and chapeau sir wiggo, richly deserved award for a brilliant track career and his stellar year on the road

i guess looking back at this year's TDF now, it really was an amazingly well planned race by sky, there was a great article in ride mag (i think, which is brilliant btw, australia should be proud of it) about rogers and porte and the way they smashed down all of the attacks this year by watching the wattages of everyone on breaks and who could sustain peak outputs for what amount of time and the like. great planning, may have looked boring at the time but it really was one of the more interesting things from the sport science side of things this year.

compare that to la vuelta, (which i was lucky enough to see the last day of) which was won off the back of an absolutely insane solo attack from contador on stage 17, some things you just can't plan for. i know he polarises people, but he is ****ing amazing when he goes off one, absolutely blew purito out of the water. again in the latest ride mag there is a breakdown of how the move was planned out by straya's own brad mcgee - great read

my favourite moment of this year - marc madiot going mental at thibaut pinot in stage 8 of the tdf when he knows he's got it in the bag