French hope

[Koba80]

Or at least on your top tube, because that's the next best thing...

 

[JS10]

Whilst I agree with a lot of the comments offered,Nothing can be allowed to compromise the Tours Integrity.By that I mean that the Tour is the worlds most important cycle race and as such should be won by the best allround cyclist.If the idea that the route can be designed to accommodate particular types of cyclists gains traction we are in big trouble.
Opinions have been offered that the result would have been different but for the crashes and absentees. I disagree ,in particular in regard to the Gallibier Stage. When Froome ,Bardet & co lit the afterburners everyone else was shelled out of the back.Such was the pace it would certainy have fried Valverde and probably Porte as well.The idea of making the route attractive to Dumoulin seems on the face of it a good idea but I am not totally convinced. What works in the Giro in May doesn't neccessarilly apply to France in July.Following the pace
in the shorter Giro climbs is a million miles away from following Froome and co going up an Alpine monster like
the Ventoux at full chat.
Froome won because he was the best allround cyclist NOT because he is British

France is lucky to have a good pool of talent-converting that talent into a Tour winner is going to need a bit of luck as well and maybe a good young prospect has got to take the politically awkward decision and go and ride
for one of the powerhouse teams abroad Though I doubt Whether BMC or Sky could do anything about Bardet"s
TT.Barguil however has impressed me a great deal but to fulfil his potential his most important decision will be
which team he moves to ,he certainly could learn a lot at BMC or Sky,,though im sure he"d get some some ribbing from Thomas with regard to his bikehandling on the way to Gap two years ago !
Lady Luck will eventually turn France"s way It only took us Brits 75 years to excrcorcise Fred Perry"s ghost at Wimbledon.

 

[The Hegelian]

Re: Re:

I tend to take the view that a pure climber can't normally win the tour unless they get lucky (misfortune of others), are a ridiculously strong climber (Pantani) or perhaps if there isn't a good all rounder for a few years. Once Froome declines I expect there will be other allrounders about to prevent Bardet winnng like Dumoulin or perhaps even Roglic. So Bardet and Barguil don't seem like likely winners despite Bardet's (probable) 2 podiums. There is a big difference between a podium and winning. I guess Bardet could nick a Tour in the right circumstances, but I don't see any current French rider as having the goods to win multiple Tours.

Fair point. Interesting how TT powerhouses can drop a bit of weight and radically improve their climbing, but climbers very often start and finish their careers as goats who can never TT to save themselves. We need to ask though: how much does Bardet need to improve to become a genuine threat?

Not that much, surely. i.e. to minimize loses. Also bear in mind that it's pretty rare to have even one (let alone two) long flat Indurain type courses. Some years have a hill tt, and maybe a rolling course. So it will come down a bit to parcours. It helps being French!

You will find the answer on the scoreboard this afternoon

I don't think so. It may be the case that he doesn't improve one iota from this year. It may be the case that he does.

In either case we don't know this from the Marseilles TT.

 

[RedheadDane]

Re: Re:

ASO is a business. If they cared about the French public, they would stop the Grand Depart whereever-pays-the-most and stop neglecting half of France, including cycling-loving regions. French stage wins are great, a French contender is always good, but TV ratings (and TV rights) are everything. They want the gaps to be small for as long as possible. If it wasn't for the crap incident, the long ITT would have settled the Giro early. I don't see a lot of ITT coming back anytime soon.

Sorry guys , but my feeling is that we'll see more designs like this one. That's where the money is.

ASO is a business that gets a big share of it revenues out of the French public, mind you. Yet the stadium in Marseille was empty, even though Bardet was mathematically in it.

If Froome can't sustain 6.2W/Kg anymore, a long TT won't kill the race, particularly if peak Quintana (most likely), Porte or Landa can. Meanwhile it might give all of them a reason to attack if Dumoulin was in yellow.

Something else to try out, as 8 man teams are clearly not going to do the trick. I think ASO are savvier than they let on sometimes.

For some of the time he was also physically in the stadium
How can you be mathematically anywhere?

 

[The Hegelian]

Re: Re:

The Giro seems to be quite happy with designing 90s style routes and force the climbers to race like Pantani 1994! A potential Landa versus Dumoulin battle at the corsa rosa looks promising IMHO.

Basso won one Giro with a strong TT. In 2010 his TT was pretty average again.

Like I said, Ricco finished a TT loaded Giro in second place. His TT was horrible. The cobra fell in the hilly TT, even lost time up to Plan de Corones. Yet, he wasn't much more aggressive than Bardet has been in the recent two years. Simoni never had an excellent TT in his pocket when he won his two Giro editions. Cuneo was absolutely horrible in the TT, but defeated Popovych with great team tactics.

It's about competition. In a Giro against Aru, Bardet absolutely would be able to win. No matter how bad his TT his. You need to anticipate and grab your chance. This year he would've been without any chance at the Giro. Last year he likely would have won it. Leipheimer would have won the 2012 Tour in 2008.

Don't forget about Contador and Rasmussen beating Evans in 2007 despite over 110kms of TT and Evans TTing like a freight train.

And for that matter, Sastre in '08.

Always a very big difference between a TT early and late in a GT.

 

[spalco]

Pinot and Bardet might have a chance in a weak year, but I think there will always be a couple guys stronger than them around. Barguil has a better shot imo.

No clue about the younger guys, but overall I wouldn't be very hopeful in the short term if I was French.

The thing that would worry the most is that the French teams still aren't looking strong, except for AG2R somewhat.

 

[roundabout]

Re:

The Giro seems to be quite happy with designing 90s style routes and force the climbers to race like Pantani 1994! A potential Landa versus Dumoulin battle at the corsa rosa looks promising IMHO.

Basso won one Giro with a strong TT. In 2010 his TT was pretty average again.

Like I said, Ricco finished a TT loaded Giro in second place. His TT was horrible. The cobra fell in the hilly TT, even lost time up to Plan de Corones. Yet, he wasn't much more aggressive than Bardet has been in the recent two years. Simoni never had an excellent TT in his pocket when he won his two Giro editions. Cuneo was absolutely horrible in the TT, but defeated Popovych with great team tactics.

It's about competition. In a Giro against Aru, Bardet absolutely would be able to win. No matter how bad his TT his. You need to anticipate and grab your chance. This year he would've been without any chance at the Giro. Last year he likely would have won it. Leipheimer would have won the 2012 Tour in 2008.

Simoni did a ridiculous TT in 2001.

Popovych was the leader when Cunego made the winning attack. And as bad as Cunego was, losing 3 minutes to the best GC rider over 50km is probably better than losing 2 minutes over 20.

 

[Monstre du Cyclisme]

Imo it's not about a close or even an exciting race. It's not about bringing French riders on the podium. It's about class. It's about being a complete rider and being able to face every terrain if it's the mountains, time trials, hills, descents, cobblestones, flat sections or even sprinting. In order to prove that you have to add all types of stages and include bonus seconds.

In this regards the French riders just have to improve their skillsets to all kinds of stages. It's not about preferring Bardet or about preferring Dumoulin in order to have a real shot at defeating Frooome.

So create a tour with long and mountain top finishes after 3 HC mountains beforehand (as well as 230km of total racing) but also short and intense stages with a downhill section to the finish. But also include 100 kilometre of time trial as it was the case until the 00s. Rasmussen and Contador showed that you still could defeat the time trial specialists (Evans, Leipheimer). But the mountain stages back then were great. Nothing compared to the lukewarm's today.

 

[swissfr]

Pinot and Bardet might have a chance in a weak year, but I think there will always be a couple guys stronger than them around. Barguil has a better shot imo.

No clue about the younger guys, but overall I wouldn't be very hopeful in the short term if I was French.

The thing that would worry the most is that the French teams still aren't looking strong, except for AG2R somewhat.

All the young French climbers are under 27 years old.
France has the best prospects in the world

 

[Monstre du Cyclisme]

Pinot and Bardet might have a chance in a weak year, but I think there will always be a couple guys stronger than them around. Barguil has a better shot imo.

No clue about the younger guys, but overall I wouldn't be very hopeful in the short term if I was French.

The thing that would worry the most is that the French teams still aren't looking strong, except for AG2R somewhat.

All the young French climbers are under 27 years old.
France has the best prospects in the world

That's definitely true. They might not be the very best shots but they come immediately afterwards. And there are further good climbers behind who might not be good enough to enter the top 5 but who are really solid helpers.

Bardet has to improve his time trial but he climbs with the very best. Pinot isn't winning material but he is certainly a podium challenger and Barguil is a bit of a dark horse. But if he is able to repeat this year's climbing performance or even improves everything could be possible in the future.

They would have a difficult life with a classical tour approach, however, i.e. 60 kilometres of TTT and 100 kilometres of ITT but I guess we won't see these times in the foreseeable future again with so many good French climbers in the peleton who at the same time clearly lack time trial ability.

 

[hrotha]

Re:

Imo it's not about a close or even an exciting race. It's not about bringing French riders on the podium. It's about class. It's about being a complete rider and being able to face every terrain if it's the mountains, time trials, hills, descents, cobblestones, flat sections or even sprinting. In order to prove that you have to add all types of stages and include bonus seconds.

In this regards the French riders just have to improve their skillsets to all kinds of stages. It's not about preferring Bardet or about preferring Dumoulin in order to have a real shot at defeating Frooome.

So create a tour with long and mountain top finishes after 3 HC mountains beforehand (as well as 230km of total racing) but also short and intense stages with a downhill section to the finish. But also include 100 kilometre of time trial as it was the case until the 00s. Rasmussen and Contador showed that you still could defeat the time trial specialists (Evans, Leipheimer). But the mountain stages back then were great. Nothing compared to the lukewarm's today.

Agreed. You can tweak the route within certain parameters to handicap a dominant rider and improve the spectacle, but you can't lose the essence of what the race is supposed to be.

All this talk about "modern cycling", as if long-range action was simply impossible, is refuted by the fact that we typically see much better racing throughout the season. We're told that everybody is just strong enough to barely hang on, but that's a very specific strength to keep during three weeks, and then we get everybody's times in a section of the ITT that included a climb and see there's wild gaps between contenders. We're told that strong teams make it impossible to move, but we've seen the leader almost isolated and nobody gave it a proper go. When the contenders start racing full gas, the vast majority of domestiques don't matter, and that's a fact that cycling history, even recent history in other races, has made clear.

Give us proper ITTs. If Bardet had to choose between moving early or becoming a complete irrelevancy in the GC, I know what he'd choose, and suddenly all the talk about not having the legs wouldn't matter.

Edit: We must not be carried away with "classical routes", though. Often, when we say that we only mean "90s routes". They're not the whole story.

 

[Escarabajo]

It is not only the riders and the routes hothra. It is the sponsors as well. Sometimes there is too much at stake. I have seen that in other sports. Teams become very defensive. Cycling as well.

 

[Monstre du Cyclisme]

It's not just about the 90's. ITT (apart from the very first few years) was always a big part of the Tour. It's just a few years since it has been reduced and finally more or less abolished. If we talk about Hinault, Merckx, Anquetil or other giants in the past all of them were superb in time trials. Sometimes there were even ITT with distances longer than 100km.

I have nothing against certain movements. There is change everywhere and cycling needn't be an exception. But I'm totally against changing the essence of a race. There is a clear trend towards skeleton riders and I don't think this is a positive change. The recipe is simple. Reduce the size of teams (on a bigger level introduce investment caps or something similar) and bring back time trials. This will create gaps which climbers have to make up in longer (some short stages can still exist, but there must exist some REAL mountain stages as well) and harder mountain stages. With less control of ridiculous strong teams we will get exciting racing. I don't get any suspense from small time gaps. I get suspense from real racing and from fights man vs. man. If we want to see real cycling that's the way to get it. Btw, including more time trials we will see a healthier cycling and maybe get rid of all the skeletons out there. In sky jumping the organisers reacted by weight limits, in cycling a simple parcours change could be enough. I really appreciate Froome. But nevertheless I truly believe that cycling should become more athletic again. Losing weight shouldn't be the only way to get a chance for a Tour victory (GC wise).

 

[Monstre du Cyclisme]

Re:

It is not only the riders and the routes hothra. It is the sponsors as well. Sometimes there is too much at stake. I have seen that in other sports. Teams become very defensive. Cycling as well.

That's true. But it's not a problem. They become defensive because it's the best and most successful way to ride. They would be fools not following such a strategy. The thing is to create rules and parcours in such a way that other tactics become more attractive. Smaller teams are such an example. More difficult and less controllable parcours is another one. We saw great cycling in Rio. We still see great cycling in certain classics sometimes. We just have to have a look what were the ingredients that made that possible and change the other races in the respective way.

 

[jsem94]

Whilst I agree with a lot of the comments offered,Nothing can be allowed to compromise the Tours Integrity.By that I mean that the Tour is the worlds most important cycle race and as such should be won by the best allround cyclist.If the idea that the route can be designed to accommodate particular types of cyclists gains traction we are in big trouble.

If the GTs are supposed to be about the best all-round cyclist let us then have two-three cobbled stages, maybe a sterrato stage and a LBL stage in every Tour. But we won't see that, because it's not really about all-round. It's mostly about mountains and some TTing. I want to see such stages though. I don't think a pure lightweight climbing phenom should be able to contend a GT without actually putting in major time on his rivals.

 

[spalco]

I hope nobody's actually been waiting since "the crack of dawn" on the Champs Elysees for the Tour de France to go past, because I can't think of a dumber way to spend a day in Paris.

 

[carton]

Re: Re:

For some of the time he was also physically in the stadium
How can you be mathematically anywhere?

You've made some general topologists very sad

But I meant mathematically as in rigurously, or technically. No offense to Bodnar or Uran, but Chris Froome's only rival in Marseille was Chris Froome.