David Millar's twitterer:

@millarmind: Oh SNAP! Sky have WAG WAR on Twitter. This shit just got real.

I think you mean Wiggo's wife.  Looks like she's as thin-skinned as her man.

Dan that pick looks like me leading you out for the sprints.....hhhmmmm.......

Yack,

we don't have those sweet Coca Cola bidons they've got.

pretty tourist photos for the unwashed masses

Lovely.  Froome's wife went all ragey on Twitter...

http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/12/tour-de-france-tension-simmers-on-twitter/

That was an interesting story. Unlike anything printed or broadcast on Velonews or Cyclingnews. I know they've never been known for journalistic excellence, but this year's coverage is, in general, terrible. And boring.

Since doping has come up, what's striking is how little doping stories have tagged the La Vie Claire team.  Considering LeMond has been so outspoken about doping, I think that if anyone knew he doped, they would have come forward by now.  The other guys, Hinault, Hampsten, Ruttimann, Bauer, Bernard, to name the stars, haven't been tagged either, so far as I can tell.

There was an article posted somewhere on this forum about a young rider from Cafe de Columbia team in the late 80's early 90's talking about the explosion of blood doping around that time. The take home message was that the Columbian riders like Lucho Herrera had amazing success in the mid to late 80's due to their physiological advantage from spending their whole life at high altitude in the Andes. Their natural hematological advantages translated into success in the Grand Tours. This young guy was too late. The Euros had discovered pharmacological ways to nullify the natural advantages of the Columbians, and the wave of Columbian riders faded fast.

My point being, La Vie Claire etc were early 80's. Things may have been simpler then.

pretty tourist photos for the unwashed masses

http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2012/07/the-2012-tour-de-france-part-1-of-2/100337/?google_editors_picks=true

find the flaw

Two errors:
Slide 15 the peleton is passing through a barley field not a wheat field.

Slide 33, Ryder Hesjedal is 32 years old. A little on the old side to be wearing the best young rider's jersey. 

Tomorrow I fully expect that John McCain will receive one of these in the mail after supporting the USADA.

Wow

Curiouser and curiouser......

I don't get the significance. He has a slightly higher hematocrit % during the tour but far fewer baby red blood cells. What does that indicate? 

It's not that much of a "gotcha" chart, if true, but this is why Wiggins and Lance and almost everyone doesn't wanna release blood info. It's easy fodder for interpretation of your desired result.

From what I read for people wanting to say he did some autologous blood transfusions, the higher hematocrit COULD indicate that (though still in an acceptable normal range, nowhere near Pantani levels), along with the lower immature RBC (he's injecting enough mature RBC's that the normal production slows down). Not sure that would even happen. This is also pointed to as a hole in his "I never doped" defense. It leaves open the possibility of other methods of blood manipulation that maybe technically didnt involve drugs. Depends on what your "definition of *IS* is."

But Stokes/Adam could probably tell you more about other possible causes. And another sports scientist would tell you that during those intense 6 weeks of Dauphin, training, Tour, that it's natural to have a hematocrit spike and a reduction in reticulocytes bc the body is requiring a massive O2 load almost constantly, so mature ones stay around a bit longer (have a range of 90-120 days, right?) and the body is shunting resources to recovery, etc.

Who cares. He was a total badass on the bike and fun to watch. I don't need these guys to be likeable. They're all celebutards to me. I don't understand why people are so obsessed with him. People love Coppi, Anquetil, Merxxkkyckkkxxx, they all doped. Why isn't the govt spending millions going after all the wall street crooks who actually ruined thousands of people's lives? I know that sounds naive. But still!

I love data. That's why I like my new powertap. But I don't always know what to do with it. I do notice that when it is hot I go slower.
One shouldn't use red/green combination because some people are color blind that way.
But even color blind people will probably spot two groups within this data.
As Jeff said, the body will likely respond to physiological stimuli by naturally changing ones hematological profile. I just don't know what the normal range of variability is within one person (normal range of reticulocytes is 0.5-1.5% is the general population).
I just care what they look like on a molecular level. I only need a few ml.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22098732

This is terrible for my fantasy team.  He doesn't care about me.  Can you cut people from your team before they quit?

FUUUUUUCKT!

And, Schleck is out:

http://www.pelotonmagazine.com/Le-Tour/content/24/1697/Schleck-Leaves-Tour-de-France

http://velonews.competitor.com/2012/07/news/radioshack-pulls-schleck-from-tour-says-team-does-not-use-diuretic_230317

not that I had a chance, but my fantasy season is done.

Slightly off topic, but I'm reading Matt Rendell's Pantani Bio.  Hematocrit over 60?!?  Whoa.

Jules, 

Pantani !!  I miss that little doper.  Frank Vandenbrouk too.  I love that Pantani tried to bait Armstrong out of the peloton on his suicide attack in the 2000 tour.  If Bruyneel hadn't patched Ferrari through to Lance's race radio....he probably would have chased him.  Ferrari ran the algorithm and deduced that Panatni could not maintain the pace...even at a 61 hematocrit.  Race radios are crap! I hate that the field can now let a break dangle until the final K's nefore they reel it in.. Where is the sportsmanship in that???

I dont think race radios have the "breakaway killer" aspect most give credit for. There were fewer long breakaway successes in the past that I remember because teams would never let them go so far. They have had motos giving time splits to riders for decades, since the '60s at least, and they still do today. It's not a mystery how far up the road a break is, radio or not.

@Wump: yeah, and per Jensie those same journos can go back to manual typewriters, no electronics and public phones to communicate.

I don't think that radios have an impact in the peloton's ability to reel in the break, as mentioned that has happened for a long time. The peloton have been able to crunch the numbers and calculate when to start chasing for decades, same as the autobus knows how hard to ride to make the time cut.

However I do think they impact a number of other issues that have changed racing dynamics.

a) Riders who study the route book, pay attention during the morning meeting and can read the conditions well are no longer at an advantage, since a DS in the car can instruct his team that in x Km they will be turning into a cross wind, etc

b) Said instructions from many DS to multiple teams causes hundreds of riders to suddenly try and get to the front, which causes crashes.

c) Riders dig deeper with a someone shouting at them, hence someone who may be drifting out of the back with 2km of a climb left and who is thinking "this hurts too much" will get the necessary motivation in their earpiece and dig just a bit deeper to hang on.

In many ways this leads to the fastest and/or strongest winning regularly, whereas IMHO being a bike racer should involve being able to read a race, read the parcours/conditions and exhibit mental strength as well as physical.

Clearly, this is not a rule, but more of a trend and there are exceptions, such as an LLS besting Sagan on Sunday.

I think Ian makes some good points.  It changes the tactical game in that it's possible the better tacticians on the road and their teams have had a good portion of their edge on rivals taken away by a DS with much greater experience in the team car.

I think the real white elephant - equipment notwithstanding, is the general level of fitness in the peloton. The tricky old northern classics are still won by the same kind of riders with the few exceptions I see coming down to everyone being so fit. There are 40 guys in with a chance to win at the end of Flanders and it isn't because of radios. In the past there were 5 or 6 guys at the start who had a chance and you'd always get to see these same guys beat the crap out of each other. Same with the idea of 'get to the front', there are just too many guys fighting for the same little B-road space these days, and there is more road furniture. In the 70s 'go to the front' meant 2 or three guys and the rest climb off at the next feed station.