Allesandro Petacchi won the final stage of theTour of Britain in Liverpool today to seal a hat-trick of stage wins on this year’s race, but it was Geoffroy Lequartre ( Agritubel) who took the big prize. The Frenchman came home safely in the pack to win the general classification, and the yellow jersey, from Steve Cummings (Great Britain). The Briton started the day with a six second deficit on Lequartre but could take back no more than a second . The other competions were won by: Matthew Goss (CSC Saxo Bank) who took the points title; Edvald Boasson Hagen (Columbia) – the sprint crown; and Danilo Di Luca (LPR Brakes) king of the mountains. Today’s stage started with an audacious break by Tyler Hamilton (Rock Racing) after the first kilometre, he built up a 16 second lead and was soon joined by Magnus Backstedt (Columbia), but the pair could not escape the the gravitational pull of the peloton and were easily swept up. Russell Downing (Pinarello RT-Candi TV), Backstedt (Columbia), and Malcolm Elliot (Pinarello RT-Candi TV) then broke after 29Km and quickly put two minutes into the chasing pack. However, it was not enough and the trio were caught on the run in to Liverpool with Olympic hero Bradley Wiggins making a surprise move to the front on the final lap of the city-centre circuit. Petacchi was not to be denied though and timed his sprint perfectly to take the stage win from Julian Dean (Garmin Chipotle) with Robbie Hunter (Barloworld in third spot). Overall the organisers of this year’s Tour of Britain can give themselves a pat on the back for a well organised race with a strong field, which was also genuinely competitive – for the first time in it’s short history. The only negative was that British crowds were denied the chance to see Tour de France sprint hero Mark Cavendish in action. Not to say that we weren’t treated to some top-class sprinting but it would have spiced things up even more had Cavendish been in the mix. The young sprinter would surely have won some stages and been in contention for the sprint or points jerseys – instead he opted to ride in the Tour of Missouri, where he won three stages. Maybe next year. Tour of Britain Stage eight results:? 1 A Petacchi (Ita) LPR Brakes-Ballan, 2hrs 19mins 25secs? 2 J Dean (NZ)Garmin-Chipotle, same time? 3 R Hunter (SA) Barloworld, same time? 4 M Goss (Aus) CSC-Saxo Bank, same time? 5 R Hayles (GB) Great Britain, same time? 6 C Sutton (Aus) Garmin-Chipotle, same time? 7 R Hammond (GB) Columbia, same time? 8 J Van Heerden (SA) MTN Energade, same time? 9 R Downing (GB) Pinarello RT-Candi TV, same time? 10 K Lisabeth (Bel) SKT An Post M.Donnelly, same time Final general classification:? 1 G Lequatre (Fra) AGR Agritubel, 27hr 21mins 49secs ?2 S Cummings (GB) Barloworld, at 5secs? 3 I Stannard (GB) Great Brtain, at 14secs? 4 D Martin (Ire) Garmin-Chipotle 27h22’04" at 15secs? 5 G Bosisio (Ita) LPR Brakes-Ballan, at 16secs ?6 B De Schrooder (Bel) SKT An Post M.Donnelly, at 20secs ?7 D Fleeman (GB) SKT An Post M.Donnelly, at 25secs? 8 F Veuchelen (Bel) TSV Topsport Vlaanderen, at 29secs ?9 E Berges (Fra) AGR Agritubel, at 50secs? 10 R Downing (GB) Pinarello RT-Candi TV, at 1min 25secs
Tour of Britain Stage 8: Petacchi takes stage, but Lequartre wins the overall
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"carefully/slowly weaving through some cars ...... and while trying to squeeze through the last bit" Maybe its just me but maybe these are the lines that start off the driver on the irrational road rage, Yes we are allowed to filter through traffic but sometimes a bit of patience is required too. If you are ending up so close that you are making contact with someone else's property then maybe just hold back a little until there is space. I am not attempting to justify or suggest that the response was proportionate but lets be honest the chances are that the OP may have played down thier own actions that triggered the nutter.
The 15.5mph (25kph) limit is stupid? What's stupid is charging down mixed use paths on an untested, illegal e-moto at 40 mph. Which is what these wastes of organs do.
@kyzyl2 I'm extremely sceptical that this app could measure power with any accuracy, but as far as I understand it is not the case that it completely ignores windspeed; as the inventor says, it uses weather as one of the variables. Presumably it takes real-time wind speed and direction from nearby weather stations and factors that into its calculations. Of course this may be wildly inaccurate if you're climbing up a bare hillside and the nearest weather station is in a sheltered valley half a mile away, but it does make some attempt to account for wind speed and direction.
@Rendel Harris we used to rent an allotment in a village near Basel and there was an annual autumn party/festival organised by the gardeners. One year as we were about to leave we went to ride our (unlocked - never a need here) bikes and my wife’s was missing. Our allotment neighbours were outraged and were getting ready to get the police in when… up the road rides a gentleman on my wife’s bike, weaving around in a drunken manner.. He gets back and receives the wrath of our neighbour (not us we were in giggles) and he explains that he had to go home to feed his cat and just needed to borrow a bike!
The physics principle exploited is that opposing forces equal applied forces. Conventional power meters measure applied forces--very well but admittedly not cheaply. This app appears to measure acceleration and slope to determine two of four important opposing forces. Notice something missing? Wind...the dominant opposing force when riding on the flats or in a pack. This app assumes that wind speed equals bike speed in order to "guess" the critical opposing wind force it does not measure. If you always ride solo and never ride when the wind blows maybe this app will work OK for you. Otherwise you are wasting your money. There is no such thing as free power.
Not gonna lie, when I saw the name LAP I thought 'Here we go again, yet another pretentious brand like MAAP, PNS, ASOS and Rapha that wants to grab a piece of the 'bragging rights' cycling category. But, to my surprise, what they bring to the table seems pretty well considered. Let's see if this idea gets some traction.
The difference in the UK is that the police don't try to hide their pride in paying no attention to bicycle theft, in order to maintain credibility with their motorhead mates. When the British Transport Police actually declared they weren't interested (OK, there were some provisos to that, but what they really meant was: cyclists can get stuffed) in cycle theft, they were forced to retract that officially but continued in practice to teach cyclists a lesson by making no effort to catch the thieves (I assume - no personal experience of this particular police-encouraged crime wave)
Might have been usefull to describe the bike / brand etc..?
Operation "Sorry Not Attempting Prosecution"? Certainly some forces see it as a success!