This is not strictly a cycling term, but since I heard it today during Paris-Nice, it is now! Imagine this scenario, or better yet, recall today’s stage: Roglic has fallen twice (on both sides, leaving matching holes in his bibs), he has wasted all his teammates trying in vain to get back to the top of the race, but nobody is in the mood to let him return. He’s now on a climb to the final, losing second after second and going from a solid first place to somewhere south of 10th – les carottes sont cuites.
‘The carrots are cooked’ means that ‘all is lost’, or ‘there’s no hope’. Jacky Durand pronounced Roglic’s fate somewhere at the beginning of the climb and I immediately did a Google search. Jacky knows what he’s talking about and poor ol’ Rog looked disturbingly like he did in the penultimate stage of the TDF in 2020.
Bonus expressions: ‘cuit’ is a useful term in cycling. In one of my first cyclosportives in France I was riding with a guy, taking turns, till he stopped riding through. I looked at him and he simply said, je suis cuit – I’m cooked. I think he could have just as easily said les jambes sont cuites, meaning the legs are cooked/gone/dead.
Use this on your French friends then attack them. They might appreciate the panache.
The Vicious Cycle 
Hmm, Schachmann won again. At least he sais he is not happy how he won the race. Its always a discussion on how much waiting for the race leader is okay..
He’s on a roll, that guy! I guess it’s not the best way to win, but he wouldn’t have otherwise 😉
Roglic’s loss was his teams fault. After his two accidents, they should have regrouped and done a team time trial in the valley to limit the losses. Instead, they freaked out, and each team member one at time wasted himself for Roglic, with the last one leaving him alone 100m from the peloton, which had full support of multiple teams at the front.
It was impossible for Roglic to do the rest of the valley by himself against multiple teams.
Jacky Durant called this mulitple times and I totally agree with him. They screwed up. It would have been much better to keep Roglic “au chaud” in the valley even if losing 20-30 seconds, then he would have had a chance to come back on the climb or at least finish less than 52 seconds done. Instead he blew up and lost multiple minutes. Amazing a world tour team with that level of experience screwed that up.
That aside, it was the only exciting stage in Paris Nice this year for me. Tirenno is so much better to watch this year…
Tirreno-Adriatico is amazing this year. Yesterday’s stage was something from another era…and nice to see that MVP is human after all.
I much enjoy Monsieur Durand’s commentary and indeed picked up on the same phrase.
He’s a witty one, that guy.
I’ve spent some time with him during 2012 Tour – I had a friend who worked for Eurosport – and he’s s really nice guy.
I will seek an opportunity to use that phrase.
If you were the type to despair, you’d have lots of reasons to use it these days.
I had the opportunity to use it today while reporting in to Mrs T by phone two thirds of the way round a 65 mile ride. She was amused.