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Tour de France - Stage 12

Tour de France
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Cadel Evans

With a fairly flat, 168.5km route, Stage 12 takes the Tour east and then north from Lavelanet to Narbonne.

After a lumpy start, it's largely downhill for the last 50km; an ideal day for the sprinters.

If his legs have recovered from the Pyrenees, "Cannonball" Cavendish has the chance to really make history, and become the first Briton to win three stages of the Tour in the same year.

No pressure, then.

Elsewhere, there was no change at the top yesterday - Cadel Evans still leads by one second from Frank Schleck.

What are your predictions for the day?

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posted Jul 17, 2008

Very unlikely since a)dopage has been strong this year (see exit of Beltrane and Ricco and one other) - if Cav was not clean it would be known by now after two previous stage wins and b) he is the track partner of Bradley Wiggins,
a fierce critic of drug use.

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posted Jul 17, 2008

And at 5.52 the Ceefax page has finally refreshed and tells the world of Cav's historic victory. Why so long - was the Ceefax beset by technical difficulties as well??

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posted Jul 17, 2008

I think the BBCi team just decided to go to the pub for a couple of hours.

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posted Jul 17, 2008

he confessed to one

but maybe the others were too

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comment by foscari (U1655980)

posted Jul 17, 2008

I have always enjoyed "Tour de France".The coverage on Eurosport is terrific.I know all the doping is scandalous,but probably no worse than the Athletics and some other sports at the forth coming Olympics.I dont think the BBC cover it properly, because its not all together a "politically correct" sport. If you asked most of the rest of sports orientated Europe to name one British sportsman they have heard of it would probably be Cavendish now.

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posted Jul 17, 2008

All - as per earlier posts, we encountered severe technical problems with our publishing system between roughly 1530 and 1740.

This impacted all of our platforms - Web, Ceefax, Digital Text and Mobile - hence the delays in publishing the news of Mark Cavendish's win.

Many apologies.

But, no lack of desire to report it nor, unfortunately, a trip to the pub...

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posted Jul 17, 2008

Thanks Andy - I do believe you. Sadly, after years of BBC bias against cycling, I still think I see it's manifestations everywhere I look.

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comment by bigcog (U8198653)

posted Jul 18, 2008

even a tired Cav is a winner, if the situation is right he'll go for it again today and win. Maybe I am biased but watching the slow-mo replay Cav puts everything into the sprint, his whole body pushing the bike to the limit. The rest in comparison don't seem to do so and maybe don't have the same 100% hunger for the win? That's why he's a winner I guess, not just his talent but his passion.

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comment by deegib (U12697786)

posted Jul 18, 2008

If it doesn't end in a big crash I'll eat my cycling hat. And it's not one of those soft cloth ones.

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posted Jul 18, 2008

How did that taste then?

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