Sprint day today! Garmin, Sky and GE all have stacked sprint train squads at this race, should be fun.

Great day to watch the last 10 km and thats it

Cav will want to smash Goss and Goos to smash Cav



for the win

I hope Goss can pinch a win to give him a bit of confidence before MSR

I hope Goss can pinch a win to give him a bit of confidence before MSR

I'm really interested to see what Goss can do today.  All I saw y'day was a big pull from him at the end (in the brief Gazzetta highlights), but no idea what his contribution was the rest of the stage.  If he suddenly is in great form, then I will have to say I'm impressed with GreenEdge's management of him, as my feeling was he was nowhere near where he needed to me.

Yeah I agree . I just have my fingers cross he might get lucky and steal one

and Farrar not so.

and Farrar not so.

Farrar has been underachieving all season when we consider sprinting tbh..

fixed that for you.

Dunno what it is with Farrar.. he either gets boxed in, or ends up leading out the eventual winner

In JV's own words - paraphrased because I can't be bothered looking it up - Tyler is a power sprinter and doesn't engage in any tactical positioning etc.  Either he is able to sprint to the line in a straight line or he doesn't get anywhere.  In effect he is the opposite of a Robbie or Cav, etc.

Were I Tyler's DS I would insist that he learns to read sprints and navigate them - or I would start paying him less to match what he is actually worth.

I mean no offense to anyone, but honestly, there is not one atom in my body than manages to get excited about another Cav sprint win. ???

I mean no offense to anyone, but honestly, there is not one atom in my body than manages to get excited about another Cav sprint win. ???

Understand how you feel, i am generally that way in most sports, do not like seeing anyone win too much but as an occasionally nationalistic brit who follows team sky i am happy for Cav to keep winning every week.

It's funny Amsterhammer, I can watch Phil win everything and never get tired of seeing it ... But watching Cav win just doesn't do it for me.

I imagine that that has a lot to do with the circumstances of the entire race/stage as much as it has to do with Cav.  Think about the events that they tend to win.  Gilbert wins events where there has usually been a lot of attacking and small suicide breaks, etc with a big do or die effort at the end.  Cav tends to win bunch gallops.

Almost by definition, if you watched the whole race, you would be more bored watching the bunch gallop, then when you add in the fact that if Cav is there he tends to win it becomes almost annoying that you wasted the time watching.

or something like that...

Yeah it sucks but if Cavendish can do it, so he should. He shouldn't ease up off the pedals just because some fans find his wins too predictable and boring.

Hopefully tomorrow, sans a crash, is a little more "entertaining". Any report out as to what caused the crash? Did Greipel get caught up in it?

Oh and it may come off a little fanboyish but I was quite happy about the airtime GE media have given to Tuft after working on the front all day. Much in the same way, Pate + Bak (iirc) were praised at last years TDF for their work at the front pulling back the BOTD, its good to see domestiques getting more of the limelight, and people in the media recognising this is as a good thing to cover.

Oh and it may come off a little fanboyish but I was quite happy about the airtime GE media have given to Tuft after working on the front all day. Much in the same way, Pate + Bak (iirc) were praised at last years TDF for their work at the front pulling back the BOTD, its good to see domestiques getting more of the limelight, and people in the media recognising this is as a good thing to cover.

Cav was giving Tuft props on twitter too, if he and Brian Nygaard are to be believed then Svein set the pace for 200km and burned 6500 calories.

Yep that's what they said on the video, from km10 for about 180km and burned 6500 calories.

Is it just me or did the Sky train looked a bit weak yesterday? They were not really able to gain control of the sprint

I was perhaps expecting a little more of a show of power from them, yes. The squad they brought looks on paper like a pretty excellent 8-man train, but I never saw more than 5 guys in front of Cav and by the finale he was down to just EBH.

Maybe T-Lovk is hoping to challenge for the GC or something?

It's a shame Tyler really doesn't finish things off cause Garmin's setups have been pretty impressive this year