I don’t get how the tour of France is such an event. It’s boring, has rampart cheating, and all the athletes look sickly. No one looks to be enjoying themselves.
Road cycling is a beautiful thing if you understand some of what's going on in a multi-stage race.
Cycling is a team sport because you can save between 16% to 50% of the energy required for movement by drafting other riders.
Other forms of bike racing lack that aspect, they're effectively individual day efforts.
It gives a huge number of tactical permutations and competitions within competitions going on all the time. The multiple stories unfold and resolve over the 3 weeks of the race.
Take yesterday's mountain stage. Ignore the main GC (Yellow jersey) competition. Ignore the race to actually win the stage. Instead just look at the battle for the Green jersey (aka the points or sprinters' competition).
Cavendish is in the lead right now but he's not a climber. To win the jersey he still needs to complete the race and not be eliminated by arbitrary daily time window.
Other teams like Team BikeExchange are maybe less strong in flat stage sprints but they can do other things to attack his position. Like compete for intermediate sprint points during the day.
The race organisers can grow or shrink the rolling time window. That's usually done to keep the bulk of non-climbers, the "autobus", in the race. BikeExchange could have their riders work hard on the front of the autobus to move it faster.
Then Cavendish would have to not only keep up with the climbers contesting the stage and the climbers contesting the overall GC but also the autobus itself. If he trails that and is outside the elimination window then he'll be out and the next place rider in the Green jersey completion becomes the leader.
That's just one thing we're watching for. There's loads of other stories going on like the battle between breakaway riders and the Peloton on the flatter days. They could be all be from different teams but on a day where they don't have to work for their team leader. Will they work together to escape the faster main group knowing that one in the breakaway will be stronger than the others?
There's so much more going on each day if look into it and that's why we love it.
Well GCN Racing is probably a good place[1].
Then I think someone else in the thread has mentioned the Velon highlights[2].
There's actually a set of Tour de France video games which are surprisingly OK. You could search for videos of people playing those as they often explain they're tactics.
They're not a complex as a real Grand Tour race but still quite good fun.
I actually find that rest day highlights shows are also really good for rounding up everything that's been going on too.
Of course there's 100s of books on the subject too.
The tactics can be amazing, though this year, the freak performance of one rider will raise the issue of chemicals - but this has been already been addressed by several commentators - see Dan Lloyd on gcn racing on YouTube. What is going on behind podacar- multiple, multiple, overlapping stories: still news to me after several years are the tacit deals done between teams.
As for looking sickly: riding 21 days at 5000+ calories intake per day at often over 50kmh doesn't strike me as sickly.
How do you look racing, on a bike? It's tough!!
Sitting at my desk for half my day job seems worse.
And, as for it being 'such an event'....? It took me a while to geddit, but the lantern rouge channel explains many tactics.
Would recumbents provide an alternative? I love riding this puppy which leaves my spine all relaxed: https://tromp.github.io/img/M-racer_green.jpg
As a German, I might be used to a lot more rough-and-tumble language, but OP's statement sounds much like the sort of thing I'd hear at a social gathering. You know, a personal opinion? That, in a dialogue, one could bond (or not) over? Which might lead to a social bond (or not?)
I think the problem with these "I don't like x" posts online is that they attract miserable, jealous and bitter people and go downhill fast.
Very different to a comment between two people in a pub environment, where the most likely outcome is some jokes about the riders' (lack of) balls or a jovial discussion about whether or not wearing lycra makes you a wanker.
On an online forum, there is absolutely no limit to parallel conversations. Letting others know a topic is uninteresting is wholly unnecessary.
how? well you can manage your cyclist team's resources (leg muscles, stamina, etc) throughout each stage to try and win. Or for example, knowing when to draft and when to cycle fast.
As it is impossible to "just" cycle as fast as you can.