r/tourdefrance

Just went back to have a look at the stage profiles after the original route release and there doesn’t seem to be any mountain top finishes or true GC days until the end of the second week?

I know it’s tough to see from profiles and it comes down to how the teams want to ride but a bit frustrating to have to wait so far into the tour to see pog, Jonas and sexias go at it!

Yesterday Lorenzo Fortunato announced that he will target the polka dot jersey at the Tour and I can’t lie, I absolutely love this.

In recent years, the KOM jersey at the Tour often felt like a consolation prize for riders whose GC ambitions had already fallen apart. For me it simply lost a bit of its prestige and identity. Like it is so big achievement for a rider and sponsors, but it felt like for me nobody truly wanted it.

But now there’s a rider making it his main objective from the very beginning: Lorenzo Fortunato. And this is coming from a rider who already won the Giro d’Italia’s blue mountains jersey last year, so…

a fun stat as well: no rider in the modern era has completed the full set of KOM jerseys across all three Grand Tours. Only Federico Bahamontes in the 1950s and Luis Herrera in the 1980s ever managed it.

The Giro chapter is done for Lorenzo. Now the Tour awaits. And I will be cheering for him.

I was wondering: If the grand tours were entirely organized as solo TTs, would Jonas and Pogi still dominate or would TT specialists like Ganna be the favorites? Remco should also be considered in this context, I guess.

What do you think?

Can someone explain to me Felix Gall’s bike setup? It seems his seat looks too low and his knees often go outward, but I don’t know too much about it. Any thoughts?

Did I see correctly that JV (and the majority of the climbers) beat the record ascent time of Stage 9s final climb at the Giro by something like five minutes?!

This might be intriguing to anyone using the Tour de France companion app or alternative like Pro Cycling Stats to follow the Tour.

It doesn’t have everything, but you can check out the stage profiles, results display, and streaming info pane that have been implemented for the Giro and other pre-Tour races.

Does this meet a need for Tour followers? I liked the idea of having a dedicated app to look up the stats/startlists/result rather than using a website, but does it have all the right features to be useful? Unfortunately this is only on iOS/iPhone for now.