On one hand, a lead-out to sprint for 3rd is maybe a bit much. But then again, 4 bonis aren't nothing with how tight the podium battle looks. Plus a lead-out is not going to cost Lipowitz much with two sprint stages coming up, and if your teammate asks for a favour, maybe you do it just for that?

People really like to call him arrogant and delusional but he's always honest with himself and the press when he just wasn't good enough. He's confident, not arrogant or delusional. And that's fine.

I'm not going to lie, I'm getting increasingly disenchanted with cycling. If it wasn't for this community here I'd probably have quit this off-season. I'm glad I didn't because of Wout's Roubaix win. But the moments keeping me are becoming fewer and farther between.

Tour really screwed up not putting more sprints. Who wants to watch this BS for 7-8+ stages

ASO should write Decathlon a big fat check for sending Seixas here because that's probably the only thing that will even remotely bring acceptable viewing numbers for the rest of the race.

Lenny Martinez still being here is very impressive

Petition to remove Pogacar and Vingegaard from the race so we actually have something worth watching.

I was worried about how I would be able to combine the Tour de France with studying for an exam that's on the 23rd. Looks like that won't be a problem, yay.

Lenny Martinez still being here is very impressive

Piganzoli is going to explode soon, but given he was a late call-up and has the Giro in the legs, this is impressive

Lol, Jorgenson didn't drop, he's bringing bottles 😂

UAE are remarkably chill right now 🤔

Must feel nice for Ayuso to finally be on a team where helpers help him when he needs it 🙃

I'm pretty sure the satellite dream is dead. Any break that goes now won't have enough time to establish a gap. This entire stage is shaping up perfectly for UAE, who have to do very little work and will launch Pogacar full speed. Let's pray Jonas can keep up, because if not, the Tour ends today.

Apparently nature break? If that is true (which it might not be) that was dumb as hell 😂 probably won't cost them though.

I wasn't paying attention, did Remco have an issue or was he just really out of position?

Maybe De Kleijn is sick, but also looking at Jacobsen for example, I think the age of big heavy sprinters is truly over. Milan being maybe an exception, but he is unbelievably fit for his size (which still makes him one of the least versatile sprinters, which says a lot).

It's funny (in a sarcastic way) because Campenaerts did the exact same thing and the commissairs did not talk to him about it.

NSN riding still is starting to get a bit pathetic, not gonna lie...

If this is the break that goes, Campenaerts won't make it over Tourmalet unfortunately. UAE will keep them too tight.

Come on, need another 5 people to bridge across and then peloton barrage

As predicted, Visma want satellites.

I fully agree with this. I think there is an at least 50% chance we get zero GC attacks today and just a climbers' sprint from a group of 10-15. Which would be a real shame.

That's because most people support individual riders in cycling, not teams. There is remarkably little overlap between the people who strongly support Seixas and the people who strongly support Kooij. So Kooij winning has almost no relevance to those that are expecting Seixas to wow them.

If you think about it, or maybe if you don't think about it too hard, I have five dinosaurs in my apartment 🤔

I don't know what to make of today's profile. UAE say they expect Vingegaard to attack, but that would be suicide without a satellite, with that 20km false flat to the finish. Even for Pogacar it would be very risky. So maybe no one attacks, or maybe we get a huge break battle to get satellites in.

This bike change is on camera actually, if you really pay attention. And it is so unbelievably quick 🤯 Jonas' bike got entangled in the crash somehow (I don't think he fell) and without skipping a beat he puts it down and Campenaerts gives him his. It's literally 2-3s. They really did rehearse this.

Preliminary results have Jonas on the same time as Pogacar. We'll see if that sticks. I don't blame him, but Jorgenson had the chance to ensure this, if he had hovered between the two groups instead of riding in with the first. Kuss always does this in splintered sprints and it's low-key brilliant.

Kind of an ideal scenario for Kooij too. With all teams bar Astana losing their leadout, this became a positioning battle. And there's few that can match Kooij in that.

So happy to see that pretty much every Visma fan on this app is still really really rooting for him. I don't care what jersey he rides in, he's still ours in our hearts 💛

Narrator: He did, indeed, make her proud 😌

THERE WILL BE SOME VERY HAPPY PEOPLE ON THIS APP TODAY!!!!!!!!!!!

OMG YEEEEEEEEEEEEEESSSSSSSSSSS He did it so perfect. Moved up at the right time. Picked the perfect wheel. He's just the best sprinter in the peloton at positioning himself. He was brilliant 😍

Alright Olav, I am lending out my Visma heart to you for today. Make me proud 🙏

Alright, no attempts to drop Merlier. A bit disappointing because I think this terrain had more potential than a full bunch sprint. But alas, the riders make the race and I guess the taste for the first full bunch sprint of the Tour was too overwhelming to try something.

I’m loving the radial app for the tour this year. I especially love the graphic on my lock screen that lets me know where things stand when I’m too busy to watch.

I am hella impressed by the strength of that jersey's fabric.

Don't stamp this stage as a typical sprint where you only tune into the last 10km just yet. This hill zone in the last 50km is no joke. It is possible there will be an unspoken peloton agreement to chill for a bunch sprint, but it could also be total fireworks trying to drop the fast men.

They either already have him signed or have no shot of signing him and he just wants it out there that they tried. There is no way he'd be talking like this if they were in active tense negotiations. And I am pretty sure it's the latter because if he was signed, they'd surely want the big surprise.

Random rant, but I fucking hate when people totally misrepresent things to further an agenda that I support. It just undermines the credibility. Lise Meitner was not "erased from the discovery" and the world did not forget her. She's in the 3rd sentence of the wikipedia article on nuclear fission.

Wholesome thing to start the day: I just found a guy on IG from Burkina Faso who has been a big Uno-X fan since 2019 and after yesterday, he is officially the happiest man on Earth 😍☺️

Who the fuck had that take? lol

This sums up bluesky very well

Next we're going to have judges using AI summaries and then your court case gets litigated by two chat bots trained on reddit posts.

Ok, so tomorrow is an interesting stage. I think it could either be a "get rid of Merlier" sprint day for the likes of Philipsen, Girmay, and Kooij, or some teams could really ramp it up in the hill zone and drop a lot of the sprinters for a proper versatile sprint.

Besides all the other really bad stuff, one of the most annoying things about AI is that I cannot enjoy random posts with animal photos or videos anymore, because half of them are AI now and I don't have time in my life to stare at them for a minute to figure out if they're AI 🤮

If this happens I will still call him demon child, but lovingly. That being said, there's no chance this happens, unless Plugge somehow pulls a massive sponsor out of the hat. Ideally not a sportswashing one.

Have you ever seen a more stacked GC top 20 in a men's cycling race? This is definitely the most stacked top 20 I've ever seen. 21st is Bernal btw, so it doesn't even stop there.

see u in the mountains dickhead

Arnaud de Lie needs a change of team and he needs sport directors and management who take care of him and care about him as a person...