Opinions of this year's Tour?

[Tom Kunich]

I really enjoyed the Tour this year. I'm still going strong so I expect Phil Ligget who is only a year older than me to be around at least as long as I am.

I missed ONCE and Euskatel. For that matter I missed the really good Americans. Andrew Talansky most definitely was not at his best and Cannondale did not seem to be using him to support Uran properly. But it's easy to criticize from the sidelines.

It appears that drugs are now pretty much a thing of the past. The Blood Passports promote honesty and that will certainly bring back real American participation.

This year I didn't see a single bike broken into bits from poorly designed carbon fiber. But I also noticed that almost all of the bikes other than Specialized were using very oversized downtubes. This makes the major strength of a frame from the oversized headtube to the bottom bracket and then through the chain stays. The other tubes are nothing more than a secondary reinforcement. So I wouldn't expect these sorts of mechanisms to break in the race.

We did see electronic shifting problems everywhere. Question: is there any real advantage to electronic shifting? Other than being the latest and greatest that is.

Who was it that announced that they were going to use Tubeless Tires? Did that turn out well? Wasn't it Cannondale and most assuredly Uran looked really good on the course.

I wanted to try Tubeless but they are talking about using 28 mm tires and that that wouldn't fit between my Campy brakes.

Have any of you tried tubeless and found it better rolling resistance with better traction as advertised?

[Michael]

Post by Tom Kunich
I really enjoyed the Tour this year. I'm still going strong so I expect Phil Ligget who is only a year older than me to be around at least as long as I am.

Yes, it was a close, enjoyable race, to be sure. I will mention two things I didn't like: 1) throwing Sagan out of the tour and 2) the lack of hay bales/use of 60 year old metal barriers.

Post by Tom Kunich
I missed ONCE and Euskatel. For that matter I missed the really good Americans. Andrew Talansky most definitely was not at his best and Cannondale did not seem to be using him to support Uran properly. But it's easy to criticize from the sidelines.

Yes, loved the old EE team, but a couple of their riders are still doing well.

Post by Tom Kunich
It appears that drugs are now pretty much a thing of the past. The Blood Passports promote honesty and that will certainly bring back real American participation.

It really does feel like illegal drug use is a thing of the past. However, there is such an incentive and so much sophistication in its use that I doubt we can ever say for sure.

Post by Tom Kunich
This year I didn't see a single bike broken into bits from poorly designed carbon fiber. But I also noticed that almost all of the bikes other than Specialized were using very oversized downtubes. This makes the major strength of a frame from the oversized headtube to the bottom bracket and then through the chain stays. The other tubes are nothing more than a secondary reinforcement. So I wouldn't expect these sorts of mechanisms to break in the race.
We did see electronic shifting problems everywhere. Question: is there any real advantage to electronic shifting? Other than being the latest and greatest that is.

I thought the same thing. I counted three instances where electronic shifting stopped a rider, and I imagine there were a few more that we didn't hear about.

Post by Tom Kunich
Who was it that announced that they were going to use Tubeless Tires? Did that turn out well? Wasn't it Cannondale and most assuredly Uran looked really good on the course.

It was Cannondale. Vaughters said one of more of his riders was going tubeless and felt this might give them an advantage if it rained. (It didn't much.)

Post by Tom Kunich
I wanted to try Tubeless but they are talking about using 28 mm tires and that that wouldn't fit between my Campy brakes.
Have any of you tried tubeless and found it better rolling resistance with better traction as advertised?

[Tom Kunich]

Post by Michael

Post by Tom Kunich
It appears that drugs are now pretty much a thing of the past. The Blood Passports promote honesty and that will certainly bring back real American participation.

It really does feel like illegal drug use is a thing of the past. However, there is such an incentive and so much sophistication in its use that I doubt we can ever say for sure.

They can try. But the question is: will the tour committee hide it like they did with Armstrong? At that time the committee knew that everyone was doping and they didn't want a black eye on the Tour so they ignored it. The final result was a bigger black eye so I think that they will be a lot more alert now.