“Never listen to Lance Armstrong about anything”: Phil Gaimon hits back at disgraced cheat’s “don’t give them a reason to doubt you” warning to Tadej Pogačar; Four-time winner Chris Froome convinces oblivious Tour security guard + more on the live blog
SUMMARY
Four-time winner Chris Froome convinces oblivious Tour security guard to let him through to race finish without pass
‘No, really… Monsieur, I really did win this four times… Please… Let me in…’
My favourite moment of the Nice final stage, was @chrisfroome rocking up in Birkenstocks, trying to convince the guard that he didn’t need a pass to go through 😂 #TDF2024 pic.twitter.com/jZya25O1G0
— Hilde (@hilduspildus) July 21, 2024
Thankfully, Froome made it through without a repeat of the incident at the 2018 Tour which saw him pushed from his bike by an overzealous gendarme who thought he was a fan descending the mountain too soon after the stage had finished…
Then, in 2021, he was mistaken for a ‘leisure rider’ on French TV after being turned back due to forest fires in the South of France.
I bet David Beckham never has to deal with this…
"Sometimes cycling seems like it's for white people only, but now he teaches us that cycling is for all the world"
Biniam Girmay’s historic moment arrived in Nice last night — three stage wins later, the first black African to win one stood on the Tour de France podium adorned in green.
A journey from Asmara to Nice, via the World Cycling Centre in Switzerland, a facility Girmay was invited to train at after being spotted by a UCI scout as a 12-year-old winning a mountain bike race in Eritrea. Culture shocks, initial challenges adapting to Europe’s colder climate, and visa issues were all part of Girmay’s story since. Gent-Wevelgem two years ago was the breakthrough moment, a Giro d’Italia stage in the same year a monumental step too — but three stages of the Tour de France, the green jersey and a place at cycling’s very top table is on another level entirely.
The impact of Girmay’s success was seen online during these past three weeks, in videos from Eritrea, the streets packed with celebrating faces, a country inspired by his achievements.
Mani Arthur, who runs the Black Cyclists Network and has competed for Ghana, told the BBC: “We don’t really see many black riders, especially from Africa, competing in the Tour de France. So to see Girmay not only be competing but to also win a much coveted stage is incredible. He’s proven himself to be amongst the best riders in the world.”
Eritrean cycling coach Aklilu Haile added: “Sometimes cycling seems like it’s for white people only, but now he teaches us that cycling is for all the world.”
REVIEW: Enigma Eikon Frame 2024
"Exhausted" Jonas Vingegaard looking forward to taking a break, while fired-up Remco Evenepoel takes aim at his critics
Jonas Vingegaard quickly shut down any ideas that he could ride the Vuelta a España, telling Eurosport he needs a rest and has never “been this tired after a Grand Tour before”.
“Unfortunately not this year,” he confirmed. “I have different priorities this year, but for sure I will be there again in the future. I’m tired, I don’t think I’ve ever been this tired after a Grand Tour before. To be honest, I’m exhausted, and I need a bit of rest now. It’s been quite some journey because it’s only three and a half months ago I had the worst crash of my career, breaking almost every bone in the upper right side of my body, and puncturing both lungs.”
Meanwhile, the Dane’s fellow podium finisher Remco Evenepoel had some critics to respond to…
“In my home country there has been a lot of criticism. I’ve worked my arse off to be in the best shape possible”
Remco Evenepoel spoke to Matt after the podium presentation 🤍🇧🇪#TDF2024 pic.twitter.com/ZQwLMhXElC
— ITV Cycling (@itvcycling) July 21, 2024
Drone shots impress during final time trial
best stadium in the world 💛#TDF2024 pic.twitter.com/1piYSzWFdq
— Emma Bianchi 🍉 (@cyclartist) July 21, 2024
"I've only ever jumped up and down screaming at the TV twice": Reaction to Mark Cavendish bowing out of Tour de France
Cav was honoured by the race organisation as well, getting his own special podium presentation alongside the other classification winners…
Sir Mark Cavendish, the all-time record holder for stage wins at the Tour de France 3️⃣5️⃣🇮🇲🚀#TDF2024 pic.twitter.com/4KV1hHy72W
— ITV Cycling (@itvcycling) July 21, 2024
For those particularly at a loss for something to do tomorrow lunchtime, Eurosport presenter Orla Chennaoui posted on social media: “Mark Cavendish will be arriving at Heathrow T5 tomorrow (Tuesday) at 1300. Let’s get a little flash Cav Homecoming thing going shall we?”
Some reaction from you guys…
Jakrayan: “I’ve only ever jumped up and down screaming at the TV twice. The first time was watching the Worlds in Copenhagen. The second was seeing the same racer hit the front with about 200m to go just over two weeks ago.
“Thank you Cav, for many things, but particularly for making me understand why and how people get so emotional when watching sport. I shed many tears after number 35, not ashamed to admit it, and I am delighted that you are going out with a fairytale ending after the crappy years, and particularly after being forced to pull out last year with the broken collarbone when you’d already come so close.”
Rendel Harris: “Thanks Cav, you’ve added huge interest, excitement and joy to my watching of pro cycling and especially the Tour for the last nineteen years and finishing your last Tour by finally capturing the elusive #35 was a highlight of the year. Good luck with wherever the sport, or life, takes you in future!”
22cm bars... what does an Olympic track rider's road bike look like?
“It’s not everyday you build a bike for an Olympian, and this is one interesting build!” the people from Saddleback wrote on Instagram. You can say that again…
“Built for track superstar @neah.evans, this @envecomposites Melee features some special modifications to fit the specifications and bike fit requirements. The 22cm wide cockpit is quite a stand-out feature!” they continued.
Cycling UK calls on Labour government to put "divisive rhetoric" around active travel to bed "once and for all" with "coherent and committed" investment for cycling
"Right now, there is nothing that says that it’s being used in the optic of performance enhancement": Movement for Credible Cycling not calling for carbon monoxide rebreathers ban yet
It was one of the hot topics at this year’s Tour de France, the news that UAE Team Emirates, Visma-Lease a Bike and Israel-Premier Tech all admitted that they were using a controversial, but legal, device called a carbon monoxide rebreather during altitude camps to test riders’ progress.
What it all comes down to is that testing using the expensive device, which allows precise dosages of the deadly gas to be inhaled into the lungs, is safe and does not have a performance-enhancing effect. This is what cycling teams are using them for currently.
However, some have expressed discomfort at the fact the very same devices and techniques could be used by those looking to artificially boost haemoglobin.
The Movement for Credible Cycling (MPCC) has told Cyclingnews that rebreathers are “not a subject” it is looking to call to ban at the moment. “We’re talking about something hypothetical rather than something suspicious, so you have to be careful,” the organisation’s president Roger Legeay explained. “Right now, there is nothing that says that it’s being used in the optic of performance enhancement, so it’s not a subject at the moment.”
Ben Stiller congratulates Tadej Pogačar and Jonas Vingegaard on Tour de France
What a dominant #TDF2024 victory by @TamauPogi. 🙌🙌🙌
Incredible second place after a serious crash weeks before the tour by @VingegaardJonas 👏👏👏
And of course the classic calls by @bobkeroll and @PhilLiggett ✊💙
— Ben Stiller (@BenStiller) July 22, 2024
"We used to have a life": Chants of "no more cyclists" at anti-tourism protest in Mallorca as residents complain of tourists driving up cost of living
Dame Sarah Storey selected for ninth Paralympic Games
Britain’s most successful Paralympic athlete Dame Sarah Storey has been selected for a ninth Games and will be looking to defend the titles she has held for the past three Paralympics in the C5 time-trial and C4-5 road race.
“Competing in nine Games is a dream I didn’t ever have. As a teenager I wanted to be an athlete for as long as I possibly could but always assumed I’d be too old by 46! I’ve got such a great support around me, led by my brilliant husband Barney and am very excited to pull on ParalympicsGB kit again,” she said.
"Never listen to Lance Armstrong about anything": Phil Gaimon hits back at disgraced cheat's "don't give them a reason to doubt you" warning to Tadej Pogačar
Former pro cyclist-turned-Strava KOM hunter Phil Gaimon addressed the comments of a certain other retired American cyclist, you know, the one who had seven yellow jerseys stripped for doping. Lance Armstrong bulldozed his way into the final weekend of the Tour de France, warning Tadej Pogačar “don’t give people a reason to hate you” and “don’t give them a reason to doubt you” after the Slovenian ruthlessly won his fourth stage of the race, at Isola 2000 on Friday, picking off the breakaway riders to beat Matteo Jorgenson with another brutal mountain performance.
Armstrong called cycling a “political game”, claiming relevance and being the person best qualified to talk about the subject because… I guess, he got caught for one of sport’s worst cheating scandals so… he’s allowed to make mysterious comments about future generations? Something like that…
Gaimon was unimpressed, telling his podcast: “Never, ever listen to Lance Armstrong about anything.” Cool, story done, next…
Only joking, he added on the episode released yesterday: “This was the performance (Isola 2000) that put it over the line for some folks, this is unbelievable, we don’t believe in this guy any more.
“People keep doing these climb comparisons. They’re looking at the climbs from Pantani and Lance and Ulrich and all those guys. And of course, Tadej smashed a tonne of those this year. And you look at that, it’s like, oh, well, that’s a bad sign. But then look at this is 25, 30 years ago for a lot of those. Think about if you went to ride Pantani’s bike right now up a hill, you’d be like, ‘ew’. Everything has progressed. All sports progress, technology has progressed, aerodynamics, equipment.
“And then you get into like nutrition and training. Every sport is going to get faster over time. Cycling from a certain era was going to regress a little bit and then progress over time. Am I saying Tadej is clean? No, I don’t know that guy. But I see a lot of comments like, ‘man, don’t be naive, everyone’s doing it’. No, they’re not. That is absolutely not true. I know a lot of guys in the peloton still, I’m very close friends with a handful of them.
“I’m not best friends with anyone on the podium, but I’m super tight with people who are very high up, who have gotten significant results this year, whose names have been mentioned in these events, who I trust thoroughly. So is everyone doing it?
No, even back then, that wasn’t the case.”
Pogačar was of course on hand to collect his prize for winning the Tour last night — a press conference with questions about doping…to which he replied: “There will always be doubts because cycling was damaged so much in the past, before my time. In any sport, if somebody is winning there’s always jealousy, there’s always haters. If you don’t have haters, then you’re not succeeding.
“In cycling, WADA and the UCI invested a lot of money and time to make this sport clean. I think this is one of the cleanest sports in the whole world because of what happened so many years ago. I tell you now, it’s not worth it. I think taking anything that can risk your health or your heart is super stupid. You can cycle until you’re 35, but there’s a long way to enjoy life afterwards. It would be stupid to do this and risk your life for stupid racing.”
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Latest Comments
@lawrence18uk Occasionally I see tradies travelling with some tools on the train, compact tool bags, rucksacks and wheelie luggage, often carrying long spirit levels separately, but on a couple of occasions collapsible ladders.
Finally some proper Gravel for the UCI World Championships! …no dates in the article. Racing starts today 10/11 Oct. Watch it free on SBS. … Go well Matt…
@Aluminium can - as an alternative to vans, yes cargo bikes (plenty in Cambridge), and I've been wondering whether supplies could be delivered from retailers - using delivery robots. and it's possible I suppose that ladders could fall in the same category - you could, instead of just hiring a bicycle, hire a ladder and it would arrive of its own accord.
... and we still had apostrophe rationing.
@Rendel Harris There was a bit in the bicycle hating Guardian, a nice little read, part of his justification was to acclimatise to the heat and humidity, which if he was in a better car might have been worth it. Good luck to him, chapeau.
@SecretSam That's not really fair, in fact not fair at all. It wasn't his fault that the last two mountain stages were shortened and on the first one he had dropped everyone and was a minute clear as he summitted the Iseran when the stage was neutralised, and on the second he stayed with or dropped all the other GC contenders. You seem to have forgotten his Giro win as well as Paris Nice and the Tour de Suisse. Only the fourth rider to have won the Tour and Giro before the age of twenty-five. Yes he probably couldn't have stayed with Pogacar even if he hadn't had the awful crash, and probably nor could any other rider in history except perhaps Merckx.
@lesterama Bernal has had two whammys. His crash, which he has probably never fully recovered from and Ineos taking a nosedive. They have no focus and no identity.
@Zermattjohn Read the comment I posted about my experience
I bought some Challenge Strada tyres. After a while the sidewalls began to detach from the tyre and the tread became rippled making them unsafe to use. The shop I bought them from asked me to drop them in and he would show the Challenge rep as he was due in the following week. The rep bizarrely firstly claimed that the tyres had failed because they may have been punctured (they hadn’t), then immediately claimed that they had failed because the rear tyre was more worn than the front! I emailed pictures to Challenge and was told they had failed because they had been fitted incorrectly. The black strip they had introduced to stop the issue I had was supposed to be above the rim. Which it clearly was shown to be correct on the pictures I sent to them which proved that the tyres were correctly fitted. This seems to be the norm now in the cycle industry, if there is an issue with a product, the company automatically blames the end user rather than look to address the issue, thereby pissing the customer off. A pissed off customer rarely returns.
@kingleo And there are hundreds, if not thousands of people holding up a shattered helmet saying it saved their life, the doctor/policeman told me.
13 thoughts on ““Never listen to Lance Armstrong about anything”: Phil Gaimon hits back at disgraced cheat’s “don’t give them a reason to doubt you” warning to Tadej Pogačar; Four-time winner Chris Froome convinces oblivious Tour security guard + more on the live blog”
Guardian interview with
Guardian interview with Victoria Pendleton
Well that was a fucking
Well that was a fucking depressing read. Poor woman.
She has been through so much
She has been through so much shit. Her successes during and since her cycling career are remarkable achievements.
She’s one of so many athletes British Cycling, particularly of that era, have utterly failed
Couple of dashcams from the w
Couple of dashcams from the w/e
Interesting one asking who is a fault
Driver fails to understand the difference between middle of the lane and middle of the road. Fails to think about where to overtake safely and what happens even if the overtake is ok.
Hirsute wrote:
I’m going to go with pretty much everybody:
This is the location from the
This is the location from the dashcam overlay – https://maps.app.goo.gl/WZF7QD1PvVodr6mP6
Possibly the cyclist thought the driver was going to turn right, that would explain the attempt to pass on the left.
Hirsute wrote:
Gotta say, I went into that comment section expecting a fight, but the general consensus (surprisingly) seems to be that “yeah, he’s obviously going to take primary approaching a junction, why would you even think of overtaking there?!”.
Maybe we’re finally getting somewhere?
Yes, I could only find loads
Yes, I could only find loads of comments against the driver and none against the cyclist.
Hirsute wrote:
I’m not convinced that it’s the cyclist, on either of those clips
#1 – motorist overtakes cyclist who is overtaking (badly) parked heavy plant, then thinks that they have evaporated so it’s safe to turn left.
#2 – motorist clearly doesn’t realise that the approach to a junction is a really bad place to overtake a cyclist, cyclist disagrees so moves right ever so slightly so as to discourage said unsafe overtake.
Pog would be so much more
Pog would be so much more believable if he didn’t sound so much like Lance.
Pog: “I think this is one of the cleanest sports in the whole world because of what happened so many years ago. I tell you now, it’s not worth it. I think taking anything that can risk your health or your heart is super stupid. I think this is one of the cleanest sports in the whole world because of what happened so many years ago. I tell you now, it’s not worth it. I think taking anything that can risk your health or your heart is super stupid.”
It sounds a lot like Lance talking about how the Tour is clean because of, well, Festina, and how he’d never dope because of, well, “cancer.” And all this worrying about health risks from people who regularly engage in high-speed, potentially deadly downhill runs on their bikes on a regular basis.
Hopefully, Pog is clean. But it might feel better if he just said: “I”m not doping. I don’t know what else to tell you. You’ll have to take my word for it, I guess, because I can’t bring myself to offer phony claims as to how that wouldn’t be healthy.”
cmedred wrote:
But if he isn’t doping and that is one of his main motivations not to then his claims aren’t phony. Honestly, I know we’re all geared towards suspicion and for good reason but he really is damned if he does and damned if he doesn’t, isn’t he?
ETA:
That’s a totally nonsensical argument, on that basis you can’t believe anyone who says they care about their health if they undertake any potentially dangerous activities as part of their job or hobbies. I’m fond of a good descent myself (nothing like Tour speeds but 80 km/h or so on a good surface with a clear run), I don’t disregard my health the rest of the time on the basis that I could be killed doing it. These are young men who devote their lives to achieving superhuman levels of fitness, just because their pursuit also involves high risk activities doesn’t mean you can write off as nonsense any claim that they care about their health.
Sorry but Froome sounds like
Sorry but Froome sounds like an arrogant ‘do you know who I am’ t**t. If you need accreditation to get passed then get it. Don’t expect officials to risk their jobs just becuase they don’t recognise you. And even if they did, that doesn’t give you the right to get passed anyway.
Rome73 wrote:
Have you considered that maybe the guard was wrong and that he didn’t need accreditation, that maybe he was told by the organisers he could just come along and they would let him in? Clearly accreditation was not essential as the guard eventually did let him in. Best not to judge without the full facts.