Geraint Thomas won today’s stage in spectacular fashion with Chris Froome just behind. Thomas takes the yellow jersey.
I should be thinking “Bravo” but can’t help wondering if they both had a little puff of Froome’s special inhaler 
I was watching at a friend’s house this afternoon… feeling absolutely shattered now… too tired (almost) to get out of the armchair… phew…
That’s a shame. Most of the posters on here wouldn’t manage more than a few km on those roads in this heat and in their case I’m going to be British and say that they’re innocent until proved guilty if and when a question mark arises.
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Wow the tour really started properly yesterday - Geraint Thomas has been superb.
I’m astounded that the public are allowed to get close enough to the riders… to cause an accident…
The fact that people can get close up, for free, is one of the reasons it such a brilliant sporting event. It’s always been hectic, especially the mountain stages, with people getting a bit heated. I’ve only been to a mountain stage once, a long time ago, and the atmosphere was fantastic. It was in the Pantani era and the tifosi were totally mad with excitement which was very contagious.
But over the years the behaviour has got far less respectful which I find very sad. It would be such a shame to loose that contact with a real sport. They were saying yesterday that despite an alcohol ban there were 60 kegs of beer at Dutch corner…nuff said!
It’s one thing to get close up… but quite another to almost block the way… and to cause a rider to fall…
If this had been a horse-riding event… I suspect folk would have more concerns for possible injury to the horse… but, this is only a bicycle race… 
and Stage 14 begins…
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I was talking to one of our neighbour’s, not an unintelligent man, who seriously believes that all British riders dope.
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I thought they all did, one way or another. I am asthmatic and I find it particularly galling that Froome, a fellow asthmatic (apparently), habitually takes about 1000 times the amount of asthma medication I do when I’m having an acute attack, frankly if he is really that asthmatic he should be in a wheelchair.
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But do you ride 3,000km including up the Alpe d’Huez? I did look at he detailed info that Sky released and it does seem that the effects of the fairly gruelling effort, plus dehydration, do have a big influence in concentrating byproducts so it seems as if he had taken more than he actually had.
Which is not to say that Sky don’t push things to the limit, but my conclusion is that a team that spends enormous amounts on training and technical equipment can get better results than other teams without actually doing anything wrong. Yesterday Boardman showed that different skinsuits can improve speeds significantly, and enough to edge the difference in a time trial. So perhaps the focus is on the wrong thing and they should be looking at levelling the playing field between rich and poor teams?
Two words in riposte…Richard Virenque.
Plus much of inuendo comes from reporting on France2 by Laurant Jalabert, who has his own doping history in cycling and hates Chris Froome… personally I feel few are entirely innocent.
I assume you realise that a huge number of pro cyclist, swimmers and skiers have asthma due to the training they do. 70% of the GB swim team are asthmatic, 30% of Team Sky are asthmatic etc etc.