Le Tour de Pharmaceutical 2014

Yay for Beryl Burton!

Merits a separate thread.

http://www.flamingbails.com/t14898-cheers-to-beryl-burton-freewoman-of-leeds-at-last#787548

(Possibly the first Self-NTR in Bails history, but it's worth the catcalls.)

ready....drugs...set...go!!!!!

Stage 5 should be a cracker this year.

given Spain's performance in the WC and Raffas exit from Wimbledon it looks like it could be a bad year for paella....I worry Contador and other cyclopath Spaniards will be exposed to and inadvertantly consume adulterated meat products

Yeah, Spain's having almost as bad a sporting year as us... maybe neither Froome nor Dirty Bertie (or even Valverde) will win this? Mind you, the Italians not faring a lot better so that rules out Nibali as well on that theory... any Aussies in contention?

Greybeard (Cadell) is not riding....Green Edge will pick up some stage wins and that will be all she wrote...expect the Cloggies and the Belgis will be in it

horace wrote:Greybeard (Cadell) is not riding....Green Edge will pick up some stage wins and that will be all she wrote...expect the Cloggies and the Belgis will be in it

I doubt it.

Yeah, Mollema's the only real hope for the low countries. Vanmarcke should feature heavily on stage 5 along with Cancellara.

Some interesting facts on Yorkshire from Letour.com

In the north-east of England, where it is the biggest historic county, Yorkshire covers some 15,000 km2 and is subdivided into four counties: East, North, West and South.


It is home to five million people, 752,000 of whom live in Leeds, the area’s biggest city.
Harrogate has 73,000 inhabitants, York has 198,000 and Sheffield has 555,000.
For its part, Cambridge, the administrative centre of the county, has 110,000 inhabitants.
As for London, the capital of the United Kingdom has some three million inhabitants, or seven million for Greater London.

The Cambridge bit confused me as it's nowhere near Yorkshire, I guess they were quickly jumping to the following stage without referencing the fact they had switched to a different county...

Guide for the competitors

beamer wrote:The Cambridge bit confused me as it's nowhere near Yorkshire, I guess they were quickly jumping to the following stage without referencing the fact they had switched to a different county...

Cambridge is clearly the top Uni in Yorkshire.

Big blow for Orica with Matthews withdrawing due to a crash in training.

Will their team bus driver be taking more care in terms of going under low finish line banners this year?

Big Dog wrote:Big blow for Orica with Matthews withdrawing due to a crash in training.

And they lost their main leadout man, Daryl Impey, after he tested positive for probenicid, a masking agent.

Big crowd.

So according to the TDF website it is 16 degrees there and everyone is in shorts. Here it is 16 degrees and I am freezing my balls off.

taipan wrote:So according to the TDF website it is 16 degrees there and everyone is in shorts. Here it is 16 degrees and I am freezing my balls off.

I remember arriving back in April, got off the plane and immediately was hit with cold that felt like it was biting my face.

"You seem to have brought the weather back with you, lovely day today isn't it?" was the line I was greeted with at the airport.

Cavendish hits the road rather hard.

Kittel wins the stage.

Looks like the collarbone, will be surprised to see Cav start tomorrow even though he struggled over the line.

beamer wrote:Looks like the collarbone, will be surprised to see Cav start tomorrow even though he struggled over the line.

I also thought collarbone at first but looked like ribs when he came over the line.

Separated shoulder. Reckon he would've been DQ'ed if he didn't crash. Also, great attendance.

Tyler Hamilton once rode pretty much the whole thing with a broken collarbone and finished top 10 GC. The drugs probably helped, though...

Aye, the 2002 Giro. Finished second, and was Evans' breakthrough grand tour too.

2003 Tour de France was the one I was thinking of, came fourth... or maybe third... or perhaps excluded retrospectively along with everyone else...

That was the year that first got me hooked on it, hard to believe it's all effectively null and void now.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_Tour_de_France