Chris Froome out of Tour de France

Christ, I can't believe people are pulling out 'I told you so'. Last year Wiggins wasn't the plan B, Sky did fine, this year Wiggins isn't the plan B and Sky aren't doing fine. They'd have been building their team around assumption of failure, with a rider who climbs alright but no where near the level of the other GC contenders. They'll put Porte up for GC and he's ahead of Contador and can climb reasonably well.

And given the sheer number of riders who went down, who's to say that any plan B rider wouldn't have avoided the same fate? It was a day for the A+ level bike handlers.

Proof! A double barrel shotgun is better than a single one.

Stop talking about Wiggins and start talking about Nibali. He's the only GC contender who regularly races the spring classics. He's bust his arse learning to race on cold wet cobbles with the hard men in Belgium every spring while Froome and the other GC riders are wanking into their power meters in Tenerife.

This is the result and it's not bad luck or good luck. It's proper old fashioned bike racing. Those who have focused on being athletes first and bike riders second have been cruelly exposed.

Oh well. Not being a particular Froome fan and disappointed that Sky couldn't deliver 2 ex winners to this British Grand Depart, I wanted Nibbles to win this year. Looks promising... although with Froome out I might be switching support to Porte.

The arguments above are interesting, apparently Bradley only won because Froome towed him round, but Froome having the support of Porte is completely different? Apparently Porte is good enough to podium too? It follows that if we had Wiggo with Porte in support in the mountains Sky would still be formidable, but we don't. Richie is all* Sky have got now...

Speaking of all round bike racers, it was worth going to watch just for Jens on day one and on the TV I loved watching Sagan working through the bunch yesterday nippy slick stuff. Le Tour is big enough to manage with a few retirements.

*no disrespect. We'll see what he or G can do.

jimmy ray will - your right about Wiggins and his 3rd places at the Vuelta and the Tour but that was a few years ago and i just dont think he has it in him now to be a genuine GC contender, a bit like Evans.

I still love him to bits, he's been brilliant for British Cycling and on his day the best TT'er in the world, but the one week tours and, as shown earlier this year, the one day classics are where he should concentrate on in my honest opinion.

Plans of mice and men etc. If it were that easy to predict winners then there would be no bookmakers. Certainly Froome was unfortunate yesterday but today....it seemed inevitable to me that he would go down again, given the weather, parcours and his injuries. Tough for him to swallow but crashing is part of racing. Maybe he'll fancy a crack at La Vuelta...

Froome didn't even make the cobbles.

Porte should be good for podium, I've felt Niballi was favourite for the overall for a while. Froome just hasn't looked convincing all season. Pressure/nerves or just a poor streak. Doesn't really matter now.

Maybe Froome should just get his dad to teach him how to ride a bike.

I was supporting Nibbles from the start but it will be disappointing if he doesn't get some stiff competition.

no-one will be as gutted as Wiggins,
to deny someone the opportunity to race as they are in a small window of optimum fitness and mental state, on the off chance that the other fella on form the same time who had also peaked.....would not fall off/get a bug/bomb in a time trial seemed too ridiculous for words

its the tour for god sake....anything can happen in 3 weeks, and counting their chickens has spunked away the chance of a lifetime for someone else......they should have both raced

sorry for froome
sorry for wiggo
brailsford you are a plumb!!!

Never got on with the smugness of SKY, but I have to say that Froome looked a broken man when he was getting in the car.
Hopefully Nibali has found his form and Contador will have to fight for his win.
Look forward to seeing Froome at La Vuelta.

If only Geraint Thomas was a bit more explosive in the mountains. He put in an awesome ride bringing Porte home.

I don't think Brailsford looked upset that he hadn't bought Wiggins. Sometimes there's more to it than just the riding. Team work and team spirit count for a lot.

I think you have to say that a lot of the Tour teams missed a step with today's stage. It really did throw up Classics weather, but a lot of the riders looked uncomfortable riding it. That may have been the case without the rain in any respect. With or without Froome's fall you have to say that Froome would have struggled as much as Contador, and I think there was a tacit recognition of that given he got off the bike.

Good luck to him though. I hope he can build for the Vuelta. You sort of feel that Nibali has this sewn up already now. He looks composed, confident and relaxed. Very impressed with him so far.

I was really looking forward to the battle between Contador and Froome.

Nibali has it sewn up? Don't think so personally. Did you see Dauphiné? Long way to go. Lets hope for some almighty battles in the stages left!

Porte looks good for a podium place with Thomas and Nieve as lieutenants. I think the latter in particular could really pull something out of the bag for his new team leader.

Bummed about Froome. It's a wicked, wicked sport we follow, isn't it?

I remember when Pinarello announced the new Dogma that it was supposedly "16% more balanced"... Sadly that doesn't seem to be balanced enough...

Not a Frome fan either after reading the book, and situation caused in Sky. Sky should have been able to put their two best riders in the squad for exactly this reason. Porte is good but not as good as Wiggins - full stop.

Frankly I feel Brailsford denied the UK its right to see Wiggins riding in the UK on three stages because he wasn't able to manage them.

A sad day for the UK through the failure of three of supposedly UK's finest sportspeople to be able to work as a team.

'Froome just hasn't looked convincing all season. Pressure/nerves or just a poor steak.'

FTFY.

Are you suggesting Nibali was on the juice yesterday?

Having a sore wrist on the cobbles must be painful. Maybe Froome should have got some advice from his team-mate Thomas "We are allowed the normal painkillers - ibuprofen and paracetamol - and a few coffees in the morning helps. Then it comes down to the whole mental side of not giving up. At times in Corsica it felt like I could not pedal"

Ah excellent, all the armchair DS's are out in force. All the expert managers who know each and every rider.

The crash happened before the peloton had even seen a cobble so to say that the cause was bad bike handling on coobbles is just rubbish. 200 nervous jittery bike riders, a threatening parcours and bad weather, everyone trying to be in the front 20 so the pace was averaging near 50kph which is insanely fast.

People were crashing left right and centre, Chris was just unlucky.

As for the "there should have been 2 leaders", that's also a bad idea, it never works. You build a team round ONE leader. And not sure where the idea that Brad would have done any better is coming from; he did one good ride on dry cobbles a few months ago and that's it, he's hardly renowned for amazing bike handling in the wet himself (cough *Giro* cough).

It's just bad luck - it's very disappointing but Sky were in the same boat when Wiggins crashed out with a broken collarbone a few years ago; no-one was shouting then that they should have had a second leader or a Plan B. You have your Plan A and then you trust to luck. That's bike racing.