**** Tour de France 2017 ****

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Only a few days to go now and the excitement is building in the Unexpected household. Well, I'm excited anyway.

Usually I can see a clear favourite for the overall but this year I really don't know. Froome is most likely to take it I'd say but I'm not convinced. More interesting is the potential for Dan McLay to build on his performances in last year's race and hopefully take a stage or two, especially as Cavendish seems unlikely to be a serious contender.

Roll on Saturday!

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The words 'cool' and 'cucumber' spring to mind

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I think the elbow was a reaction to the contact, not the cause of it.

Cab would have thrown his dummies out for a crash like that a few years ago.

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Yipper said:

Without Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwen in the commentary box, the TDF on telly has lost all its sparkle. The new commentary team are terrible. It's completely ruined the TV coverage.

Really?!? They were dreadful, they just kept on trotting out the same old clichés and missed half of what was going on. IMO Boulting is good as the lead commentator and Millar is excellent at the technical and tactical stuff.

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Dan Martin should be good today

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I started watching as a kid in 1986, which was the first year the Tour was shown in the UK, and for many years after that it was exciting and rare for a Brit to even win a stage or mountains jersey. Different times!

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Bear in mind that Froome doesn't actually race all that much in a season compared to most of them

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Apparently Landa's contract is up this year so he'll be advertising himself to other teams - and Sky too perhaps - as a GC contender.

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It's extremely likely to go down to the wire, it's certainly never happened in modern times anyway (excluding the famous Lemond/Fignon time trial), but it would be awesome if it did!

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It's always a procession because the GC is always settled before the last stage. If it's still up for grabs then all hell will let loose.