I never fully understand the anti-bike hatred of some car drivers, although it did annoy me a lot to see a rider sail through red lights on my way to work when we should be playing by the rules and taking the wind from those aggressive drivers’ sails. There was a good point made about the age and gender of the aggressive tweeters, not fitting the imagined profile of older white van-driving men. The stream of aggression that makes the roads a more dangerous place for cyclists even made Buzzfeed (courtesy of @cyclehatred).
It’s a relief to look at cycling where the cars are only there to help the riders out, like in the Giro (although perhaps not as much as Gavazzi thought, after he has been disqualified for drafting the team cars as he sat in last place overall). Yesterday’s stage was pan-flat with a nasty hilly kick at the end to mess with the sprinters’ fun. It was on this climb that Cavendish lost touch and his Omega Pharma Quickstep team gathered to try to pull him back in while Visconti from Movistar (again) desperately tried to hang on to a lead of about 30 seconds, taking advantage of confusion in the main group. With one kilometre to go he was hanging onto the lead, helped by some gutsy descending, and pulled out a win that belied all the pre-race ideas of this being one for the sprinters and therefore a shoe-in for Cavendish.
Movistar made it two wins in a row and are really shining in a way we’ve not seen before. Navardauskas came second, but seemed to be unaware that he had not caught the leader and the GC contenders came in marking each other and keeping the picture the same in the top three.
Meanwhile, this made me want to go to Wales again soon. A perfect example of creating a new destination bike-track in an area of declining industry and tourism:
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