{"id":6971,"date":"2014-07-04T16:45:13","date_gmt":"2014-07-04T15:45:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.selectspecs.com\/blog\/?p=6971"},"modified":"2014-07-04T16:45:13","modified_gmt":"2014-07-04T15:45:13","slug":"tour-de-france-2014-all-eyes-on-chris-froome-and-mark-cavendish-as-the-action-gets-underway","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.selectspecs.com\/blog\/tour-de-france-2014-all-eyes-on-chris-froome-and-mark-cavendish-as-the-action-gets-underway\/","title":{"rendered":"Tour de France 2014: All Eyes on Chris Froome and Mark Cavendish as the action gets underway!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>2014 hasn&#8217;t been a great year for our sporting nation so far, what with England taking an early bath from the Brazilian World Cup and\u00a0Andy Murray&#8217;s defeat at Wimbledon. \u00a0Our attention now turns to a sport we&#8217;re actually pretty good at, <strong>Cycling<\/strong>!<\/p>\n<p>With success at the London Olympics (12 medals &#8211; 8 of them gold!) in 2012, and the\u00a0Tour de France in 2012 and 2013, our eyes will firmly be on top<span style=\"line-height: 1.5em\">\u00a0British duo (<em>and Oakley sponsored<\/em>)\u00a0<\/span><strong style=\"line-height: 1.5em\">Chris Froome<\/strong><span style=\"line-height: 1.5em\"> and <\/span><strong style=\"line-height: 1.5em\">Mark Cavendish<\/strong><span style=\"line-height: 1.5em\"> at the <strong>101st Tour de France<\/strong> which starts from England for the second time. \u00a0<\/span><span style=\"line-height: 1.5em\">22 teams of 9 riders will set off from Yorkshire tomorrow (Saturday 5th July 2014) on a grueling 3600km journey over 21 mountainous stages &#8211; the thought alone is enough to leave me, an avid cyclist, exhausted at the thought!<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-7008 aligncenter\" alt=\"tour-de-france-mtb-jump\" src=\"https:\/\/www.selectspecs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/07\/tour-de-france-mtb-jump.jpg\" width=\"740\" height=\"423\" \/><em>A cheeky mountain biker shows the lycra clad roadies a thing or two&#8230;<\/em><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"line-height: 1.5em\">Local hero Mark Cavendish (Omega Pharma-Quick Step), aka the Manx Missile, will be looking to add to his record tally of 25 Tour de France stage victories with another win on home soil in the opening <strong>190km<\/strong> stage which will also allow him to wear the leaders yellow jersey for the first time ever!<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-7012 aligncenter\" alt=\"mark-cavendish-radarlock-bradley-wiggins\" src=\"https:\/\/www.selectspecs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/07\/mark-cavendish-radarlock-bradley-wiggins.jpg\" width=\"740\" height=\"800\" \/><em>Mark Cavendish wears a pair of special edition RadarLock Path sunglasses and the stylish Oakley <a href=\"https:\/\/www.selectspecs.com\/catalogue\/index\/term\/marshal\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Marshal<\/a> optical frame. \u00a0Bradley Wiggins is also wearing a RadarLock Path.<\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.selectspecs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/07\/mark-cavendish-radarlock-bradley-wiggins.jpg\"><br \/>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>2013&#8217;s TdF winner <strong>Chris Froome<\/strong> leads Team Sky through the stages and will be looking to retain his title but he undoubtedly faces a tough battle with his main rival Tinkoff-Saxo&#8217;s <strong>Alberto Contador<\/strong>. Both are strong contenders so it&#8217;s going to be interesting watching this battle unfold &#8211; expect to see the yellow jersey swap backs several times!<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" alt=\"chris-froome-oakley-sunglasses\" src=\"https:\/\/www.selectspecs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/07\/chris-froome-oakley-sunglasses.jpg\" width=\"740\" height=\"881\" \/><em>Chris Froome wears <strong>Oakley <a href=\"https:\/\/www.selectspecs.com\/catalogue\/index\/term\/radarlock\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">RadarLock<\/a>\u00a0Path<\/strong> and <strong>Oakley <a href=\"https:\/\/www.selectspecs.com\/catalogue\/index\/term\/racing\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Racing Jacket<\/a><\/strong>. Both these are custom models.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Unfortunately, the 2012 champion and Olympics hero Bradley Wiggins has been left out of Team Sky&#8217;s TdF campaign and will instead focus on preparation for track events at the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow in July 2014.<\/p>\n<p>Will Froome pick up this years title or will Contador get the better of him? How many stages can Cavendish grab? It&#8217;s going to be a fascinating 3 weeks of wheel to wheel action!\u00a0<strong>aller,\u00a0aller,\u00a0aller<\/strong>!<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline\"><strong>Finally<br \/>\n<\/strong><\/span>If you&#8217;ve ever wondered what it&#8217;s like to be in the middle of a peleton reaching speeds of over 60kph, check out this on board video, it&#8217;s insane!!<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Are you a keen cyclist or mountain biker?<\/strong> \u00a0We highly recommend you wear good quality eye protection while riding. \u00a0Be sure to check out our sunglasses that are great for riding <a href=\"https:\/\/www.selectspecs.com\/Sunglasses\/Designer\/Sport\/c46\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>2014 hasn&#8217;t been a great year for our sporting nation so far, what with England&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":6992,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,19],"tags":[43,97,306,433,1388,1489,1586,1819,1822,2249,2251,2345],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.selectspecs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6971"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.selectspecs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.selectspecs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.selectspecs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.selectspecs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6971"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.selectspecs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6971\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.selectspecs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.selectspecs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6971"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.selectspecs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6971"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.selectspecs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6971"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}