Le Tour 2015 BaKano Awards

Here they are, several weeks later and after Vuelta already started. But I had many stuff to do including some sightseeing so sorry about that.
Hope you enjoy reading it, as much as I enjoyed coming up with them:

"I Don't Want It" Award: There was that rider that didn't want to lead the escapees on a climb so he swerved right so fast that almost crashed into a motorbike. And there was that other rider that didn't want his musette bag so he fell when it was given to him.

French pedal strokes - 2015 3/3

The Tour de France 2015, also known as Tour de Froome, is now over. And as soon as it was over the excitement bug inside starts to fade and so it took longer to write the final article about this year edition.

Also once it is over it's harder to talk about the last week, because all is settled no new predictions only conclusions. So I have to go back to the 2 other articles to see my thoughts and considerations and sum it all up.

It didn't go as I thought although I got it right in what comes to Quintana winning back some time from Froome. And he did attack on both Stage 19 and Stage 20. What surprises me is that it was indeed due to the Sky team that Froome kept the yellow jersey, on the climb to Alpe d'Huez. I thought he could defend alone but he couldn't. He really needed help from his team-mates and 3 of them actually. If Sky would have been exhausted as suggested in earlier stages and Froome isolated, I think he would have lost several minutes and the Tour.

French pedal strokes - 2015 2/3

14 stages done, Stage 15 is going on right now and I am writing my second article about this year's edition of the Tour de France.

I expected fireworks on the second week and we did have great stages and nice results but not the attacks I was expecting. Well, kind of. Movistar did attack here and there, Quintana included, but Froome is still in control. I was expecting more attacks from Movistar and Tinkoff-Saxo on Stage 12. If I were a betting person I would have placed a bet on Quintana to won the stage or at least gain back some time, but it was not to be.
The big change we had was that the Big 4 became the Big 5 as Tejay van Garderen from BMC kept himself in the hunt, in particular after BMC won the Team Time Trial.
Nibali is gong backwards and Contador again lost more time.
Froome has one foot on the door, he just needs one final effort and crack it open.

French pedal strokes - 2015 1/3

I love cycling and follow the cycling season (road competition) closely every year.
The Tour de France being the biggest event of them all, is of course the crown jewel.

The 2015 edition is under way and more than 1 third (of the stages) is completed already.
Many things happened and already and has usual many crashes that took a toll on the peloton. Not as high impact as last year, when we lost the defending champion on week 1. This year we only lost 2 yellow jerseys, that were not contenders for the overall win.

And so all the Big 4 of current cycling are still there: Froome, Contador, Nibali and Quintana.

Be careful what you wish for

A German driver, dressed in red and stepping on the top place of the podium. Now that was typical a decade ago, but today there was a replay of that scenario. Who would have thought that 2 weeks ago?

Not many people for sure, and I admit me neither. But I am happy, more than happy. Mainly because as usual after one race, sometimes after the Winter tests, people come and complain about all sorts of things. The new rules and engines are crap. There is no competition. Mercedes are too far ahead and will win everything. Rules have to be changed to make the sport more competitive. And then it takes 1 race, 1 race only and we get already a different winner. And a driver and team that were win less the year before.
It was brilliant, absolutely brilliant, that Vettel and Ferrari answered so many questions in just a couple of hours.

A match made in heaven?

When the new partnership between McLaren and Honda for the 2015 season was announced, many people thought it would be a repeat of the previous partnership that dominated F1 in the late 80s and early 90s.
On top of that the last year that Honda had a turbo F1 engine paired with a McLaren car, they dominated entirely the season winning all bar one race.
Me on the other hand, as well as some others of course, was actually thinking on the previous venture in F1 by Honda that failed big time. Toyota also had big ambitious and came up short so I did not trusted much in the Japanese engineering, as before.

Starting the new season with the first Grand Prix at Melbourne, many people were still believing McLaren would pull a Red Bull 2014 (where they performed miserably in testing only to be the second fastest team at the season start).
In reality they were a mirror of the 1988 season. Back then they locked up the first row in Qualifying and now they locked up the last row, like a mirror (where left is right and right is left)...