Third fastest Tour in history....

Hmmmmmmm..........

The 2006 Tour de France was the third fastest ever, with Floyd Landis' winning average speed 40.784 km/h for the 3656.5 km distance. Only Lance Armstrong (41.698 km/h in 2005 and 40.956 km/h in 2003) has ridden faster to win La Grande Boucle. Armstrong also holds two more of the top five average speeds: 40.563 km/h in 2004 and 40.315 km/h in 1999. ​

 

Wasn't this tour relativly flat? Fewer Pyrenees stages, etc.
Doesn't that boost the average speed somewhat?

 

Strange. It seemed like they were saying during each stage that it was slower? Guess they didn't get all the Epo out of the Peleton...

 

Natural evolution.

If they didn´t loose 30 minutes to oscar pereiro it would be even faster.

 

Just because they kicked out a few big name dopers doesn't mean this was a clean Tour. Just as dirty as ever, I imagine. Start list was just a tad shorter.

 

Average speed of the whole peloton means nothing because of the very nature of bike racing. The average speed of the top twenty in time trials and final climbs is what we should be looking at.

 

The statistic WBT gave was the average speed of the winner, not the peloton. But your alternative is a good one. I would add to it all of the stages, with some mechanism for eliminating the times of any breakaways that make it to the finish. Ultimately, however, I suspect the speed of the winner will be a close proxy to your alternative.

 

This Tour was very,very flat so the speed had to be very high. Only four stages in the mountaines and 2 long ITT's made such a high tempo possible. In fact it was pretty slow, as many stated during the stages.

And though Klöden and Landis had on of the fasted rides up to Alp`d Huez in hitory they only managed it, cause the tempo was very low before the last mountain.

And the ITT's were very slow too, and only proven TT-specialists had good results, with the exception of Cunego, who was already in very good shape the days before.

 

.........watching LeTour 2006, one has to suspend ones disbelief.

I'm not going to rain on the parade but let's see what comes out of the TDF in due course.
Third fastest TDF ever......................nagging doubt is always there, I'm afraid.

Three certainties in life, death, taxes and riders who dope.

 

But how can you compare this one to the more mountainous Tours of the past? Foul play aside, I'd expect this Tour to be fast.

(Nagging doubt is there, for sure, but not because of the speed.)

 

TDF 2006 was less mountainous - than previous editions.

But on the debit side - it was boiling not weather.
The field was smaller (with approximately 25 less riders).

You'd expect that with a smaller field the workload would be heavier - thus making more demand on each rider. Which should mean a slower race, I would have thought.

 

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Those dickheads ! They will just have to pick up the pace, must go faster next time. ​

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Given the course this year, I didn't think it was that fast .​