Thursday 20 July 2023

2023 Tour de France Withdrawals - Week 2

Every edition of the Tour has that one stage where there's a sudden disaster and lots of people drop out. I've seen it be hard mountain stages, where too many people are over the time limit, but not enough for the broom wagon to be cancelled, I've seen it be hard stages where there's been a bug going through the peloton, I've seen it been rain and crash. 

This year's "that one dratted stage" seems to have been stage 14, where a combo of slippy road, a turn and ill-fortune took down a swath of riders (https://www.eurosport.co.uk/cycling/tour-de-france/2023/tour-de-france-neutralised-after-extraordinarily-nasty-moment-on-stage-14-involving-almost-all-teams_vid1951457/video.shtml) 

[I'm not sure who that Intermarche-Circus-Wanty rider is, probably Adrien Petit, but that's possibly the actual face of "damn it all" made flesh.] 

Stage 14 really stands out in the pie chart of withdrawals by stage.  Withdrawals-by-stage-end-of-week-2 And you can see the inflection it causes in the Kaplan Meier diagram  Kaplan-Meier-Week-2 The Kaplan-Meier split out by teams makes it clear that life continues to happen to Astana and EF Education-Easy Post Kaplan-Meier-teams-week-2 

All of last week's withdrawals were either did not start the day following previous crashes (or general wear and tear) or mid-stage abandons due to aforementioned crashes. Type-of-withdrawals-week-2 Interestingly, that means there still hasn't been an over-the-time limit withdrawal. 

In the yellow jersey standings at the start of the third week there was so little in it that people started to talk about 1989. I know people enjoy talking about that edition. 

I've mostly just been enjoying Kwiatkowski and Izagirre winning stages, and desperately trying not to jinx a certain rider who is still in. (If I avoid jinxing him, I will explain who it is) 

The final post in this series will be delayed by a week for reasons, but I hope to add an extra special diagram to make up for the delay.

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