Talk:2006 Tour de France

Given the drugdping scandals

We need a link. Bona Fides 14:50, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Favorites

I noticed that last year the equivalent section on yellow jersey contenders was dynamically altered during the race and eventually removed (I've recently restored it). The true dynamic contender list is, sooner or later, the top 5 or so on GC, so I see no reason to keep an updated list of contenders separately. The original list of favorites, whether half retire or the eventual winner is not among them, is, however, a useful piece of information and, I believe, should remain in the article, statically, forever. So, this is a request to not add or delete from the Favorites list once this year's Tour has begun. Agreed? (please discuss/vote accordingly below) --Serge 02:48, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

VOTE!

(Please vote Agree or Disagree and sign with --~~~~. All comments should be made in the above Discussion section.))

Agree. --Serge 02:48, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Support. i like the idea of at the end of the tour, or in the years following, being able to see who where the early and pre-race favorites. uri budnik 04:18, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Agree Will.law 18:25, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

also, the names of basso, ullrich, mancebo etc have already been removed from the table of contenders. i think if everyone agrees, they should be put back in, with a note explaining they were withdrawn from the race the day before the start. Will.law 18:29, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

Agree, and the the names should be put back in. --Per Abrahamsen 18:50, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

Agree once its sorted exactly who is going to be on the start line dark horse 03:41, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

• I suspect I disagree given the starting line changes - this will be a different tour, not just because Lance isn't there.--A Y Arktos\^talk 09:07, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

But for historical purposes, I think it's a mistake to not list Ullrich, Basso, Vino, Mancebo, etc. as favorites for the 2006 Tour just because they were suspended hours before it started. They were favorites and I think this is an important fact to leave here. We could note they were DNS because of the scandal in the comments. --Serge 06:03, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

• Agree, although of course it should be subject to revision, if referenced. But it must be made crystal clear that this is a pre-race presentation. --Mais oui! 06:53, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

Agree. Why not? They were the pre-race favourites and just because they were pulled out days before the tour began doesn't change that fact. --Maajid 13:52, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

NEED UPDATE

http://www.cyclingnews.com/news.php?id=news/2006/jun06/jun30news3 doping nightmare:/

I think we should take out the section about Ullrich's being in. He is clearly out, according to this report. Ksnow 07:35, 1 July 2006 (UTC)Ksnow

Yeah, that newspaper clip cited in the article is older than this doping scandal. Sam Vimes 08:35, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

You can also find news from the race on http://www.cycling.tv They are pretty small but bring news and views from France via Streamed video. They have a 2 hr live show from there studio.

Without a former winner among the starting riders for the first time in 50 years?

I've tried doing a little research and as far as I can tell this years Tour de Frances is the first since 1956 without a former winner of the tour among the starting riders. If Ullrich hadn't been excluded there would have been one but now there isn't. I have however not been apple to get my "research" confirmed so I hesitate to include it in the article (as well as in the article on the Danish Wikipedia where I spend most of my time). Can anyone find a source to verify my idea? --Heelgrasper 23:55, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

That would be an excellent fact to include, however I can't find a source either, perhaps the media hasn't researched that angle yet? I just made the 1956 Tour de France page and there does not seem to be a former winner in it, but I haven't checked the years 1957 yet :) --Fxer 18:31, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

On this page it is mentioned that it happened in 1999. --Pelotas 18:20, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

That looks right, I can't find any previous winners who started in 1999. What happened to Marco Pantani and Jan Ullrich, caught up and banned in the 1998 tour drug scandal or something? --Fxer 19:04, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

I believe Pantani was caught up in some scandal, but I know Ullrich was out injured. So, yes, there were no previous winners in the 1999 Tour. --Serge 19:25, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

From Marco Pantani:

The late years

Things turned bad for Pantani towards the end of the 1999 Giro. He was well on the way to winning, having already won four stages, with all his challengers far away in the GC, and only one mountain stage left: however, he was disqualified from the race (eventually won by Ivan Gotti) for a suspiciously high red blood cell count which suggested (although could not conclusively prove) use of the banned substance EPO. Later, it was also revealed that he had a hematocrit level of 60% after his crash in 1995, far above the later adopted 50% limit [1]. After his banishment from the Giro, his pride wounded, Pantani stayed away from the rest of the year's races.

--Serge 19:31, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Rider's jerseys progress chart should be in the main article

i think the Rider's jerseys progress chart should be in this article and not in 2006 Tour de France, Prologue to Stage 11. in my view it belongs right there next to all the major results. i plan to move it but first i wanted to open it for dicussion. i think it belongs after the team classifications and before the retirements. uri budnik 05:05, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

Please move it, so it matches the placement in the 2005 Tour de France article.--Per Abrahamsen 05:32, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

i've moved the table; and i just noticed something else. if there is anyone with more experience in editing tables, can it be changed so that the stage numbers match properly? since the start of the tour is called the prologue, the stage numbers are off by one. uri budnik 23:33, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

• I could format the table differently using wikitable, but don't want to be too bold. I don't like the empty cells for stages yet to be ridden. Will fix if there is concensus.--A Y Arktos\^talk 08:05, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

• Why is the column with the leader in the youth standings in light blue when the jersey is white? --Pelotas 08:55, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Presumably because white on white is difficult to see.--Per Abrahamsen 08:57, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

The text was black, and it seems a bit silly to have white on blue, so I've reverted it. I'll leave the white on red of the Combativity column and the pale yellow Team's column for someone else to look at --Aioth 02:11, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Stage winners

I believe the stage winners should be noted in the main article. Who won the stage is at least as important as who wore what jersey. But they stage wins are also delegated to a subarticle in 2005 Tour de France so I'm sure.--Per Abrahamsen 05:32, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

Request: fill in stage types

I see someone has put the High Mountain and Time Trial stage types into the stage list. However, the remaining 13 stages need to be classified. 9 are flat or "plains" stages, while 4 are Intermediate stages ("partly mountainous" :-) ). Unfortunately, I don't know which are which (although I could take a good guess from the stage profiles). If anyone has that information from an official source, please fill it in (I got the 9/4 from the official site en francais, but maddeningly it didn't say which were which). Otherwise I will fill it in once the race is over (rather than guess from the profiles, I'll know definitively based on green jersey points, which differ by stage type).

Not even those green jersey points make it clear, all-in-all it's a bit subjective. Consider for example the stage of today (Stage 10 from Cambo-les-Bains to Pau), it features two big moutainclimbs, but still it is not considered by most to be a real mountain stage, as the last climb is over 40 kilometres from the finish line. However the green jersey points given out in this stage make this a stage of 'coefficient 3', which is the category for real mountain stages. I can tell you that there are three levels, coefficient 1 (stages 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 13 and 20, the 'flat' stages), coefficient 2 (stages 3, 12, 14 and 18, the in-between stages) and coefficient 3 (stages 10, 11, 15, 16 and 17, the mountain stages). --Pelotas 18:15, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

"Cyclists not in the 2006 Tour" or "Retirements" - rvrt heading

Ref this edit of 5 July - I intend to revert back to the sub- head "Retirements" from "Cyclists not in the 2006 Tour". There are many cyclists not in the tour. Lance of course. (Me also :-) ) This section does not cover those but only those who have retired, either during the race or immediately before the race, ie it was intended that they race and they have dropped out.--A Y Arktos\^talk 19:30, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

I agree that the subhead should be Retirements and not Cyclists not in the 2006 Tour. Sue Anne 19:43, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Maybe we should make the header "Riders not completing the tour" and make two subheaders, "riders not allowed to start" and "retirements". Seems logic no? --Pelotas^talk 16:40, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

• No problem with the logic. Looking at the list of riders for teams, these riders not allowed to start have had an impact, as they must have been registered and couldn't be replaced. Vinokourov's eam couldn't start at all. Other teams started with less than 9. Canberra' own (:-) ) Michael Roger's was saying in a television interview that, with only 7 riders this has affected what T-Mobile can do and changed their strategy. Can we write a little about the rules on this? I won't be able to research and write til next week - sorry - thus I know I should {{sofixit}} but can't right now. Maybe it is already there somewhere abd I have missed it.--A Y Arktos\^talk 19:59, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Categories of Climbs

Is there a formula which officials use to determine the categories of individual climbs? Or is it a subjective thing? I haven't been able to find anything in Wikipedia which explains the categories.--RattBoy 13:54, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

• There is some information at http://www.faqs.org/faqs/bicycles-faq/part1/section-22.html - The Tour organizers use two criteria 1) the length and steepness of the climb and 2) the position of the climb in the stage. A third, and much lesser criteria, is the quality of the road surface. The FAQ claims: rating inflation, so rampant in other sports has raised its ugly head here. Climbs that used to be a 2nd Category are now a 1st Category, even though, like the Madeleine, they occupy the same position in a stage year after year. It is a useful link with estimates of heights of climbs but dates from 2000 and isn't sufficiently formula driven to help.--A Y Arktos\^talk 10:42, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

---

• I believe the steepness and length are indeed the two most important factors, but 'rating inflation' is something I do not believe in, changing of ratings is more a combination of things:
  • position of the climb within a stage.
  • position within the tour.
  • presence of other climbs in the stage/tour.
  • influence from commerce/sponsors.
  • influence from organisers of surrounding city/village.
  • or other.

Examples in this tour:

• Today (stage 18 from Morzine to Mâcon) there is a climb of category two in the middle of the stage. Now the rules say that "If the last climb of the day is of category two or higher, then its points are doubled." (This rule was implemented to prevent riders going on breakaways each day just to win the polka dot jersey while they are not real climbers. Since the last climb is mostly close to the finish, they expected to see real climbers pop up.) Anyway, this stage is no mountain stage at all. So I suspect the tour directors of adding that small little category four climb after the category two climb, just to remove the double points. Yet if you check the profile of the stage, they could have put climbs of category four everywhere.
• In stage 3, the tour passed the Cauberg which was originally given category four. However since the Cauberg is the most famous climb in the Netherlands, the Valkenburg organisers asked the tour to upgrade the climb to category three, which they did.
• In stage 16, the tour passed the Galibier and ranked it the highest category. In the tour of 2000 the Galibier was only Category 1. However not all things change, as stage 17 features the exact same climbs as Stage 16 of tour 2000, all of the same category as 6 years ago.

Personally I don't mind that things change, makes it more tactical for the climbers. --Pelotas^talk 11:57, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

---

• Oh and the points have changed also, it's now:
  • Category 4: 3, 2, 1
  • Category 3: 4, 3, 2, 1
  • Category 2: 10, 9, 8, 7, 9, 5
  • Category 1: 15, 13, 11, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5
  • "Hors Category": 20, 18, 16, 14, 12, 10, 8, 7, 6, 5 --Pelotas^talk 12:03, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

First picture

Could somebody crop that to remove the hands? Thanks ahead of time. - Kookykman|(t)e 14:59, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

• I don't think cropping would be appropriate. It illustrates that it is a spectator sport. I liked it.--A Y Arktos\^talk 00:16, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

Separate article for Stage 17?

How about a separate detailed article on the epic Stage 17? --Serge 23:10, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

• There is a section on the stage at 2006 Tour de France, Stage 12 to Stage 20#Stage 17, Thursday, July 20: St.-Jean-de-Maurienne - Morzine, 201 km which could be expanded before contemplating a separate article.--A Y Arktos\^talk 00:20, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

Withdrawals

It is my understanding that the Astana-Würth team members not involved in the Operación Puerto doping case did not start because the the team was too small and where not withdrawn by the team. Gam3

Complete list of finishing times?

What do people think about adding the complete final general classification for all finishing riders, over 100 riders or so. As an encyclopedia should we have more than just the top 10 listed? --Fxer 17:17, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

I don't know if that would really be useful information though. What about a link to http://www.letour.fr/2006/TDF/LIVE/us/2000/classement/ITG.html ? --Aioth 07:38, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

I've many times thought about - why there isn't complete list of those who finished... --gragox 19:58, 27 July 2006

i concur. it make sense to have the full gc in the article. uri budnik 06:09, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

Seeing as we list every single person who dropped out of the race, but don't even mention all those that finished! :) --Fxer 22:02, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

I've put down a list up to number 50, and if I can find the time I'll finish it off on the weekend. If you want to do a bit of it, you're more than welcome --Aioth 07:32, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

Gah, whoever changed the columns around can finish it. --Aioth 06:20, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

I'll finish it :-) Fred Bradstadt 12:08, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

Added the last 39. I believe the complete team standings could be useful also? --Pelotas^talk 20:16, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

I've made David De La Fuente's row red, since he was named the most combative. It looks pretty horrible though. --Aioth 07:14, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

Astana-Wurth

"Vinokourov, Bazayev, Kaschechkin, and León Sanchez are not themselves implicated in the doping case, but five of the nine riders of Astana-Würth were suspended and could not be replaced, leaving the team without the minimum of six starters." Is it worth noting (and citing if necessary) that those five cyclists were cleared by Spanish investigators following the Tour? --Estradak 22:42, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Yes, except that Jörg Jaksche was not cleared. The other four was.--Per Abrahamsen 23:01, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

I don't believe Jaksche was on the original Astana Tour team. Instead, news sources indicate that the fifth rider was Sergio Paulinho, and he has been cleared. http://www.velonews.com/race/int/articles/10588.0.html --Estradak 05:54, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

New Winner

landis has been disqualified for taking drugs, the spaniard is now the winner this should be edited in —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 203.206.255.133 (talk) .

Disqualified? Where did you see/hear that? Probably will happen, but we would need a pretty good cite before saying it has actually happened. Moriori 08:59, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

Actually, It might not happen at all. http://www.voanews.com/english/2006-11-15-voa46.cfm

I dont' know how to phrase it, so if somebody could add that... But it appears that the Labs made several errors in the drug testing.Cptjeff 21:37, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

Elevation gains

Has anyone seen elevation gain figures for individual stages of the race, or for the entire route? --Itinerant1 07:04, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

pereiro not contested

The article still said that Pereiro's second place was also in risk because of doping, but that is no longer the case since January 2007. (See News story). Therefore I removed this. The fact that the second place was in risk belongs to the Pereiro article, not to the 2006 tour article. --Pie.er 07:00, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

I've just edited the first paragraph reflecting this.

Controversial edits

Unless I get a storm of opinions against me now, I want to revert the edits done by Ksy92003:

2007-07-21T22:37:22 Ksy92003 (Talk | contribs) (49,987 bytes) ("innocent until proven guilty." he is still the winner of the TdF. it's stated in paragraphs that it's contested. but in the tables, it isn't important to note. right now, he is the winner.)

Preferrably, I want the edit done and locked by an admin, till this case is settled, as earlier discussed on Landis' page.

Thanks abach 17:53, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

It won't be locked unless you get numerous vandalising edits by ip addresses daily. You'll just have to keep an eye on it. Severo^TC 20:36, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

Start-class or B-class?

I just rated the article a B-class article. Then I looked at this talk page, and saw that it was rated Start-class at 1 august 2007, and the main article has not changed a lot since then. I have been rating a lot of cycling-articles lately, and to me this article is clearly better than the average Start-article. I am only human however, so I can make mistakes too ;). If the article is not B-class but start-class, please change it back, but I would like to know some arguments why this is not a B-class article, so I can use them when rating other articles. --EdgeNavidad (talk) 14:37, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

B is fine. The problem it has is lack of prose and too many lists. Severo^TC 14:39, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

I removed this image because it was squishing the jersey table

Stages map

Feel free to reinsert it where you will. Nosleep (talk) 04:07, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

Dead link

During several automated bot runs the following external link was found to be unavailable. Please check if the link is in fact down and fix or remove it in that case!

• http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20889737
  • In 2006 Tour de France on 2011-05-26 02:17:18, 404 Not Found
  • In 2006 Tour de France on 2011-06-14 08:16:33, 404 Not Found

--JeffGBot (talk) 08:16, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

Dead link 2

During several automated bot runs the following external link was found to be unavailable. Please check if the link is in fact down and fix or remove it in that case!

• http://www.velonews.com/news/fea/13354.0.html
  • In Doping at the Tour de France on 2011-03-17 14:38:17, 404 Not Found
  • In Floyd Landis doping case on 2011-03-19 08:40:47, 404 Not Found
  • In 2006 Tour de France on 2011-05-26 02:17:18, 404 Not Found
  • In 2006 Tour de France on 2011-06-14 08:16:39, 404 Not Found

--JeffGBot (talk) 08:16, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

Dead link 3

During several automated bot runs the following external link was found to be unavailable. Please check if the link is in fact down and fix or remove it in that case!

• http://www.velonews.com/tour2006/news/articles/10182.0.html
  • In 2006 Tour de France on 2011-05-26 02:17:21, 404 Not Found
  • In 2006 Tour de France on 2011-06-14 08:17:33, 404 Not Found

--JeffGBot (talk) 08:17, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

Retrospective changing the classification leadership table

Do we know what the policy is on the classification leadership table? It was changed to remove Floyd Landis from stage 19 and 20 retroactively, but how far is this to be applied - e.g. to riders who have more recently been stripped of their results over this period following admission of doping? I get the impression there isn't a clear ruling from the cycling authorities on this (so would personally choose not to amend the table) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.1.53.57 (talk) 22:52, 10 October 2012 (UTC)