)

Feared that we might still be there when the TdF starts — probably without Peacock Premium access for full stage replays. But learned today that we'll definitely be back home before then. Yay!
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instead of a flat bar conversion - words that make me wince* - the Creo is already quite high stack, short reach (endurance geo), & the Spesh hover bars have 15 or 20mm rise already. I bet if you tried one and added a few spacers (before fork gets the chop) and swapped in a short stem... Or for more height, switch the hover bars for the Surly Truck Stops (30mm rise) you'll really be surprised at how high and short reach and just comfortable the ride would be. This 'slammed' long reach aggressive position- it is definitely not. Just in case you are ever thinking about this for real!

* before you ask - I've no problem with flat bars, my Vado SL is evidence of that. It's just people think drop bar bikes are all very uncomfortable. But there are different types. My revelation was my Salsa Vaya. I got it used and it had the Surly bars already on. If you look at a race bike for example, the drops line up close to the bottom of the frame's head tube, the rider bending at the waist and leaning stretched out very low down. On my Vaya the drops line up above the headset. The tops or hoods are very comfy and when i go to the drops (descending or head winds) it's not bad at all.

Anyway, you were making a joke and here I am pontificating.
 
Rás Cnoic said:
Anyway, you were making a joke and here I am pontificating.
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Oh no, I wasn't joking. Tested drop bars again before buying the SL, and my old neck said nope, not doing that — not if you want to look up far enough to actually see where you're going. Besides, I much prefer the wider flat-bar hand separation.

I'd have a Creo 2 Carbon Comp now if the conversion hadn't put the total cost out of reach. The setup you mentioned might have helped, but I seriously doubt that it would have gotten my neck to yes on drop bars.
 
As ever, a great run down of the hopefuls from the outstanding Inner Ring (INRNG.), for the TOUR DE FRANCE STARTING TODAY! I know footie has eclipsed everything but IT'S HERE YEEEEEEEAAAAAAHHH!

INRNG isthe best, most knowledgable road racing blog, such a joy to read, no fuss no ads, and the message boards are always insightful. Love the titbit like in todays TT preview that UAE failed to book the local car racing circuit to train for the team time trial and tried to muscle/beg TotalEnergies for their slot and got told to take a hike! 😂 😂 Nobody else has such detail.

Here's the contenders - so Remco, hidden away at altitude since Leige has lost 4Kgs to be lighter on the peaks! He's all lean and mean looking. Here we go!

inrng.com

The Inner Ring | Tour de France Preview

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Coverage starts at 10am here on the East Coast of the US. INRNG is also my favorite cycling blog. There's not a lot of cheerleading, just great observation. I read it year round, and I'm also in the comments. I use my real name though.
 
I'm sure you all have come across this stat before, but it always blows my mind. How close Jonas and Tadej have been in the 5 TdF's they've raced together:

After ~10000 miles they are only separated by something like 85 seconds in total time if you subtract out all the bonus seconds.
(exact times varies by source a bit, probably because you have to go back through every stage to pull out the bonus seconds)
 
Stage 4 of the Tour de France this year is our neck of the Pyrénéen woods, so to speak. It skirts south of our town, Mirepoix, but we have been on most of the roads it will go on -- by car, mind you! Lovely biking in this area...
 
There was a nice sequence of Groupama-FDJ doing this stage by the book, towing their GC hopeful Gregoire at the back, with riders dropping off and back in the gap in front of him. That makes for an easier physical ride for the leader, but it's much tougher mentally for him to get that slot open at the last second for the drop-in. It takes total concentration.
 
stompandgo said:
There was a nice sequence of Groupama-FDJ doing this stage by the book, towing their GC hopeful Gregoire at the back, with riders dropping off and back in the gap in front of him. That makes for an easier physical ride for the leader, but it's much tougher mentally for him to get that slot open at the last second for the drop-in. It takes total concentration.
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I was noticing how much smoother they looked slotting in and was thinking the same about how hard it is for the protected rider to micro adjust his cadence to open just enough of a gap without losing his rhythm.
 
Shots fired! Guess UAE could have done with that training session on the motorsport track. Ineos/Net company had high hopes but punctures took out Vauquelin. With Onley out, this was a stage they would have been confident about. Visma mean business.

Travelling today, hopping over to Galway, West of Ireland & busy week ahead but will try and catch some highlights on the move.
 
BTP (Beyond the Peloton, a subscription email newsletter) is predicting that Pogi will attack the crap out of Visma on Montjuic today, and take the stage, but maybe not the yellow. This is a similar circuit as was used in the Volta Catalunya, but with a harder finish. They ride it 3x before the end.

Off to Maine for a few days, then Italy.
 
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