Postponing this year's Tour de France from July to late August and much of September because of the global pandemic has surely influence cycling this year. On a much smaller scale, the postponement has influenced my ability to watch and study the race. Classes at my university commenced on 12 August, which has meant that I've been unable to watch some stages live. I've had to watch them on replay.
Besides altering my academic and research work, this year's Tour de France overlapped with my transition from quadragenarian to quinquagenarian, which happened during yesterday's Stage 8. Today I've managed to watch replays of the last few kilometres of Stages 8 and 9 so that I could see the winners, get the winning times, and grab screen shots. I'll have to watch longer stretches of those first two mountain stages tonight so that I might better understand what happened.
Stage 8 saw Nans Peters finishing alone and thrilling his home country of France. He looks happy!
General classification battles were taking place behind Peters. We were a bit fast on this stage. Our prediction's comparison with reality and Peters's average speed are given below.
- Stage 08: 4h 02' 12" (actual), 3h 44' 26" (prediction), 17' 46" fast (-7.34% error)
- Stage 08: 9.70 m/s (34.93 kph or 21.70 mph)
Were cyclists holding back a little in anticipation of Stage 9? Even the race organizers didn't think the average speed would be below 36 kph. I'll have to watch the replay to see how slow the peloton looked early in the stage.
Stage 9 saw serious shakeup in the general classification as Primož Roglič of Slovenia took the yellow jersey from England's Adam Yates, who now sits in 8th place, 62 seconds behind Roglič. Today was a red letter day for Slovenia because Tadej Pogačar, who won't be 22 years old until the 21st of this month, won the sprint to take Stage 9. Check out Pogačar on the left just as he crossed the finish line today. Racing speeds must have been up to something more normal today. We did much better on today's stage compared to yesterday's stage.
- Stage 09: 3h 55' 17" (actual), 3h 51' 01" (prediction), 04' 16" fast (-1.81% error)
- Stage 09: 10.84 m/s (39.02 kph or 24.24 mph)
Tomorrow's rest day could have been on riders' minds as they pushed harder today than yesterday. I like our Stage 9 prediction! Look out for last year's winner, Egan Bernal, who now sits in second place in the general classification, just 21 seconds behind Roglič.
I will take advantage of tomorrow's rest day by watching replays of Stages 8 and 9 tonight, and then posting our Stage 10 prediction sometime tomorrow.
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