Best Grand Tour of the year

[Gigs_98]

Re:

I base my comment upon logic and facts - not just because I say so

Proof was Steven Kruijswijk almost won the Giro but for a crash. The Vuelta was a stronger field than in the Giro as was Chaves. Froome and Quintana would have demolished Nibali in his 2016 Giro winning form. Obviously I can't change your minds. So be it.

Kruijswijks crash proofes that chaves was worse in the Giro? What?

 

[Thepirateisgood]

The tour was the best GT.

Giro and then the Vuelta was the most entertaining.

 

[Mr.White]

Re: Re:

Based upon where Chaves rode in relation to Quintana, he was easily the 3rd strongest climber and the fact he benefitted by Kruijswijk's crash in the Giro. Pretty simple really.

I don't quite see the logic here... Was Quintana at the Giro? Was the Giro route comparable in any way to the Vuelta's?

Irrelevant. It was also irrelevant your earlier point about riders like Bennett or Moreno. We are comparing Chaves at the Giro and Vuelta. I explained why he was stronger now than in May based upon how he rode in relation to the winner. I also contend that Quintana and Froome would have beaten Nibali at the Giro in this form. You can chose to disagree that's fine.

I choose to disagree! Chaves at the Giro was not weaker by any means, young rider like him can only be stronger in his first GT, which is logical. Vuelta had few bigger names, but overall quality was not higher. Froome in this form would be eaten alive in the Giro mountains for example... Hell Valverde hold 2nd spot for two weeks and this was his 5th consecutive GT!

 

[Miburo]

Giro

 

[zlev11]

Re:

all this people talking about the great depth of the Vuelta field... I wonder what position they think a guy like Talansky would get in the Giro.

i think he would have beat Jungels, at least. maybe even Majka. so...one spot lower? i think both fields were equally strong.

voted for the Giro

 

[Thepirateisgood]

There is a part of the forum just for you guys:

viewforum.php?f=24

 

[Gigs_98]

Re:

There is a part of the forum just for you guys:

viewforum.php?f=24

Sorry for discussing in a forum. How embarassing

 

[Thepirateisgood]

What?

I mean put the fantasy discussions where they belong, like '12 contador against '14 contador and whatever.

 

[El Pistolero]

Glad to see the Giro win. Hope Nibs returns there next year to battle with Aru. That would be a heated battle.

 

[El Pistolero]

Re: Re:

The top end level was clearly better in La Vuelta, but the depth after Kruiswijk and Lopez crashed out was probably slightly worse. It also makes it look bad that Konig fell asleep, Valverde lost 10 minutes one day and Sanchez crashed and therefore fell out of top-10. It could have looked much better.

This. Froome, Quintana and Contador are the three best GT riders. OK, Chaves pushed Contador into 4th place but Contador enlivened the race majorly and was weakened by a crash. The Vuelta had a much stronger field for GC than the Giro, and has had for a few years now.

Stronger on paper perhaps, but Froome and Quintana already had the Tour in their legs, so weren't in their best shape.

Overall, the field of this Vuelta wasn't strong and that's why we have seen many riders win their first stage here. And no offence to those riders, but I don't see them winning a stage in the Giro or Tour.

 

[Savant12]

Tour for what Froome did differently. Attacking off a descent; bridging across in crosswinds; running up Ventoux; and finishing a stage on a team-mates bike.

 

[42x16ss]

Re: Re:

The top end level was clearly better in La Vuelta, but the depth after Kruiswijk and Lopez crashed out was probably slightly worse. It also makes it look bad that Konig fell asleep, Valverde lost 10 minutes one day and Sanchez crashed and therefore fell out of top-10. It could have looked much better.

This. Froome, Quintana and Contador are the three best GT riders. OK, Chaves pushed Contador into 4th place but Contador enlivened the race majorly and was weakened by a crash. The Vuelta had a much stronger field for GC than the Giro, and has had for a few years now.

Stronger on paper perhaps, but Froome and Quintana already had the Tour in their legs, so weren't in their best shape.

Overall, the field of this Vuelta wasn't strong and that's why we have seen many riders win their first stage here. And no offence to those riders, but I don't see them winning a stage in the Giro or Tour.

Agreed. It was a bit like the Tour de San Luis - very strong overall contenders, but not too much depth after that. With all respect to riders like Bennett, Formolo, Yates and De La Cruz, I don't see them coming top 10 in another GT too soon (although I do expect them all to continue improving) and I certainly don't see the likes of Cort, Meersman, Keukeleire or Drucker sweeping up stage wins in big bunch sprints at the TDF.

The gaps from 4th to 5th and 6th to 7th highlight this.

 

[veji11]

Can't quite know for sure yet what I feel about Giro and Vuelta exactly in terms of ranking, but what is sadly evident is that the Tour is 3rd... Once more ovecontrolled racing because of too many quality riders at their top ruins the Tour :
- The best sprinters are there, with their A trains, this means that you have 40 guys whose job is too reel in initiatives or rather act like a form of nuclear dissuasion, whereby would be attackers know there is nothing to do if the stage doesn't have some really serious climbing... The Giro was a bit weaker and the Vuelta a joke in that regard.
- The best leaders with their A teams as well on the tour means the race is so much more controlled. Only the Movistar was at Tour de France level on their home race in the Vuelta, like Astana on their home race of the Giro.
- The Vuelta having a mishmash of riders trying to salvage their season or capping it off with a last GT before well deserved holidays means that the level is much more heterogeneous, and it opens the race.

So for me the Tour is dead last, that's a given.

 

[SKSemtex]

Great year.

Only if Nairo was loosing 5 seconds to Froome before stage 20.

This was really really good year for cycling fans. Spring races, grand tours (even TDF=Tour of the Froome) were very good.

a lot of great old stars and and lot of new stars were really shining:
Froome, Quintana, Nibali, Valverde, Sagan, GVA , CAV
Chaves,Kruiswijk, De Gendt, Poels, Dumoulin GAV, Latour Felline, Moscone, ......

Next year will be even more fan with these young guns cumming to the scene.

 

[DanielSong39]

Giro stage 19 and Vuelta stage 15 were two of the more epic stages in recent memory.

In the Tour we had Froome running up the mountain - we were denied an epic Tour when the organizers neutralized the stage and did not penalize him. An opportunity lost...

 

[Cookster15]

Re: Re:

I base my comment upon logic and facts - not just because I say so

Proof was Steven Kruijswijk almost won the Giro but for a crash. The Vuelta was a stronger field than in the Giro as was Chaves. Froome and Quintana would have demolished Nibali in his 2016 Giro winning form. Obviously I can't change your minds. So be it.

Kruijswijks crash proofes that chaves was worse in the Giro? What?

Not Kruijswijk's crash - but that Kruijswijk likely would have won the Giro if he hadn't crashed. Not sure why I have to spell this out for you Do you think Kruijswijk in that form would have beaten Quintana and Froome at the Vuelta? Come on. Nibali was relatively poor by his lofty standards in the Giro and still won - he lost 2:10 to Kruijswijk in the MTT alone. That would never happened to Nibali Giro 2013 or Tour 2014. On the other hand I didn't see anything in Quintana's performance at this Vuelta to suggest he wasn't better than he was at the Tour.

Chaves was better this Vuelta than the Giro simply because how he rode against better competition.

Of course nearly everyone who has ridden more than 1 GT is more tired in the Vuelta - so what. Based upon that logic, the Giro is always the hardest GT because it is the first in the season. I stand by my comment that this Vuelta was tougher competition than the Giro. That might not make it the "best" Grand Tour this year but that isn't what I was writing about.

 

[El Pistolero]

Re: Re:

I base my comment upon logic and facts - not just because I say so

Proof was Steven Kruijswijk almost won the Giro but for a crash. The Vuelta was a stronger field than in the Giro as was Chaves. Froome and Quintana would have demolished Nibali in his 2016 Giro winning form. Obviously I can't change your minds. So be it.

Kruijswijks crash proofes that chaves was worse in the Giro? What?

Not Kruijswijk's crash - but that Kruijswijk likely would have won the Giro if he hadn't crashed. Not sure why I have to spell this out for you Do you think Kruijswijk in that form would have beaten Quintana and Froome at the Vuelta? Come on. Nibali was relatively poor by his lofty standards in the Giro and still won - he lost 2:10 to Kruijswijk in the MTT alone. That would never happened to Nibali Giro 2013 or Tour 2014. On the other hand I didn't see anything in Quintana's performance at this Vuelta to suggest he wasn't better than he was at the Tour.

Chaves was better this Vuelta than the Giro simply because how he rode against better competition.

Of course nearly everyone who has ridden more than 1 GT is more tired in the Vuelta - so what. Based upon that logic, the Giro is always the hardest GT because it is the first in the season. I stand by my comment that this Vuelta was tougher competition than the Giro. That might not make it the "best" Grand Tour this year but that isn't what I was writing about.

Giro and Vuelta are fundamentally different races. Vuelta are mainly flat stages with an uphill finish while the Giro has many multi-mountain stages with high altitudes that surpass the magical 2000 meter barrier. If the Giro didn't have these stages someone like Valverde would have won it this year, but now he cracked every time a real hard mountain stage took place. The only reason Nibali could take so much time back on other riders was because of the high altitudes of some stages. No team can control such stages, it's too hard.

 

[Gigs_98]

Re: Re:

I base my comment upon logic and facts - not just because I say so

Proof was Steven Kruijswijk almost won the Giro but for a crash. The Vuelta was a stronger field than in the Giro as was Chaves. Froome and Quintana would have demolished Nibali in his 2016 Giro winning form. Obviously I can't change your minds. So be it.

Kruijswijks crash proofes that chaves was worse in the Giro? What?

Not Kruijswijk's crash - but that Kruijswijk likely would have won the Giro if he hadn't crashed. Not sure why I have to spell this out for you Do you think Kruijswijk in that form would have beaten Quintana and Froome at the Vuelta? Come on. Nibali was relatively poor by his lofty standards in the Giro and still won - he lost 2:10 to Kruijswijk in the MTT alone. That would never happened to Nibali Giro 2013 or Tour 2014. On the other hand I didn't see anything in Quintana's performance at this Vuelta to suggest he wasn't better than he was at the Tour.

Chaves was better this Vuelta than the Giro simply because how he rode against better competition.

Of course nearly everyone who has ridden more than 1 GT is more tired in the Vuelta - so what. Based upon that logic, the Giro is always the hardest GT because it is the first in the season. I stand by my comment that this Vuelta was tougher competition than the Giro. That might not make it the "best" Grand Tour this year but that isn't what I was writing about.

Do you even notice that this is once again 100% the same argument as in the earlier posts I responded to?

 

[Cookster15]

Re: Re:

I base my comment upon logic and facts - not just because I say so

Proof was Steven Kruijswijk almost won the Giro but for a crash. The Vuelta was a stronger field than in the Giro as was Chaves. Froome and Quintana would have demolished Nibali in his 2016 Giro winning form. Obviously I can't change your minds. So be it.

Kruijswijks crash proofes that chaves was worse in the Giro? What?

Not Kruijswijk's crash - but that Kruijswijk likely would have won the Giro if he hadn't crashed. Not sure why I have to spell this out for you Do you think Kruijswijk in that form would have beaten Quintana and Froome at the Vuelta? Come on. Nibali was relatively poor by his lofty standards in the Giro and still won - he lost 2:10 to Kruijswijk in the MTT alone. That would never happened to Nibali Giro 2013 or Tour 2014. On the other hand I didn't see anything in Quintana's performance at this Vuelta to suggest he wasn't better than he was at the Tour.

Chaves was better this Vuelta than the Giro simply because how he rode against better competition.

Of course nearly everyone who has ridden more than 1 GT is more tired in the Vuelta - so what. Based upon that logic, the Giro is always the hardest GT because it is the first in the season. I stand by my comment that this Vuelta was tougher competition than the Giro. That might not make it the "best" Grand Tour this year but that isn't what I was writing about.

Do you even notice that this is once again 100% the same argument as in the earlier posts I responded to?

What argument, your or mine? Maybe just answer the bold bit and it will be clear. Yes or no - because you still haven't answered this. Your reply to me yesterday was irrelevant to the point I was making that the Giro competition was weaker than in the Vuelta.

 

[DBotero]

Vuelta>Tour>Giro.

 

[Gigs_98]

Re: Re:

I base my comment upon logic and facts - not just because I say so

Proof was Steven Kruijswijk almost won the Giro but for a crash. The Vuelta was a stronger field than in the Giro as was Chaves. Froome and Quintana would have demolished Nibali in his 2016 Giro winning form. Obviously I can't change your minds. So be it.

Kruijswijks crash proofes that chaves was worse in the Giro? What?

Not Kruijswijk's crash - but that Kruijswijk likely would have won the Giro if he hadn't crashed. Not sure why I have to spell this out for you Do you think Kruijswijk in that form would have beaten Quintana and Froome at the Vuelta? Come on. Nibali was relatively poor by his lofty standards in the Giro and still won - he lost 2:10 to Kruijswijk in the MTT alone. That would never happened to Nibali Giro 2013 or Tour 2014. On the other hand I didn't see anything in Quintana's performance at this Vuelta to suggest he wasn't better than he was at the Tour.

Chaves was better this Vuelta than the Giro simply because how he rode against better competition.

Of course nearly everyone who has ridden more than 1 GT is more tired in the Vuelta - so what. Based upon that logic, the Giro is always the hardest GT because it is the first in the season. I stand by my comment that this Vuelta was tougher competition than the Giro. That might not make it the "best" Grand Tour this year but that isn't what I was writing about.

Do you even notice that this is once again 100% the same argument as in the earlier posts I responded to?

What argument, your or mine? Maybe just answer the bold bit and it will be clear. Yes or no - because you still haven't answered this. Your reply to me yesterday was irrelevant to the point I was making that the Giro competition was weaker than in the Vuelta.

Here is our discussion summed up:
Cookster: The Vuelta had the better field because Chaves was better there
Brullnux: There is no proof Chaves was better in the Vuelta
Cookster: He was better at the Vuelta because giro Nibali easily would have been beaten by vuelta Quintana/Froome
Gigs: There is no proof Nibali easily would have been beaten by Quintana and Froome
Cookster: The proof is that Kruijswijk easily would have been beaten by Quintana and Froome

You basically made three statements and all of those statements rely on the opinion you already had, which is that the Vuelta had a stronger field. I could use 100% the same reasoning the other way around:

-Chaves was better in the giro than in the vuelta
-He was better at the vuelta because no way Froome/Quintana with the tdf in their legs beat a fresh Nibali
-The proof is that Kruijswijk easily would have beaten Froome/Quintana too

 

[Brullnux]

I think Kruijswijk in that form would have come very, very close to beating Froome and Quintana at the Vuelta.

 

[Cookster15]

Ah, at long last it took some prodding but we finally got there. No Kruijswijk would not have beaten Froome/Quintana in the Vuelta, let alone "easily".

Quintana was stronger in the Vuelta than he was in the Tour as was obvious in Camperona and Cavadonga. Froome showed no evidence he was appreciably weaker in the Vuelta than in the Tour which he won easily.

The Giro may or may not have been a better race but Vuelta competition was tougher than in the Giro and by that measure so Chaves was better in the Vuelta than he was in May.

 

[doperhopper]

For me Vuelta with a bit of icing over Giro but both high quality entertaining races: epic battles in both (Formigal vs. Nibali's resurrection), but Vuelta prevails, as it featured more top riders (and fully racing), and there was even epic race for the 3rd place.

As for the Tour, well, pretty much no GC battle at all, instead we saw attempts to provide some substitute entertainment (Vroom's circus aeropedalling, crosswinding, and let's not forget Oscar for his windymountain chicken run)... Of course one can mention a bit of Sagan, couple of nice sprints and breakaway stage wins, but that's not the main dish (and btw. in Vuelta you have these nice breakaway wins pretty much every day).

Imagine Tour lost its tourist primetime July spot and was swapped with Giro... nobody would watch and it would fade into the deserved "also GT" in couple of years.

 

[Cookster15]

For me Vuelta with a bit of icing over Giro but both high quality entertaining races: epic battles in both (Formigal vs. Nibali's resurrection), but Vuelta prevails, as it featured more top riders (and fully racing), and there was even epic race for the 3rd place.

As for the Tour, well, pretty much no GC battle at all, instead we saw attempts to provide some substitute entertainment (Vroom's circus aeropedalling, crosswinding, and let's not forget Oscar for his windymountain chicken run)... Of course one can mention a bit of Sagan, couple of nice sprints and breakaway stage wins, but that's not the main dish (and btw. in Vuelta you have these nice breakaway wins pretty much every day).

Imagine Tour lost its tourist primetime July spot and was swapped with Giro... nobody would watch and it would fade into the deserved "also GT" in couple of years.

For pure cycling I agree. But the Tour's appeal goes beyond cycling. France on TV has a romantic appeal that Italy and Spain can't match. That is why it retains July prime spot no matter how much worse the racing or parcours might be.