Best GT of the year

[Asturiano]

Try to answer these questions too:

1) The hardest one?
2) The best design route?

 

[DanielSong39]

The Vuelta was both the hardest and had the best route.

This year was kind of meh, though, when it came to GC battles. I think I'm still spoiled by the late-race GC drama from the 2015 Vuelta and 2016 Giro.

 

[SafeBet]

Vuelta was surely the best designed one. I don't know if it was the hardest, but I can say it's the one that entertained me the most.

 

[Alexandre B.]

I think the Giro was the best raced out of the three.

 

[Inquitus]

Vuelta was the best course and the hardest, Giro provided the closest racing and the best excitement with poopgate and all the rest. The TDF was just shockingly bad, the parcours was rubbish, Froome was never under any pressure with the big TT in the penultimate stage, and as such it delivered very little excitement or meaningful competition.

 

[Red Rick]

Giro. Only one with a real fight for the GC victory. Only attacks from just about every GC rider. Action from a number of climbs out multiple times. Relative suprise winner. Dutch winner. Crap incedent. The emergence of Gaviria. Dumoulin almost losing it by missing the split. Lots happened. Best 2 week race this year

Giro. It's between the Giro and Vuelta for me. The Vuelta takes the cake for Spanish flat being not at all flat, and for using the Angliru. The Giro skipped it's most brutal climbs this year, but it still had the biggest and highest mountain stages. I take the Giro here, cause toward the end almost everyone was fading, and because the Vuelta did not have a true multi mountain roller coaster.


Giro. It was by far the most balanced route. I crapped a lot on the route when it came out, and I still believed it could've been a lot better, but it was also the only balanced route. It had a variety of finishing climbs, hardly depended on uphill finishes alone, and was quite diverse in the use of its mountain stages. The Asiago stage should've used another side of the Monte Grappa, but the finish was very interesting. 2 ITTs with this length worked well. The Tour was a thing I don't want to think about again. The Vuelta was pretty good for a Vuelta in recent years, but still depended too much on on the same sort of finishing climb and MTF's only. It lacked a true, true queen stage, and the queen stages overall were way too short. They did nicely on some of the medium mountain stages, though it turned out they not hard enough to make much happen (might as well blame Sky for that). Some more variety in mountain stages would have been nice.

 

[bob.a.feet]

Giro was the best GT this year. Vuelta was probably the best designed but Giro had more stages in the high mountains. Tour route was terrible.

 

[DNP-Old]

None, they were all terrible. On one hand you have a grand tour that has a winner that could literally take a *** on the side of the road and still win, on the other hand you have a grand tour that had possibly the worst route design in the last 25 years, and on an odd third hand you have a grand tour that, though well designed, was never a real contest and had to rely on one man, whom luckily could deliver on the very last stage.

 

[Dekker_Tifosi]

Vuelta best design and most entertainment, but no GC tension for the win.

Giro best GC tension but could have been designed better, and first week was kind of a dud.

Tour was atrocious on all fronts. Worst stage design, no GC tension because the TT was looming. Nothing. Hated it

 

[bob.a.feet]

One thing I must say about the Tour route is that there was no need to get rid of most of the summit finishes. The Tour is the most conservatively raced race there is and it absolutely relies on MTFs. At least on an MTF you kinda have to attack but a descent finish just neutralizes. Either the route makes the race or the riders make the race, and when the riders aren't making it then maybe you need a better route. If they used a route similar to 2015 then you would see more action, but there's not much you can do about the Sky train.

 

[Valv.Piti]

Vuelta best for me, a bit better than the Giro which was pretty mediocre.

I also do think the Vuelta was the best designed, altho it had many flaws it gave Contador so many opportunities to do his thing. Giro more balanced but disappointing considering what they had available.

I think the hardest is between the Giro and Vuelta, everybody were empty in the Giro in the end and they raced every day in the Vuelta.

 

[jsem94]

Vuelta was the best GT. Not as much suspense for overall, but still amazing. Design was great too, just lacked a few proper high mountain stages.

 

[portugal11]

Vuelta wins everything. The giro was very easy inthe first two weeks. Le tour was a joke...

 

[Dekker_Tifosi]

btw to fix the poll, edit the first post, add an option, then edit the post and remove the option.

 

[hayneplane]

Vuelta was excellent, Tour had far too many pan flat sprint stages and nowhere near enough uphill finishes plus the farce of the Sagan disqualification.

Giro had decent route and a good story with Dumoulin a well deserved winner.

 

[Ricco']

Sky killed this Vuelta.

If we could had Froome without this level of team strength, we could be in for the greatest grand tour of the last years, I think.

Giro was the best for me. After that Vuelta and then the borefest of the Tour.

 

[portugal11]

Re:

Vuelta best design and most entertainment, but no GC tension for the win.

Giro best GC tension but could have been designed better, and first week was kind of a dud.

Tour was atrocious on all fronts. Worst stage design, no GC tension because the TT was looming. Nothing. Hated it

Still, according with tonton, was great because of gc suspense

 

[Escarabajo]

Anything but the Tour.

The Tour route is the worst I have seen in my cycling life.

 

[PremierAndrew]

I genuinely think this year's Tour was worse than 2012. At least there were some decent sprints and stuff in 2012. This year's Tour was *** in every aspect

 

[portugal11]

Re:

I genuinely think this year's Tour was worse than 2012. At least there were some decent sprints and stuff in 2012. This year's Tour was **** in every aspect

I agree with you. This year we barely have decent attacks.

 

[skippo12]

I don`t know why people hype this years Vuelta design. They increase the number of muritos every year and basically reduce the stages to a 2km uphill sprint instead of the usual flat sprint of the Tour. Might be a little bit more interesting because they have the GC contenders battling for seconds but in the end it is the same: 4 boring hours and 10 minutes entertainment. I think a big reason for those race designs in spain was to favor there own riders. Valverde, Contador and Rodriguez excelled at those finishes and choose to ride the Vuelta most of the time. With Contadors retirement the era of spanish world class climbers ends and maybe the Vuelta design will change as well.

 

[afpm90]

If I take Contador out of the equation (for sentimental reasons), Giro was the best GT in terms of GC fight, mainly because of Dumoulin diarrhea. The first two weeks were kind of boring, but I loved the third week.

In terms of stage design I would say Vuelta was the best, even with some things that I don't like, like the short stages. But it's better than seeing 1231243144124 sprint stages.

Tour was a absolute dud.

 

[deValtos]

I was going to say the Giro but then I remember the first week was a bit meh. Toss up between Giro/Vuelta when you take into account the whole 3 weeks.

People often forget about the first 10 days of a GT when talking about which was more enjoyable, I saw recently some posts suggesting the god awful 2012 Giro was exciting and a must watch ....

 

[Gigs_98]

I think the Vuelta was better than the giro. This debate reminds me a bit of the one in 2015 when many people said the Vuelta was the best gt of they year because of the great fight for the overall win, while the Giro wasn't really close in that regard from the TT onwards. However just like this year I think the importance of a close gc got overrated a bit because both the Giro 2015 and to a lesser extent this years Vuelta had the great thing that you had the feeling something would happen every day. Whenever there was a climb anywhere close to the finish you knew someone would attack and although in this years vuelta it was basically only Contador who simply attacked over and over again it still made this race very special. I really enjoyed it and although some high mountain stages were destroyed by a way too powerful sky train I still think all in all it was better than the giro.

I also think that the Vuelta had the best route. I love that there are only 4 pure sprint stages (of which one didn't even finish in a sprint) because I think sprinting is a skill which should get rewarded in grand tours but not to the amount which is common in todays gt's. I also loved that there were so many medium mountain stages, something which was absolutely missed in the last editions of the vuelta. Even the design of the mountain stages was better than usually in the vuelta, although I have to say that the giro is still a bit better in that regard (which is actually quite sad because I could spend hours writing about why I dislike the design of the mountain stages of the final giro week)

And unfortunately in both categories the tdf is far, far behind...again. I just hope that race will soon become what it used to be again.

 

[hrotha]

Vuelta, easily.