Jun 29 2013

Le Tour 2013: Stage 1

100th Running!

Wars and stuff, you know.

It’s going to take me a day or two to acclimate myself to the magnitude of the task and the fact that nobody I know is racing.

Bradley Wiggins, the defending champion, is Sir Not Appearing in this Film.  He dropped out of Giro d’Italia because he was sick and then he got injured.  He’s been replaced by Chris Froome as the “great British hope” (second place finisher in 2012) and it’s unknown at this point if he’ll ever return to professional cycling at all.  Andy Schleck and Alberto Contador are the other names I’m most familiar with among the pre-race favorites.

But more on that as we go along.

In other shocking developments- No Sprint Prolog!  We race in Corsica (French btw, home of Napolean Bonaparte) over 132 miles of flat from Porto-Vecchio to Bastia.  Corsica has the only 2 Departments (States) of Metro France Le Tour has never visited, but they’ll be spending 3 days there before moving to the mainland with the only Team Time Trial in Nice.

Night Time Finish!  You heard that right.  The meaningless parade around the Champs-Élysées will take place under the lights for the first time evah!

From the official site–

Running from Saturday June 29th to Sunday July 21th 2013, the 100th Tour de France will be made up of 21 stages and will cover a total distance of 3,404 kilometres (2115 miles).

These stages have the following profiles:

  • 7 flat stages
  • 5 hilly stages
  • 6 mountain stages with 4 summit finishes
  • 2 individual time trial stages
  • 1 team time trial stage
  • 2 rest days (I’ll be looking forward to these)

10 new stage towns

Porto-Vecchio, Bastia, Ajaccio, Calvi, Cagnes-sur-Mer, Saint-Gildas-des-Bois, Saint-Pourçain-sur-Sioule, Givors, Chorges, Annecy-Semnoz

The Route!

Today’s Stage is a Sprinter’s course which could leave one of the Speed Demons like Mad Manx Cavendish in the maillot jaune for the first time in a long time.

Guardian Guide to the 100th Tour de France

The New York Times

Sites of Interest-

The Stars Hollow Gazette Tags-

rustymancuso581

10 comments

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  2. Nothing ever happens at the beginning anyway.

  3. 4 man break away.

  4. cranky internet.  I blame AT&T.

  6. under the flag, so they’re going to end the race 3K early.

  7. and now there is a massive crash.

  8. Initial Results:

    1 Marcel Kittel (Ger) Team Argos – Shimano  

    2 Alexander Kristoff (Nor) Katusha  

    3 Danny Van Poppel (Ned) Vacansoleil-DCM

    Full result will be posted later today.

  9. over where the finish line was located and a stick bus

    Marcel Kittel (Argos-Shimano) won his first Tour de France stage and took the first leader’s jersey after a chaotic and complicated finish in Bastia. Last-minute potential changes in the location of the finish line and a mass crash contributed to the confusion, and the German was lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time. Second place went to Alexander Kristoff (Katusha), with 19-year-old Danny Van Poppel (Vacansoleil-DMC) third.

    The Orica-GreenEdge team bus got stuck at the finish line, and was only removed at the last moment, after the decision had apparently been made to move the finish line forward. Shortly thereafter a large crash took out favourites Mark Cavendish and Peter Sagan, amongst others, and Andre Greipel who had come through the crash safely, punctured to his great disgust.

    Alberto Contador (Saxo-Tinkoff) was caught up by the crash, and was one of many who seemed to have lost time on the stage, as the crash occurred before the 3km marker. But Tour organizers had already announced that due to the mass confusion and changing of the finish line, several times, all riders would be given the same time.

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