[Will Hunt]

I reckon this Cycling News one is shit. No points for KOM!
That said, I have no idea whether others are better.

[lukeyboy]

Yeah, I have to agree. I'm afraid I didn't do extensive research before starting the league, it was a bit of a spur of the moment thing. Not sure what others are available...

However I think their text updates during the race are pretty good, if anyone has found a better site please let me know!

[iain]

I've not played one before, and I appreciate I should , but I was a bit pissed at wasting transfers on the TTT. Why exclude it?

Opera Mobile works ok in desktop mode, lets you do everything except scroll through the change rider list, ie. the most important bit, so still not great. It does let you look at team rider selections and the league properly though.

Matter of fact encyclopedic beta mind. Genius.

He did it again yesterday, knew the road they were finishing on and how it would run.
Found it strange how early his team worked though, and then seemed spent when they were really needed.

[tomtom]

Its complete rubbish. Because I'm second to last of course

Its alright.. a bit of fun etc..

[Jaspersharpe]

The rules and the website are total dogshit but it adds a bit of extra fun to watching it. And anything I'm beating tomtom at has to be worthwhile.

[tomtom]

The rules and the website are total dogshit but it adds a bit of extra fun to watching it. And anything I'm beating tomtom at has to be worthwhile.

:p

[Jaspersharpe]

Found it strange how early his team worked though, and then seemed spent when they were really needed.

Sounds like he wasn't too happy about it:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2013/jul/04/tour-de-france-andre-greipel-mark-cavandish

Omega Pharma-Quick Step's sports director, Brian Holm, brushed off his reaction. "I just heard him yelling in the bus, no one can understand him when he's yelling,"

 

[Stubbs]

Brian Holm is such a legend and has a great beard

[Duma]

the fantasy site working for anyone else? won't let me log in, which is a bit annoying when transfers expire tonight!

[Duma]

ignore me it works now!

[iain]

This has been one of the best tdf's I've watched, proper racing every day. Brilliant.
Spoiler:

NSFW  :

and great to see Dan Martin win the stage yesterday

Duma's got the fantasy cycling sussed 

[Duma]

Now that was an excellent stage! Good to see the saxo and Belkin boys have some fight in them.

[Will Hunt]

Agreed! Never saw that one coming! Kittel is incredible. Just hope the mountains take the whack out of him for Paris.

[Duma]

hope y'all binned your sprinters in time for the third week....

[lukeyboy]

Certainly have. It'll take more than that for me to catch you up now though Duma!

[Richie Crouch]

What a great result today, impressive uphill domination!

Spotted a good article on altering body mass and diet on the G too: http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2013/jul/14/tour-de-france-team-sky-dietician, although you have probably all seen it before 

[Will Hunt]

Utterly incredible today. Its scary how much stronger Froome appears to be than anyone else. And he seems to like nailing them before a rest day!

I quite like how one commentator mentioned that Contador "hadn't been himself" since his ban. On the contrrary, he seems to be entirely himself!

[tomtom]

Cadel Evans has had a noticeable drop off too...

[Stubbs]

Will, perhaps note how you have congratulated one (British) rider on an exceptional performance while at the same time noting the drop to 'normal' levels following a drugs ban...

[mrconners]

A performance good enough to be from the 90's.

I want to believe its all above board but I am struggling to keep the faith

[Duma]

A performance good enough to be from the 90's.

this.

[Duma]

However, I do like Quintana, what a poker face! was certain he was going to nip round froome for the win until he cracked.

[Will Hunt]

A performance good enough to be from the 90's.

this.

I'd struggle to believe that Sky were doping. They've structured their whole team brand around being the 0 tolerance clean team. Could a rider get something like that past Brailsford? If they were caught it would discredit the team, and Sky (the company's) involvement in cycling in the UK massively. So is there more pressure to win or to ride more poorly but clean 

Its not like we haven't seen performances like this from Froome before. He and Wiggins tore the race apart last year.

Quintana wasn't far off Froome's performance and he didn't have much help from the rest of his team. It would be interesting to see how he would have fared had he stuck with the Sky train until the attacks started.

[tomtom]

From what I've gleaned from tweets/articles is that whilst some stage and in particular climb times have equalled or exceeded times from the bad old days, the same rider is not doing that day after day after day..

Froomes time up Ventoux beat Armstrongs fastest time, but Froome had a tailwind, Armstrong headwind..

I think its been a great Tour to watch... aside from Froome nailing it on the key stages (which is great), the tour has been pretty random..

[Stubbs]

Last year Sky had their whole team working on the climbs and Wiggins and Froome only had a few KM at the end to deal with.  Those performances were marked by keeping a high tempo and dropping people steadily, not accelerating and blowing apart the field.  The important thing last year was that neither Froome nor Wiggins seemed to be head and shoulders above their competition, and it was the work of a very strong team that was getting them in position.