Tour de France: ​Stage 19 Daily Dish

Cannondale-Drapac found the new sponsor they've been looking for.


Joe Lindsey |

Cannondale-Drapac found the new sponsor they’ve been looking for. – By Joe Lindsey

tourdailydish19

It’s been no secret the past month that the US-registered Cannondale-Drapac team was looking for a new sponsor. This week, they found one. Officially incorporated as Slipstream Sports, the American pro team is in its ninth Tour de France and has seemingly had almost as many lives, with eight total title or co-title sponsors and no less than three mergers with other teams.

That’s life in the WorldTour, where title sponsor deals only last a few years and the longevity of sponsors like FDJ, now at 20+ years, and the stability they provide, is a rarity. But few have proved more adept at finding backing than Slipstream GM and founder Jonathan Vaughters, and on Friday the team announced it had signed a deal with Oath, the renamed media division of Yahoo-AOL that is now part of Verizon.

There are still some questions. The announcement appears to cover, for now, just one season, 2018. And Oath is officially the team’s “exclusive digital media sponsor,” but the team hasn’t said if that means it’s a new title sponsor. One thing we do know is that the team and Oath do plan to do more than just a basic money-for-brand-on-jersey swap. Oath has more than 50 media brands including the HuffPost, Yahoo Sports and Engadget, all of which could become platforms for the sponsor to share stories about the team and sport that Vaughters, at least, says often go untold.

Annemiek Van Vleuten Destroys Strava Izoard Strava Segment

Dutch rider Annemiek Van Vleuten won yesterday’s first stage of La Course with a convincing solo attack and victory on the Izoard climb. It was a rare opportunity for men and women to race over the same terrain, which allowed Strava spectators to see some impressive comparisons.

Van Vleuten’s pace over the final five kilometres was so high that only a few riders in the men’s field went faster over the same portion. Of the 41 men in the Tour who uploaded their Stage 18 rides to Strava, just two (stage winner Warren Barguil and Romain Bardet) were faster up the final part of the climb. And Van Vleuten’s time on the full Strava segment—27:16—was actually 24 seconds faster than Barguil’s.

Van Vleuten finished a full 43 seconds clear of second-place Lizzie Deignan of the powerhouse Boels-Dolmans team.

Sky Plans to Race Controversial Skinsuits in Saturday’s TT

It seems long ago and far away, but three weeks ago on Stage 1, the biggest stories of the day were the crash-DNF of hopeful Alejandro Valverde and the controversy over Sky’s skinsuits, which featured drag-reducing dimples on the front of the arms and shoulders.

In the intervening weeks, the UCI has not reversed itself on the legality, despite rules about “non-essential items designed to reduce air resistance” that seem to clearly suggest that the tech isn’t legal. So, Sky naturally plans to use them on Saturday for the 22km time trial in Marseille. One rider who won’t be, however? Chris Froome. As leader of the Tour, he’ll race in a skinsuit from the Tour’s official clothing provider, le Coq Sportif, instead of the controversial kit from Sky sponsor Castelli.

It will also be interesting to see what other teams do in response. Teams have in the past attempted to push boundaries with skinsuits, including the Pearl Izumi skinsuits that Garmin ran in 2010 that featured a flap of fabric in the armpit that stretched into a flying-squirrel-like wing before the UCI told them the suits weren’t legal. With Sky given an effective green light in Stage 1, teams have now had three weeks to work with their apparel sponsors to mimic the tech, so we’ll see what’s in place on the start line.

Don’t be too surprised if some—or all—of the designs are disallowed, however. UCI rules are sometimes vague and other times inconsistently interpreted, as third-place Rigoberto Uran discovered on Stage 1 when his time trial bike’s cockpit, which had been cleared as legal by one commissaire two hours before the start, was disallowed by a second commissaire just five minutes before Uran was due to roll out of the start house. The team blames that incident for at least some of Uran’s 51-second loss to Froome in that opening TT. Given that Uran is just 29 seconds down now, it’s easy to see how consequential rules decisions can be.

Will Froome Go Winless?

While Chris Froome will almost certainly win his fourth Tour de France in five years, he’s not a stage-win machine in the mold of past champions like Eddy Merckx. He’s won seven stages total across six Tours.

And while he’s certainly a favourite to take the win today, he’ll face stiff competition from a number of riders including his own teammate, ex-World Time Trial Champion Vasil Kiryienka, multiple-time World Champion Tony Martin of Katusha and Stage 17 winner Primoz Roglic of LottoNL-Jumbo, among others.

Should Froome not get the win today in the TT but still win the tour, it will make the first of his four Tour titles that did not feature at least one stage win. It’ll also be the first time since at least 2010 that a Tour winner won the overall without winning a stage. (We say “at least” because it’s complicated: Alberto Contador won the 2010 Tour without a stage victory but the title was later stripped and awarded to Andy Schleck, who won two stages.)

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