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news
Peter Sagan wins Stage 3 of 2017 Tour de France.JPGTour de France Stage 3: Peter Sagan unclips 200 metres from line - and still wins
Peter Sagan of Bora Hansgrohe recovered from unclipping a couple of hundred metres from the line to win Stage 3 of the 2017 Tour de France on a day when the race headed from Belgium to Luxembourg via a brief detour into France. Team Sky’s Geraint Thomas retains the yellow jersey of race leader.
Today saw the first uphill finish of this year’s race with a short but punchy climb to the Côte des Religieuses at Longwy, and it produced a rousing finish many had predicted.
With the 1.6-kilometre climb averaging 5.2 per cent, it was a stage that suited a puncheur rather than a pure sprinter or a climber, and what’s more one that not only began in Philippe Gilbert’s home town, but also took place on his 35th birthday.
The Quick Step Floors rider did not figure in the finale, however, and after BMC Racing's Richie Porte had come to the front as the gradient of the final climb eased off coming under the flamme rouge, Sagan was sitting fourth and launched an attack that looked set to produce a convincing win for the world champion.
But inside the final 250 metres, one of the Slovak's feet unclipped from the pedal and it seemed that victory would elude him.
Sagan, however, had other ideas, clipping back in almost intsntaneously, regaining his momentum, and holding off Sunweb's Michael Matthews and Dan Martin of Quick Step Floors to take victory.
Unclips mid sprint - still wins. @petosagan
#TDF2017pic.twitter.com/UO0dQOyNoA— CyclingHub (@CyclingHubTV) July 3, 2017
Sprint incroyable de @petosagan, surpuissant pour s'imposer devant @blingmatthews / What a sprint from Sagan, so much power! #TDF2017 pic.twitter.com/FJGFOYWHnL
— Le Tour de France (@LeTour) July 3, 2017
Data from Sagan, Matthews and Porte clearly shows the impact of the moment the world champion unclipped and his susequent recovery.
Porte attacked first, but Sagan dominated the field with an ave speed of 28.6km/h on the final climb (1.6km, 5.8% grad.). #TDFdata #TDF2017 pic.twitter.com/VKlYAPEX8X
— letourdata (@letourdata) July 3, 2017
The yellow jersey of Thomas was in the group immediately behind, guaranteeing the Welshman at least another day in the race lead, while team made and defending champion Chris Froome moves up to second overall.
It took a while for the break to form today after the stage headed from Belgium towards Luxembourg, and when it did it was Adam Hansen of Lotto-Soudal – riding a record 18th Grand Tour in a row – who instigated the move.
He was joined by Direct Energie rider Romain Sicard, plus four Tour de France debautants – Cannondale-Drapac’s Nate Brown, Nils Politt of Katusha, Romain Hardy from the Fortuneo team, and Wanty Groupe Gobert’s Frederik Backaert.
As yesterday, the peloton kept the break on a tight leash, with the maximum lead seldom going beyond six minutes.
Once the break had negotiated the day’s intermediate sprint point, it was Dimension Data’s Mark Cavendish, looking to get back to full race fitness after his long lay-off through glandular fever. who got the better of the other sprinters to take seventh place.
Following the day’s second categorised climb Brown, who had taken the solitary point at the first one, jumped off the front of the break with Politt, the American taking maximum points at the third King of the Mountains summit to all but ensure himself of taking the polka dot jersey from team mate Taylor Phinney.
Heading towards the final 40 kilometres, a move by Lotto-Soudal’s Thomas De Gendt was followed by several other riders and doomed the break.
One of those riders was Direct Energie’s Lilian Calmejane, who launched a solo attack ahead of the 20-kilometres-to-go point, but he was slowly reeled in by the peloton and caught 10 kilometres ahead of the explosive finale.
Reaction
Stage winner Peter Sagan
What is pressure? I don't know what it is.
First of all, I want to thank the team for pulling all day. It was not easy with the headwind and a lot of stress in the peloton.
It was a pretty hard climb at the end. I saw a little gap with 800m to go. I decided to speed up. It was far away and too early.
When I started my sprint, my foot went out of the pedal. It was another mistake but I won. Michael Matthews almost beat me but I'm glad I stayed ahead of him.
Overall leader Geraint Thomas
It was obviously a stressful finale but the team did a good work to keep us up. At the start of the climb, Chris Froome was a little far, in about 20th position, so we had to make an effort to move up.
Richie Porte attacked strongly. I didn't expect that. I knew Sagan and other riders going for the stage victory would bring him back.
We said before the race that Richie was the main man. Our impression is reinforced by what he did today.
However, having the yellow jersey from the start of the Tour is a massive benefit for us. It gives us the freedom to ride at the front early but today we let the honour of pulling to other teams.
It's a long way to Paris with another 18 days to go but for me it's a dream scenario so far and it's good for the morale.
New mountains classification leader, Nate Brown
For sure the polka dot jersey is part of our plan. We went out with the goal yesterday to get the jersey and today we rode for keeping the jersey in the family.
I'm the happiest man I kept it. We intend to continue being super aggressive during the whole race. We have guys for the GC. We want to spice up the race.
Marcel Kittel, who kept the leadership of the points classification
I'm still very confident, my legs were okay today, in the end it was very difficult. But in general I feel really good.
For us, the goal will be again the victory tomorrow. I will be very focused.
The green jersey ambition can be developed after a few more stages and if I see if I can have realistic ambitions or not. For now, I'll keep defending it and fighting for it.
> Tour de France 2017 preview: Your stage-by-stage guide to cycling's biggest race
Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.
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62 comments
Looked at this site for a few days. First and last post. What a fucking retard cunt garden. Spoilers on home pages. Potty mouthed helmet dodgers. Fuck me with a warty priests yoghurt chucker this place is a refuge for knuckledragging racist mini minds. Never been to UK and thank fuck you guys are off.
Really? Only it says 144 posts opposite your username. The rest of your "first and last post" seems to suffer from the same lack of accuracy.
Yeah, it takes a particularly special brand of Internet lifeform to lecture about the state of UK roads, then claim to have never been to the UK, then think they can hide all of their contradictory bullshit by changing their username from Bigtwin to Trekpro and failing to realise that you'd keep your post count and everyone would realise that's exactly what you'd done.
Can't even do an Internet flounce properly.
Haha. Fantastic. Post of the day.
Much as hate to interrupt this charming conversation - between people expressing a valid opinion, and the kind of person who'll jump at any excuse to tell other people to fuck off, or call them snivellers, for making suggestions which could not possibly disadvantage them - but surely there's an opportunity to please everyone, without harming SEO, and requiring just a few lines of code. Something like:
OK, it'd be a bit more complicated than that, but surely not much. Now, adding an ignore button to hide the comments of needlessly-aggressive people, that'd be a significant piece of development.
... or those of single-issue trolls? Damn straight.
It's not just the web site, though, when twitter and facebook feeds have the same headlines. So yes, it shouldn't be too difficult to avoid coming to road.cc between the end of a stage and whenever you get to watch the coverage, but it can also be difficult to avoid accidentally. If the title doesn't give a spoiler to the result, it would be appreciated by me for one, and there are others who obviously share this view. Not the world's biggest problem, but it is annoying when it happens.
Nobody has suggested a news embargo, just a change to the way the headline is written.
"Sagan Pulls a Pedal. Internet explodes. No-one gives a sh*t about who won"
Really? A web site that you don't pay for reports on the most interesting thing to happen on cycling that day and you want them to change their reporting method just so you can wander the internet leisurely until you chose to check on the results? Sheesh. If you don't want to know the results yet, don't go on a cycling website. Specially not a cycling website, whose biggest deal of the day is reporting the stories and results of the tour. Just wondering how long you would like them to keep the results buried? couple hours, A week? Holy Cr*p. Precious much? How about other stories they cover that you'd rather get from another source first? How about most articles are headed "something interesting happened in cycling today, please don't look here until you've checked your preferred supplier first"
Snivelling cowering faithless lickspittles.
Picturing the type of person who thinks it's a good idea to visit a cycling website at the same time as they're trying to not find out the Tour De France results, and hoping they're not responsible for anything more than deciding what to have for breakfast that day.
Bookmark deleted.
How about this catchy internet trope?
"Sprinters hate him....Slovak cyclist destroys peleton with this one easy trick"
Haha this thread really makes me laugh, I know not to look on this site between the end of the race and watching the highlights, I'd usually be travelling home and making dinner so it's not really a hardship. I think I'd know that going on to any cycling website during the tour is bound to end up with the result being shown. I doubt sponsors would be very worried what time you're on the site, the overall number of views and referrals are what matters to them.
With regards to the racing, Sagan really is something else, seeing how quickly he reacted and got his foot back in, and still managed to get the power back down to hold off Matthews was pretty incredible. It was surprising to see just how interested all the gc riders were on a stage that really didn't seem like a big deal to them, looks like they know they've got to take any chances that they can this year.
Amazing, Sagan unclips mid-sprint and still goes on to win... yet the main topic of conversation on here is the headline used :-P
There's a clip where Dave Gorman covers headline writing quite succintly. Unfortunately, I can't find it online.
In summary, SEO best practice clashes with traditional headline and article writing designed to pull the reader in which drip feeds the main points instead, creating more of a story. Traditional headlines don't give the story away in the first few words, because the reader would just stop reading. After all, their questions have been answered and the rest of the words are just padding. The torrid Hate Online is a prime example of this.
SEO stating everything goes directly against traditional methods. Key words have to appear in the first chunk of text. There's an argument that it actually discourages readers, but I don't see this is likely to change back any time soon.
Not sure where you went to journalism college but you couldn't be more wrong. Traditional headlines do give the main point of the story.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_pyramid_(journalism)
On reflection, perhaps I should have gone with: "Tour de France Stage 3: Peter Sagan launches his sprint early - you won't BELIEVE what happens next"
I don't see the point in not putting the results in the headline, because;
1) People that have already watched it (live or delayed) won't care to read some drab report that appears to simply relay the results which they already know.
2) People that do want to know the results will go to a news source that reports the news in a more user-friendly and enticing manner
So I think the two options are:
1) Don't bother reporting on any cycle race news at all
2) Continue doing what you're doing (which in my opinion, is pretty good - I like reading the race reports here)
Sorry all for causing a storm in a teacup...
I can handle spoilers on a cycling website and have learnt to stay off facebook, what does piss me off is when they announce the action on the sports bulletin of 6music at half past six at night!
Holy shit everyone. News is news and online that means right now news. Surely we can all keep our digits off certain places on our handheld bike gear ordering machines whilst waiting a few hours?
If you want race results you go to cyclingnews.com not here - this site is much more of a magazine read than a proper news site.
Yes "Click here for day3 results" is a rubbish title, but its better than one that spells out for you everything that happened - what's the point in clicking on it when it's already told you everything?
Much better would be "Finish line drama on stage 3 of the tour" it offers intrigue without spoilers, and is much more tempting to click on than either of the other 2 options
Anyone complaining at the headline spoiling the result really can fuck right off.
This is a road cycling website where the 'News' page is the most prominently displayed next to the main logo. What in thundershiting heckbiscuits do you expect them to do, other than prominently report the main road cycling news of the day?
Do those suggesting they instead go for a coquettishly teasing headline that doesn't reveal the actual winner also absolutely love tedious clickbait? Because that's what you're suggesting. If you don't want to know the result before the highlights, don't visit a cycling website beforehand. Or if you do, don't then moan that it's doing its job and telling visitors what happened.
Well I think with such a convincing argument, we can just lock the thread.
I don't understand the passion with which some here have argued in favour of spoilers on the front page. If you're here for the results, you click the link. If you're not, you've had the highlights ruined.
I'm ambivalent; I don't really understand why road.cc would want to annoy a large number of readers.
Cuts both ways, though, doesn't it: the idea of posting neutral headlines seems to be pissing a chunk of the readership off too.
If I don't want to learn some information, I'm disciplined enough not to a) visit a site likely to contain that information and then b) whine about the site doing exactly what I expect it to do every other time I want it to.
But really, what's the alternative? Site dedicated to road cycling delays posting a realistic headline/withholds images of world's biggest road cycling event from the front page because some readers don't want to know what's in the article? What sort of business model would pandering to that sort of moaner be? And at exactly what time would it be acceptable to display the image/an informative headline on the front page. After you've watched the ITV highlights? +1 maybe? Or after Steve from Accounts has had chance to get back from the pub and watch the whole coverage while surfing sites that he otherwise demands tell him what's going on in road cycling?
Some posters on here really need to wind their fucking necks in.
Seriously? I mean really - seriously?
Go for it: extol the virtues of trying to stay on top of your whiniest commenters' (not customers, or even readers) demands for lack of spoilage to one of the biggest news events of the year.
The alternative is maybe just shutting the fuck up and considering that the road.cc bunch have heard this shit before and decided that, actually, fuck the whiners. Don't take my word for it - take Mr Mac's up there.
Or taking your bitching over to the Loose Women board.
Brexit means Brexit!
SPOILER ALERT
"Cycling man sits on fence over internet row"
A couple of points, I can understand the frustrations, as others have said spoilers do sometimes pop up in unexpected places and it's annoying. The business model argument is tricky, as others have said, I shall just avoid the site until 9pm if the stage is interesting (not today then). On the other hand, in Simon's response he has said that it's been raised before and probably frequently. This thread seems split on the issue, so maybe Davel is being somewhat harsh in his whiniest rant
In other news, what the hell was Porte thinking. He was never going to take the 10 seconds on the line, if it was a 'show of strength' it was a total failure!
I refer the good sir to
Arkell versus Pressdrammadcarew's post.Edit: in all the carnage I missed Jerm14 deleting his bookmark. I suspect others did too. How many more innocent victims must this horror claim?
This.
Seriously... can fuck right off?
Seriously? ... uch strength of feeling, over something so immaterial?
I have to say, if I was looking for the result of the tour stage, I wouldn't come here.
If I was wanting to get an opinion piece on the tour stage result, I wouldn't come here.
Therefore I can see why people might not expect to see the result plasted over the front page.
Out of interest, who does come on here to catch up with the latest results from the tour?
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