Tour de France 2025 **spoilers**

I enjoyed their coverage, ad breaks apart, everything else was top notch without being over dramatic. A real shame it's ended, and a big loss to cycling in general as the casual viewer will be lost and a lot of would be new young riders will be lost too as they won't be aware of cycling and dream of being the next Pogacar, Vingegaard or Healy! Cycling is too niche a sport to go behind a pay wall!

I agree re Sky strangling the life out of the Tour in the last few years of peak Froome. But my point was more that at we did have genuine GC contenders willing to try and have a go/ tag team them. On one day you might have Tinkoff try something. On the next maybe Movistar. BMC/ Astana. They all contained experienced, proven GC winners. Hindsight tells us that they always fell short thanks to Sky loading their team with Super Doms, but at least at the start of the Tour we had genuine hopes that any one of a number of teams/ riders might beat Froome. Ditto most stages. Yeah a lot of them ended up dull as dishwater and the attacks failed, but we’d tune in most days thinking today they might work.

This Tour was a foregone conclusion after the first couple of Pog stages. Nobody other than Vingo looked at Pog’s level and he wasn’t even in the old Berti/ Nibbles/ Uran/ Nairoman mould of liable/ likely to attack (I know, Nairo lost interest towards the end of his time). Even before the Tour, the only people even mentioned as possible contenders for GC too spot were Pog, Vingo and at a very outside bet Remco. And Remco was miles off the pace (albeit that he’s one of the few guys in the old style racing mould).

So I suppose it’s the lack of GC ambition from most teams that I’m getting at - if Visma aren’t at it then it’s a cake walk for UAE and Pog. Ineos, Astana, Movistar are so far off the pace compared to the level that they used to be at just a few years ago.

Again, not to defend Skineos, but hoovering up competitors started way before that. You could even say Hinault and Lemond, but then Lemond had Robert Millar as Superdom, and then we had the postal train which was pretty stacked with GC talent. Even Indurain had Delgado.

I'll really miss ITV's highlights. Imlach been on my TV as long as I remember between NFL and Tour. However, even though I generally like Ned, I found it a bit of a w@nkfest with him and Millar over Pog, and also prone to the over dramatics about Jonas' "bad" days. "Worst day on the bike" etc - probably not as bad as the time he crashed in Itzulia FFS

Watched a recap of the 87 stage to La Plagne on YouTube last night - mental stuff. Would be wild to watch that racing with today's race coverage. All I remembered from the stage was Roche getting the oxygen but on one of the descents Fignon had to get help retrieving his bike from a tree after he, or maybe it was just his bike, went over the barrier and got lodged in it - and he still managed to go on and win the stage. It was like a very competitive bunch of sportive riders going at each other for hours. Hate to be the one saying it was better back in the day but holy cow, that stage would have been edge of seat stuff from the start and something we haven't seen for 20 years and will never see again.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRyG1l1NPz0

Not sure that would have too much impact on Pogacar and UAE. All tour long they normally have Wellens pulling in service of breakaway containment and on the climbs a max maybe of Yates and Narvaez? Pollitt did a few turns as well of course but tbh, with the lead he had and JV generally looking unable to do much, once the Narvaez sprint on Hautacam was done, Pog didn't really need anyone else.

Was literally just about to come on and suggest something similar.

There's an element of truth in that - as mentioned earlier Pog pretty much won his first couple of Tours without any decisive help at the pointy end of the race. But what it might do is stop teams hoovering up all his potential competitors. The numbers limit would have the effect of spreading them around? And the more top level talent freed up (willingly or otherwise) from domestique service the more challenges facing the big names and possibly to more teams able to put together a GC bid?

Not sure there was mad hour plus fights for the breakaway in the day? No TV coverage often mean everyone taking it easy until the red light went on.

Ah man, come on. Missed opportunity. In Cheese's final scene he has a line where he goes "…you gonna stand there crying that back in the day ****. They ain't no back in the day,..."

Outside of Pog, who is a ridiculous talent, have UAE won a Grand Tour? Maybe I'm forgetting someone, but, I don't think they have, they should have won the Giro recently, but, really threw that away. Tactically UAE aren't great, but, Pog covers up a multitude of faults, essentially he won his first couple of tours without a team, Jumbo/Visma for all their faults are tactically much more astute, they are just up against an insane talent. UAE have definitely built up a great team around Pog now, but, man for man Visma's team at the Tour was still stronger imo, but, Pog was decisively stronger than Vingegaard.

Without Pog over the last few years, we would have had complete domination of the GTs by Jumbo/Visma, for a start Roglic would have won in 2020 for Jumbo/Visma. It's only a few years ago Visma won all 3 GTs, and had the full podium at the Vuelta, we had the ridiculous situation where they effectively chose who won, we all know Vingegaard or Roglic would have won that Vuelta if let ride, ironically Kuss hasn't been the same rider since, it's like his hunger has been sated, or he's not as motivated to just be a domestique! I don't think UAE will reach the same dominance level, as without Pog they tend to mess up.

guys, would LeMond have beaten Roche in 1987 had he not been injured? Roche was very strong

yes, that cost Pedro about 3 minutes, and Pedro was only about 3 minutes down at the end