Cars with automatic brake sensors built into them are wonderful when used in cities and other places where they can keep unaware drivers from killing cyclists. However, a bike race’s lead car is perhaps the worst possible vehicle for the technology, and five cyclists were the unfortunate victims of a lead car at the…
Track cycling crashes are ugly. Riders can reach over 40 MPH on their sprints, and falling at that speed can often leave you with skin burns, which half of the Australian team suffered when they crashed a week ago.
Highlights are hard to come by at the Tour de France. Cameramen are always on the lookout for weird little moments, like Taylor Phinney playing one of those weird shell helmets like a drum or Alejandro Valverde reading the newspaper. However, sprint genius Mark Cavendish stopping for a pee break isn’t exactly the best…
Sprinters don’t tend to have long peaks in cycling. For every Erik Zabel or Robbie McEwen who dominates the Tour de France for half a decade, you have bushels of Thor Hushovds and Alessandro Petacchis—who win one points competition and a decent amount of stages, but never hold onto the crown of “World’s Best Sprinter”…
The opening stage of the Tour de France was a wild one. The feared crosswinds of northern France did not split up the race and produce time gaps between general classification contenders like they did last year. Heavy winds can make it impossible for riders that come unmoored from the peloton to fight their way back…
The opening stage of this year's Tour de France was a blatant attempt to get Mark Cavendish his first yellow jersey. Organizers kicked off the race with a pancake-flat run into Harrogate, UK, where Cavendish's mother is from. It's probably the only time the peloton's most accomplished sprinter will race in a Grand…
Mark Cavendish was involved in (read: pretty much created) a crash in the final 400 meters of the opening stage of the Tour de France. While trying to create some room for himself to maneuver, he pushed against Simon Gerrans and the two bikes become entangled and they both went flying. Miraculously, neither man was…
Multiple outlets are reporting that a spectator threw piss at Britain's Mark Cavendish during the Tour de France's 11th stage today. There are neither photos nor video of the pissbombing (at least not yet!), which came one day after Cavendish was involved in this collision near the finish line with the Netherlands'…
You can't win the tour alone. The flat stages featured in the first week tend to be fast, and feature a peloton riding as a single group through often narrow town streets. This is one reason crashes are most frequent during the first week. These stages favor the sprint specialists, and if the team has a contender for…
Stage 3 of the 2012 edition of the Tour de France was taken by 22-year-old rising star Peter Sagan—the youngest winner of a Tour de France stage since Lance Armstrong did it at the age of 21 in 1993. Sagan has now won two stages, and you can expect him to win a couple more this tour (if not this week). The jersey…
Frankly, I'm torn on which call is better: The American version, courtesy of Universal Sports, or the slightly more measured Russian perspective as heard on Eurosport. As for Phinney, he kept his pink jersey, got some X-rays at a local hospital, and returned to practice today, cankles and all.
Mark Cavendish took today's 11th stage, thanks to some well-timed headbutts from teammate Mark Renshaw. Renshaw became the first rider kicked out of the Tour, but it was totally worth it.
