LeTour 2023

 Thoughts on LeTour 2023

Photo copied from here.

Zio waited awhile for this post. Watching highlights on Italian TV finally got him going on it.

Najlepsa hvala (many thanks) to Tadej Pogacar! (in white above) Without him how dull would this edition of Le Grand Boucle have been? A boring Danish cyborg (in yellow above) would have wiped-the-floor with everyone, especially as two contenders crashed out on the first day. At least UAE attacked and tried to make a race out of it while J-V mostly defended. We'll probably never know what caused Pogacar to blow-up on Stage 17 but that was the end of what was at least an interesting two-way battle. 

BRAVO to Giulio Ciccone (in polka dots above) first Italian king of the mountains at LeTour since Claudio Chiappucci in 1992.

Well done to Jasper Philipsen though while nobody really wanted to see another Tashkent Terror or Cannonball out there you still proved you were the fastest with or without your famous lead-out man.

Not so well done to Tour security. Francophones love to criticize the Giro d'Italia for what they claim is poor crowd control but when was the last time an attack by a contender was thwarted by crowds narrowing the road or riders knocked off by spectators like we saw this year at LeTour?

Not so well done either to the equipment suppliers, especially the neutral support team that couldn't get Nils Politt a bike he could ride!! How many chains did we see break or somehow malfunction? The marketing-mavens tell us modern 12-speed electronic drivetrains are accurate, efficient and foolproof, but....

Zio had his usual anger at the TV director who too often seemed to miss a move while showing us a way-too-long scenery shot. Zio wonders if the "picture breakup" critics of Italian RAI TV go on about (RAI's director used to default to a fixed camera view of the finish when this happened) happens to EMG just as often but the director switches over to scenery shots rather than a static image from the finish to hide it?

Congratulations Jonas Vingegaard on another TdF win. It's not your fault you don't have much panache. If it wasn't for cycling you'd be working in that fish market where no panache is required either.

Vive LeTour!