Please note that our live blog can sometimes be slow to load. If you continue having problems, try refreshing your browser or, on mobile, switch to the classic version of the site.
Live blog: Tour de France Stage 18 highlights and reaction, gendarme pushes Chris Froome off bike, spectator tries to pull Geraint Thomas off his + more
All today’s news from the site and beyond
Thu, Jul 26, 2018 14:05
Help us to bring you the best cycling content
If you’ve enjoyed this article, then please consider subscribing to road.cc from as little as £2.49. Our mission is to bring you all the news that’s relevant to you as a cyclist, independent reviews, impartial buying advice and more. Your subscription will help us to do more.
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.
14 Comments
Read more...
Read more...
Read more...
Latest Comments
chrisonabike 14 minutes ago
@perce everyone should wear lights, full stop. And punctuate properly - that really gets up my colon! Anyway, must dash...
perce 34 minutes ago
@Ojisan My old English teacher told me i had to work on my punctuation, so I started going to school half an hour earlier.
60somethingcyclist 1 hour ago
Arrogant obnoxious Tory.
Rendel Harris 1 hour ago
How do you see them then? Do you regularly drive into black cars?
eburtthebike 2 hours ago
@Blackthorne83 He'd love to, but some bastard's taken out the cycle lanes.
kil0ran 3 hours ago
I was a few bikes away from the fatal collision during Ride London a few years ago, I barely avoided the victim's dog which was running loose. Definitely one of those slo-mo adrenaline fuelled moments and I was only doing about 40kph. At lead out speeds it really doesn't bear thinking about.
open_roads 3 hours ago
@Xenophon2 "That’s a lot of batteries to keep track of, to the point that I have a dedicated charger with 3 m USB-C cable in my office, another one at home. Can’t imagine having to deal with another battery such as on the Flight Attendant." Top tip: In reality most of the SRAM stuff lasts a month or two even with pretty heavy usage. I just charge all the batteries on the last Sunday of every month and have yet to be caught out. The SRAM batteries are so cheap / small / light it's also worth keeping a spare in a saddle bag or similar.
ajuk.uk@gmail.com 4 hours ago
@chrisonabike There does seem to be evidence that 20 mph limits work on roads that already lend themselves to such low speeds, and I do think the lack of a 25 mph limit option is an issue for some roads. Speed limits should especially not be set very low in the hope that many or most drivers will only exceed them by a set amount because, not only is it not true that many people drive like that, the opposite can happen. Instead of targeting the drivers most likely to cause harm, you're putting the prohibition onto the behaviour of more sensible drivers and forcing the police to target them. The DfT guidance used to have a paragraph calling out this presumption. The extent to which road design and conditions at the time dictate traffic speeds is too stark to ignore. I've seen urban roads with signed 40 mph limits have lower average speeds than some roads with posted 20 mph limits. And yes, that road in Gloucester has signs openly inviting drivers to go faster, and almost none of them do: the non-compliance was about 2%. Compare that to over 99% non-compliance on some roads in Wales. What I'm mainly talking about is the increasing imposition of 20 mph limits on much higher-standard main roads. That's where you see extreme levels of non-compliance. In some cases, the average speed has even been known to go up after the limit has gone down. Showing such contempt just brings speed limits into disrepute and my contention is that drivers should take speed limits seriously.
ajuk.uk@gmail.com 4 hours ago
@chrisonabike There does seem to be evidence that 20 mph limits work on roads that already lend themselves to such low speeds, and I do think the lack of a 25 mph limit option is an issue for some roads. Speed limits should especially not be set very low in the hope that many or most drivers will only exceed them by a set amount because, not only is it not true that many people drive like that, the opposite can happen. Instead of targeting the drivers most likely to cause harm, you're putting the prohibition onto the behaviour of more sensible drivers and forcing the police to target them. The DfT guidance used to have a paragraph calling out this presumption. The extent to which road design and conditions at the time dictate traffic speeds is too stark to ignore. I've seen urban roads with signed 40 mph limits have lower average speeds than some roads with posted 20 mph limits. And yes, that road in Gloucester has signs openly inviting drivers to go faster, and almost none of them do: the non-compliance was about 2%. Compare that to over 99% non-compliance on some roads in Wales. So no, when speed limits match the road, compliance is much higher, but speeds are not. What I'm mainly talking about is the increasing imposition of 20 mph limits on much higher-standard main roads. That's where you see extreme levels of non-compliance. In some cases, the average speed has even been known to go up after the limit has gone down. Showing such contempt just brings speed limits into disrepute and my contention is that drivers should take speed limits seriously.
14 thoughts on “Live blog: Tour de France Stage 18 highlights and reaction, gendarme pushes Chris Froome off bike, spectator tries to pull Geraint Thomas off his + more”
Is it just me wanting it to
Is it just me wanting it to be so or did Chris Froome come out with “Fuck you!” in his best ‘Allo ‘Allo! accent?
Woldsman wrote:
I suspect he had been speaking French but couldn’t think of a better expletive in the heat of the moment.
billymansell]
Indeed. No matter how fluent one becomes in another language, in the heat of the moment, one will always revert to one’s native lingo.
Potty mouth Froomedog!
Potty mouth Froomedog!
Is that an AG2R Soigneur
Is that an AG2R Soigneur trying to grab G ?????
Pitbull Steelers wrote:
No i think it’s just some mouth breather posing as a fan waering AG2R kit. Hopefully Le plod will be feeling his collar and charging him with assault.
Oops, an embarassed cop is
Oops, an embarassed cop is going to get a lot of stick for that
‘Va te faire eпculer’ was
‘Va te faire eпculer’ was what I was told to say, swearing in Italian is much better and generally more insulting when using ‘mother’ & ‘whore’ together!
BehindTheBikesheds wrote:
ou mieux, ‘va te faire foutre’… i would imagine poor old fromey has had enough of the old frenchies by now… he should have said to the viuex flic ‘ Je vous prie de m’excuser, Monsieur, mais j’en ai marre de votre putain de… pays/course/tour/paysants/population (delete as appropriate!)
you are right that in italian it is very expressive – ‘figlio di putana’ etc etc… but a simple ‘vaffanculo’ is enough 🙂
il sole wrote:
Fantastic guitarist
turboprannet wrote:
🙂 And a superb precis of this year’s Omniyawn of a Tour.
Nique ta mère may be what you
Nique ta mère may be what you seek, there are add-ons should that be too genteel.
Merde!
Merde!
Good to see the ‘body guard’
Good to see the ‘body guard’ getting stuck in like a good’un. And not worrying more about his bike than his charge.