Finally, what's your opinion about "Vuelta"?

[Cyivel]

Sarcasm was implied, fam

 

[Broth3r]

The prototype GT. It put everyone in their rightful place.

Spectators on the edge of their seats.
Climbers on the podium.
TTers on Majorca or Colombia.
Trains on the tracks.
And pure sprinters... on the track as well.

 

[Afrank]

(More descent finishes, less super steep finishes, bla bla, and all that stuff)

Great race! We got real racing on every stage. Even the sprint stages we got some great action on thanks to no dominant sprinter teams. And a continuous GC battle throughout the entire race kept it interesting, unlike at the Tour where Froome had the whole thing won in the first MTF. And it was just fantastic to to see it all come down to the wire on a climb as brutal as Angliru. Enjoyed the race very much.

 

[Afrank]

why on earth would you want a 28 year old 2-time GT winner to win ahead of a 41 yr old whose never won one before??!

Why on earth can't you grasp that some people may like one rider more then another?

 

[darwin553]

If the TdF was a farce, the Vuelta was an epic farce.

 

[Master50]

Loved the race hated the clinic discussion. Absurd as always. Actually now that the clinic denizens won a big one they are even more unbearable.

I was thrilled to finally see Chris win a big one after spending so much time helping others. Just the right mix for him. a real climbers tour. Would have loved to see a couple of top Columbians in the mix.

 

[maxmartin]

Loved the race hated the clinic discussion. Absurd as always. Actually now that the clinic denizens won a big one they are even more unbearable.

I was thrilled to finally see Chris win a big one after spending so much time helping others. Just the right mix for him. a real climbers tour. Would have loved to see a couple of top Columbians in the mix.

please keep your clinic hatred stuff also in the clinic forum, here should be neutral ground, pro- or con- clinic should equally be banned.

 

[Arredondo]

I had little hope that Purito would win his first GT, lets hope for chance 32 next year

 

[murali]

Apart from all the misgivings, this is one of the best stage races I have seen in the recent past.

Most of the stages were unpredictable. I mean who could have thought that Morkov will take a win, or elissonde will outclimb the best climbers in the world.

Tony Martin, you dirty devil! He just added one more chapter to the legend of unorthodox attacks book.

And Bargui! if ever a youngster should emphatically state that he is under-utilized, he just demonstrated how it is done. My DS said take a rest, so i attacked.

Saxo making cross-winds a trademark move.

Purito.
Valverde.
Nibali.
Horner.

And then, txurruka!! rofl.

Route was not really innovative. Landscape was a bit of improvement, though the ES commentators demonstrated again that they dont know anything apart from TdF and USPS. But who cares!

The 198 riders(including theo bos who churned controversy even before the race started) made sure that this race was filled with emotion, pleasure, intrigue and what-not.

It is easy to criticize any event, especially one as big as the vuelta.
Half the MTFs were a joke. Riders made them interesting, not the route as such.
There were not any real good sprint team. Leave out OPQS and OGE, who were relatively stronger, and one is left to wonder whether any team is capable of pulling back a break. OPQS/OGE didn't contribute to pull back a break in only a handful of stages, and all the stages were won by the break.(don't know abt the final stage.)
The actual mix of stages needs a complete revamp. I didn't see an actual "transition stage", meant for roulers to show off. Gilbert won on an uphill sprint, Stybar won because of a highly technical finish.
Of all the flat stages, only OGE managed to win one stage with a sprint train. This alone speaks volumes about the course.
And, of course, as descender has been pointing out for a very long time, where is that descend finish?

After watching this Vuelta, it would seem as if Spain has only mountains with insane gradients, or very flat windy coasts. Spain is a much more beautiful country with many more wonderful places. If unipublic really wants to make Vuelta popular, they should add stages meant only with bolstering tourism in mind. And please teach the TV commentators something about the places. The intelligent ones stick to race.

In response to some amusing comments earlier:
A TTT is better than a prologue, better than a MTF, better than a sprint finish.
If you want to watch predecided GTs, then you can very well have 20 flat TTs.

 

[Kwibus]

Lots can be said about this Vuelta again. Lots of things to critise, but looking back at it I can only conclude it was incredibly entertaining with an epic GC battle and lots of succesful breakaways....even on the flat stages.

9/10

 

[Pantani_lives]

2/10

I think they designed this course to let Purito or Valverde win against Nibali: lots of steep uphill finishes, only one time trial. Well, they succeeded in making Nibali lose.

Every mountain stage was won by an obscure Frenchman. So was the KOM jersey. The few sprints weren't worth mentioning.

 

[willbick]

'Pantani Lives'? No he doesn't - he's dead coz he took too many drugs

 

[hayzer114]

Great race, best grand tour of the year once again. While the field didn't contain some of the real strong guys from the Tour (Froome, Quintana, Contador) it was a good field and very entertaining. I think Nibali has shown that other than Froome he is probably the next best grand tour rider at the moment (even though he didn't win) and also that it is extremely difficult to nowadays win two grand tours in a year. If he solely focuses on the Tour next year and has a very strong team at his disposal (including a few Columbians) he could well rattle Froome but its a long shot. Would also have liked to see Richie Porte here as I feel that he could have done quite well. While the mountainous parcours makes for a more exciting overall race and gives breakaways a better success rate I would have like to see a few more sprint stages which would have enticed the likes of Greipel, Kittel, Goss even Bouhani (to make amends for the tour) to race. All round there were some excellent performances, Tony Martin rode like a machine on his incredible solo effort and it will be some battle between him, cancellara and wiggins for the itt gold. Was very impressed with Nicolas Roche finally coming out of his shell and doing a strong gc.

 

[Carols]

8/10

Plenty of action, many surprise winners. Just the right amount of sprint stages Aside from my complete shock over the winner, a great race!

 

[movingtarget]

Enjoyable race but I preferred the 2011 and the 2012.

 

[Kokoso]

So Leo König was ill again on the Angliru. Respectable effort after all then. He seems to have big potential. Don't know if this is the right thread but

 

[Peter von]

8/10
I liked it, the MTF was spread out during all three weeks, it was a very different race from Giro and le Tour and IMO that was a good thing, maybe they gave us too many uphill finishes on short climbs.

They bonus seconds worked well i think it's good that they only gives 10 sec. for the winner now, it's still enough to give the riders a reason to go for it, but not so much that they become too much of a deciding factor.

I don't care too much for the combined competition, i would rather have a jersey for the intermediate sprints or combbined from mountain points and sprint points, something the breakaway riders could compete for.

KOM works fine, not the organisers fault only obscure riders tries to win it, maybe if WT points were awarded for KOM winners we would see more teams witout top5 favorites send good climbers away on KoM hunts.

I can't really decide on the points competition, i don't know what should be done, but it going to one of the guys on the podium, without them doing anything special to try and win it is not good, maybe more points on finish line on flat stages or maybe it's the sprinters fault for not trying to pick up point by going i breaks and take IS.

Overall a really good race, it both suffered and gained from it being the lesser of the three GTs, it gained in drama as more riders had a chance to succeed and it was less predictable, it suffered because we can't help but think that it's not that great when Nibbles and Valverde can podium without being on top of their game.

 

[jsem94]

7.5/10, got to give this high score because of the drama. It was tense up until the Angliru. However, route-wise, it could have been much better. This beats just driving by in the desert all the time, but we could have had a few flat stages and a few downhill finished to mix things up a bit more.

 

[Afrank]

I can't really decide on the points competition, i don't know what should be done, but it going to one of the guys on the podium, without them doing anything special to try and win it is not good, maybe more points on finish line on flat stages or maybe it's the sprinters fault for not trying to pick up point by going i breaks and take IS.

I think the majority of the blame for this can be placed on the parcours. When half the stages are uphills for the GC men, the pure sprinters aren't going to have any chance in the points competition. More points on flat stages would certainly help to balance it out a bit more, but that's also assuming that some higher tier sprinters go to the Vuelta and bring decent sprint trains. As we saw this year, if the sprint field isn't strong, many of the sprint stage can easily go to late or early breaks.

 

[jaylew]

No Cav, Kittel, Petacchi, no stupid sprint trains making every stage boring as ****.

This.

And get rid of TTTs

Actually they should start with a 5k prologue of which the final 1k is up a 25% ramp.

I would love that both of these.

Great race, best grand tour of the year once again.

And this.

Loved the Vuelta once again but I have to admit being a fan of the top 4 riders helped. I love all the mt and uphill finishes and was happy to hear they have no plan to move away from that formula in the near future.

Just a thought - how exciting would the TdF be if you took all of the riders, spectacle, and excitement that is the Tour and had the riders do a course like this years's Vuelta? (I'm drooling now)

 

[Asturiano]

This.

I would love that both of these.


And this.

Loved the Vuelta once again but I have to admit being a fan of the top 4 riders helped. I love all the mt and uphill finishes and was happy to hear they have no plan to move away from that formula in the near future.

Just a thought - how exciting would the TdF be if you took all of the riders, spectacle, and excitement that is the Tour and had the riders do a course like this years's Vuelta? (I'm drooling now)

I think the next year Vuelta is going to have less uphill finishes and a bit more hard mountain stages like Peryagudes and final stages after a descent.

By the way, Guillen (Vuelta's organizer) suggested he wanted an ITT with a big descent / final climb.

 

[cineteq]

Why on earth can't you grasp that some people may like one rider more then another?

Well said.

 

[lostincosmos]

I agree, unfortunately the miraculous performance of one rider ruined the whole gc battle for me.

sigh...such a common refrain these days. and i agree. i stopped watching in the last week cuz i just couldn't stand to be that insulted yet again only a month or so after the last time

But i'm all for routes like this in the future...let's let the Vuelta be about mountains. no TTT, 1 TT of just ok length and undulating. sprint stages for a few battles to watch...

wait...did i just describe the Giro?