Tag Archives: Richie Porte

Oh no not again….Richie Porte crashes out of the TDF 2018

Dear Rouleurs,

You have to feel for Richie Porte, Australia’s best chance of winning the Tour De France (TDF 2018), Stage 9 Arras to Roubaix over the dreaded cobbles, was always going to be a stern test of GC riders. It’s a very bad case of deja vu for Porte, who fractured his pelvis on the corresponding stage, last year. That horrific crash on a high speed descent, left MMT thanking the stars he has disc brakes on his Domane.

To crash out at the 10km mark, before reaching the cobbles, was just plain bad luck.  The team doctor’s  assessment of ‘Disjonction acromio-claviculaire de l’epaule droite’ was later updated to fracture of the right clavicle.  MMT can’t see how Porte could be ready in time for 2018 version of La Veulta.  This shameless plagiarised article from yesterday’s Sun-Herald, tells the tale of woe.

 

In fact, this blog could have just as easily been about Chris Froome who also had stack but had the good fortune to land on grass rather than bitumen. Almost all of the GC riders had some kind of misadventure over 156km  mini-Paris-Roubaix par cours.

Team BMC had a pretty poor day, despite Greg Van Avermaet’s second place and successful defense of the Yellow Jersey.  Tejay van Garderen, BMC’s other GC hope, lost almost 5 minutes on the stage, with a succession of crashes.  Bruised and battered by the day he’s almost 4 and 1/2 minutes behind Chris Froome.  Froome sits in equal 8th with Michelton-Scott’s Adam Yates.  Provided Froome stays upright on the remaining 11 Stages, he will win his 5th TDF and complete a TDF-Giro double.

Until next time, ride safe

MMT

MMT does the TDF 2018 – part 1

Dear Rouleurs,

MMT can’t wait for the weekend and the bulk binge of SBS Tour de France (TDF) highlight packages he intend to watch.  Sadly, Michael Matthews has already withdrawn from the TDF with some form of YAFF and will not defend his green jersey from last year.  Mind you it looks like Peter Sagan already has this in the bag, with none of the other sprinters really doing too much.  It looks like the changing of the guard is starting to occur.  Yes I’m looking at you Messrs Kittel, Greipel and Cavendish.

However, MMT is much more interested in the fate of the remaining Australian’s competing this year.  To this end, MMT has put together a General Classification focused graph showing how remaining ten Australian’s are going.  MMT had considered including non-Australian members of the Michelton-Scott team eg Daryl Impey and Adam Yates, but thought better of it.  So here’s the graph.

 What this reveals, is that Australia’s only GC rider, Richie Porte is having a fair crack, being 11th on overall time.  The next best Australian is Simon Clarke in 70th.  Everyone else is outside the first 100, which is consistent with these guys being either team captains eg Simon Gerrans or domestiques eg Luke Durbridge.

MMT will update this graph next week. Hopefully Richie Porte is in the top 5 by then.  MMT is really looking forward to stage 9, which retraces most if the Paris-Roubaix route.  While a GC rider may not win the tour on this stage, they certainly can lose it by either crashing out or losing time on the back of pack splitting the peloton.  Either way MMT can’t wait….woo hoo!!

Until next time, ride safe

MARV

Marv’s 2017 Annual Report

Dear Rouleurs,

Hasn’t 2017 disappeared in the blink of an eye.  MMT had a great year all things considered.  He watched his adorable little red-haired girl grow from rug rat to toddler and attend childcare.  He received the best ever Father’s Day present in the form of her first steps in this world…awesome work bubba girl.  His beloved AFL football team, Richmond Tigers broke its 37 year drought and won the 2017 AFL Premiership.  MMT still gets goosebumps and feels a bit teary when thinks about that one.

So onto cycling, like Alan Kohler on ABC I have a bunch of pretty charts to present.  The first one shows my yearly worm, or how I accumulated kilometres over the course of the last 12 months. The sharp kick at the end is the Festive 500.  In December, alone, MMT did nearly 1000km.

The second, has the same data set, except its month by month.  This graph clearly shows the impact of worst cold and flu season Victoria has for 15 years. MMT was seriously YAFFed in April, June, August and September.  It also shows how doing Rapha related stuff has pushed my annual kilometres to almost 8,000.

The final graph shows my ride activity month on month.  It seems the combination of work, life, Bubba mean that about 22 to 25 rides a month is what I can expect for the next few years.

So in summary the numbers look like this:

So in an average month MMT, does 24 rides, for 660km, which takes about 28 hours and burns 33,460 calories.  Honestly, MTT feels that he should be much, much thinner than he is, after seeing these numbers.  That would be something to work on in 2018.

Until next blog, ride safe

Marv

PS Go Richie Porte in Team BMC in the 2018 TDU

Merry Christmas from MMT

Dear Rouleurs,

November and December have vanished in the blink of an eye, and MMT has not posted anything for over three weeks. MMT is way behind on updating his bike log.  A quick look at MMT’s Strava account reveals a grand total of almost 7,500 Km.  MMT has averaged 5 rides  and 160 Km a week all year.  Damn….thats not bad.  When MMT returns to work next year he’ll have to do the math and see where he ended up.

Santa came early for MMT.  He took delivery of a very cool and fast pair of Aeolus 5 wheels for his beloved Domane.  Whilst his wallet will hurt for a few months, the wheels have been absolutely superb and worth the $4,000 they cost.

The other nifty addition, to MMT’s never ending collection of bike paraphernalia, has been a Topeak bike seat.  This has been installed on Marv’s old Canondale F4, for the specific purpose of doing Sunday morning rides to the park with gorgeous half-pint daughter.  Here she is locked into the seat and enjoying being the centre of attention.

Change of topic, MMT scanned an article on Richie Porte a few months ago.  He’s Tasmania’s (er…Australia’s as well) best chance to win the Tour de France next year.  He had a horrific stack this year breaking his pelvis among other things.  You can see the screen capture of this incident, that I posted a few months ago.  The good news is that he is back training.  Another interesting development was the departure of Simon Gerrans to Porte’s Team BMC Racing.  That could make for a very interesting combination on the road next year.  Anyhow here’s blatant breach of copyright from Herald Sun a few months ago.

So finally, MMT and famil would like to wish any that may have accidently stumbled across this blog, a very Merry Christmas and a prosperous 2018.

Until next time, ride safe.

Marv