Best non mountain stage in GT's in the last 15 years

[Red Rick]

Right, similar to the other thread. Because there's epicness being left out

Tour

Arenberg 2014



Giro

Montalcino 2010
l' Aquila 2010

 

[CheckMyPecs]

Gaillac – Cap Découverte, 2003 Tour.

 

[Gigs_98]

Tour 2013: stage 13 to saint amand montrond (cross wind stage)
Tour 2015: stage 2 to zelande (also cross wind stage)
Giro 2015: stage 3 to La Spezia

 

[May0maniac]

Right, similar to the other thread. Because there's epicness being left out

Tour

Arenberg 2014



Giro

Montalcino 2010
l' Aquila 2010

Well, you probably already mentioned the best stages.

 

[CheckMyPecs]

Tour 2013: stage 13 to saint amand montrond (cross wind stage)
Tour 2015: stage 2 to zelande (also cross wind stage)
Giro 2015: stage 3 to La Spezia

You are very recentist, my friend.

 

[Gigs_98]

Tour 2013: stage 13 to saint amand montrond (cross wind stage)
Tour 2015: stage 2 to zelande (also cross wind stage)
Giro 2015: stage 3 to La Spezia

You are very recentist, my friend.

I just wrote down the stages that came to my mind immediately. Ofc I know that these aren't even almost all good stages

 

[Eshnar]

Faenza 2003 obviously
Bergamo 2007 (it was almost high mountain though)
Pescocostanzo 2008
Pescara 2013

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Sestri Levante 2009, most epic TT in recent memory

 

[burning]

Does Fuente De count as a non mountain stage?

 

[CheckMyPecs]

Re:

Does Fuente De count as a non mountain stage?

Thank Riis for that one.

 

[May0maniac]

If TTs count I'd like to mention Albi 2007, because Vino, and 2003 Gaillac - Cap Découverte, the return of the Kaiser.

 

[burning]

2010 Spa could have been an amazing stage if Cancellara didn't stop everyone.

 

[pastronef]

Re:

Faenza 2003 obviously
Bergamo 2007 (it was almost high mountain though)
Pescocostanzo 2008
Pescara 2013

can you give some details, my memory is not good.
I remember Faenza, Simoni got the jersey, but who won the stage?
the others I dont remember

 

[Eshnar]

Re: Re:

Faenza 2003 obviously
Bergamo 2007 (it was almost high mountain though)
Pescocostanzo 2008
Pescara 2013

can you give some details, my memory is not good.
I remember Faenza, Simoni got the jersey, but who won the stage?
the others I dont remember

Arvesen.
I had to check

 

[pastronef]

Re: Re:

Faenza 2003 obviously
Bergamo 2007 (it was almost high mountain though)
Pescocostanzo 2008
Pescara 2013

can you give some details, my memory is not good.
I remember Faenza, Simoni got the jersey, but who won the stage?
the others I dont remember

Arvesen.
I had to check

argh, I wanted to say it, but I feared it was Sella. tell me about the other 3 stages

 

[Eshnar]

Re: Re:

Faenza 2003 obviously
Bergamo 2007 (it was almost high mountain though)
Pescocostanzo 2008
Pescara 2013

can you give some details, my memory is not good.
I remember Faenza, Simoni got the jersey, but who won the stage?
the others I dont remember

Arvesen.
I had to check

argh, I wanted to say it, but I feared it was Sella. tell me about the other 3 stages

Bergamo was won by Garzelli over Simoni and Bettini, with the Di Luca in pretty big difficulty at some point.
Pescocostanzo saw Di Luca and Ricco' attacking and Purito and Contador bridging. Piepoli joined them from the front (he was in the break) and pulled them to gain quite some time on the others. Bosisio won from the breakaway.
Pescara should be recent enough right?

 

[pastronef]

Re: Re:

Faenza 2003 obviously
Bergamo 2007 (it was almost high mountain though)
Pescocostanzo 2008
Pescara 2013

can you give some details, my memory is not good.
I remember Faenza, Simoni got the jersey, but who won the stage?
the others I dont remember

Arvesen.
I had to check

argh, I wanted to say it, but I feared it was Sella. tell me about the other 3 stages

Bergamo was won by Garzelli over Simoni and Bettini, with the Di Luca in pretty big difficulty at some point.
Pescocostanzo saw Di Luca and Ricco' attacking and Purito and Contador bridging. Piepoli joined them from the front (he was in the break) and pulled them to gain quite some time on the others. Bosisio won from the breakaway.
Pescara should be recent enough right?

I had to look for all of them. Pescara = Hansen. nice stage, you are right

 

[RedheadDane]

Caceres in the 2013 Vuelta. That was quite an escape by Panzerwagen! Felt a bit sorry for him when he was caught.
But only a bit for... obvious reasons.

 

[42x16ss]

2010 Giro - Evans vs Vino on the sterrato. Closely followed by RedheadDanes pick of Tony Martin and the 2014 TDF on the cobblestones.

 

[Valv.Piti]

One of the good stages which haven't been mentioned was the stage win by Martin in Mulhouse and Galipin grabbing the jersey, I enjoyed that one. The ITT from the Giro 2015 also was great.

 

[GP Blanco]

Tour 2013: stage 13 to saint amand montrond (cross wind stage)
Tour 2015: stage 2 to zelande (also cross wind stage)

Don't forget the Giro 2010 Amsterdam-Middelburg with the peloton shattered by crashes and cross winds.

 

[Breh]

La Grande Motte 2009. Granted, not THE most exciting stage but Armstrong gaining time on Contador was pretty funny. In particular with the subsequent TTT and Armstrong missing out on yellow with less than a second.

 

[Cance > TheRest]

Re:

2010 Spa could have been an amazing stage if Cancellara didn't stop everyone.

Good thing the following stage was epic!

 

[railxmig]

An excerpt from my post on the best mountain stages:

Montalcino 2010. This one is mostly thanks to the weather. Evans in rainbow, Vino and of all people Cunego (which i call "Che Guevara") showing real flahute skills of old. Guys like Godefroot, Kelly, de Vlaeminck, van Springel or Maartens would be proud of them. Interestingly future all-rounder Nibali lost 2 minutes. Times changes as then he was more known as possible future Savoldelli but his climbing seem to got better while he now rarely shows descending skills. I thankfully didn't watched rest of this Giro because i would most propably lost rest of my hair. I never was a fan of Basso and him doing Robo just when Arroyo had a chance to do Pereiro... I don't even want to think about that. Wait those must be only mountain stages... Sheep.

[...]

Mulhouse 2005. This one is technically a medioum mountain stage but this amazing solo of Chicken needs to be mentioned in this thread. Besides Dario Cioni was in the break with Rasmussen and Voigt get the yellow while Moreau (then still a GT threat) went with Voigt to gain 3 minutes (!) on the bunch.

[...]

Fuente De 2012 - propably most emotional and most succesful Contador trademark racing plus sneaky and very intelligent Valve [...]

Some of those old Vuelta crosswind stages were intersting. Almost allways crosswind stages are interesting. But discounting ITTs and crosswinds it's not that easy to think about something amazing in GT's in last 10-15 years. The only example i can think of right now and wasn't mentioned is Gap 2011. Contador blewing the field apart on the shallow side of Col de Manse plus great descend by Samu and Cadel resulted in a quite embarrasing loss by the Schleck tandem plus Voeckler riding into someone's garden. Special mention of course goes to Gap 2003 but this one is well documented.

Bagnères de Bigorre 2008 where Ricco did a Pantani on a poor moto guy and breakaway maraudeurs. He had so much in jet that this moto had no chance to catch him. Special mention goes to Froome who was in a short lived break at that day just before Ricco.

Those ones are technically mountain stages but they ended in an over 40km flat run-in to the finish so they felt more like transitional/medium-mountain stages. The beginning of Saint-Girons 2009 thanks to if i remeber Evans or somebody else of GC importance trying to go for a breakaway, the beginning of Pau 2010 thanks to Szmyd blewing peloton apart i think for Basso (or was the stage where he had health problems and needed to abandon?) on Peyresurde and then Van Den Broeck's attack on Aspin which resulted in Samu Sanchez losing contact and like 5 or 6 man leader's group for a while before it all came back on Tourmalet. Lourdes 2011 thanks to amazing descend skills of Mighty Thor which could be a good opponent for legendary Il Falco.

Maybe San Giorgio Del Sannio 2015 would be good here, Forlì 2015 with an amazing win by Nicola Boem and of course Milan 2015 which was won by Iljo Keisse from a breakaway. Keeping in the thread of parade stages won by breakaway the Vinokurov Paris ride needs a mention. Propably the last win in Paris by a GT rider since Hinault. That rocket sprint from Cavendish when he by himself bursted through breakaway in the last 100m was an amazing sight too.

THe 2014 version is well known and documented but slightly forgotten Arenberg 2010 was good too. Younger of Schlecks somehow managed to keep of all people Cance's pace which generated a carnage. Older Schleck did a Froome, Evans managed to keep himself in the first group showing that he's the real hard-man of GT riders while contador los around a minute with mysterious additional loss of time in the last km. After this stage i was actually more supporting Schleck than Contador in this Tour.

From ITTs i could go with Cognac 2007 with sudden almost-record times of Evans and Leipheimer and Contador's struggle, yet still amazing 5th place to keep the yellow jersey by the narrowest margin of 23sec to Cadel and 31sec to Levi since the infamous LeMond Fignon Tour.

 

[SafeBet]

Santi Perez destroying the world in the Sierra Nevada ITT during the Vuelta 2004 _O_