Belgian Yves Lampaert won today's first Tour de France stage, an individual time trial in Copenhagen. My prediction was nearly perfect with fellow Belgian Wout van Aert sitting in first place, just one second off what I had predicted. It seems there is a big push by media companies to prevent screen shots, so I had to use my lousy cell phone camera to get Lampaert crossing the finish line.
I'm a dinosaur with social media and cell phone usage. Maybe I'll find a better way to grab an image. Seems like the media outlet wouldn't mind me doing free advertising for it!
We started this year's Tour de France off with a great prediction.
- Stage 1: 15' 17.76" (actual), 15' 21" (prediction), 3.24" slow (0.33% error)
Not a bad way to begin! Lampaert was really cooking on his bike, despite lots of rain and 18-kph (11-mph) winds. Check out his average speed.
- Stage 1: 14.38 m/s (51.78 kph or 32.17 mph)
Lampaert will be in yellow tomorrow, but he and 174 other riders were put on notice when Tadej Pogačar finished third, just 7 s behind the yellow jersey. He's still the man to beat!
Tomorrow's flat second stage begins in Roskilde and ends after 202.2 km (125.6 mi) of cycling, in Nyborg. It will be fun seeing more of Denmark. I'm not sure we can hit tomorrow's winning time as well as today's, but we'll try.
- Stage 2: 4h 32' 29" (prediction)
Early on in each Tour de France, I wonder if predictions will be too fast, too slow, or about right. It seems there are usually a quarter to a third of the stages that we can't predict to better than 3% error. We'll learn a lot during tomorrow's long stage!
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