Grand Tour Elimination Game ( 2010s )

[Forever The Best]

Good points. 2012 Vuelta saves that year for me. Fuente De was legendary, and we also had some nice action on Valdezcaray with crosswinds, but the rest was not that great apart from the last few kms which were very exciting. But Giro and Tour were so bad that it may well be worse than 2013 as overall. Especially that Giro was very disappointing, stage 17 and stage 19 of that Giro would be queen stages in a different GT and barely anything happened on those.

 

[Red Rick]

I actually think 2012 was worse. That Vuelta is a bit overrated (like the 2014 one) for nostalgic reasons. That gt seasons had the Stelvio, Fuente De and that's it. 2013 had a lot of mediocrity but not the same Mariana Trench deep lows.

2013 Tour had much more action despite the GC battle being equally NID. 2013 Giro was worse but apart from cancellation and nerfing the mountain stages ended up alright bar Galibier in the massive headwind and snow. Most of the drama was early on with Wiggins in the early medium mountain stages, etc. 2013 Vuelta was quite good it just got a meme winner.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

I actually think 2012 was worse. That Vuelta is a bit overrated (like the 2014 one) for nostalgic reasons. That gt seasons had the Stelvio, Fuente De and that's it. 2013 had a lot of mediocrity but not the same Mariana Trench deep lows.

I think the 2012 Vuelta is also overrated because the other GTs in 2012 were so bad that it was like a huge sigh of relief to actually see some racing and GC battling, even if it was all the same kind of action save for Fuente De because of the one-trick parcours. As a result, we did get some consistent action from it, but it was generally a last 10-15 minutes of every stage kind of action. But after tthe 2012 Giro and Tour, that in and of itself felt miraculous.

 

[gunara]

I don't see 2012 and 2013 are that close in level of enjoyment. Both Giro and Tour of 2012 were the biggest meh shows possible from a grand tour, stage after stage you waited and got disappointed, with few giggles here and there. The Vuelta, well, had the quartet sprinted Fuente Dé it would have gone down as one of the most disappointing hyped-up GT of the decade, but of course legendary stuff happenned.....unattended and not fully understood by us.

2013 had three quirky races that left enough of either amusing or traumatic images on my memory.

 

[Seb]

Thanks for this great game!
I don't know whether this is the right thread for this suggestion, but we could do an elimination game with this year's Tour (or Giro, Vuelta) stages.
Perhaps a more experienced forum member than me could host the game.

 

[tobydawq]

Okay, I had to bump this thread as I just heard Jonathan Vaughters say the following on The Cycling Podcast:

"To me, the 2012 Giro was the last really great Grand Tour to watch".

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Okay, I had to bump this thread as I just heard Jonathan Vaughters say the following on The Cycling Podcast:

"To me, the 2012 Giro was the last really great Grand Tour to watch".

"To me, the 2012 Giro was the Grand Tour my team won, and in those halcyon days before I had to cannibalise other teams to keep it alive and my riders hadn't all been outed as dopers and I hadn't yet had to introduce all manner of proposals to 'save cycling', by which I meant, keep me at the forefront of it"

 

[SHAD0W93]

Okay, I had to bump this thread as I just heard Jonathan Vaughters say the following on The Cycling Podcast:

"To me, the 2012 Giro was the last really great Grand Tour to watch".

Maybe he enjoyed all the heartbreaks the Giro had for us
And not the fact his Ryder won.

 

[SafeBet]

Okay, I had to bump this thread as I just heard Jonathan Vaughters say the following on The Cycling Podcast:

"To me, the 2012 Giro was the last really great Grand Tour to watch".

Well we know Vaughters is kind of a clown, but both Bernie and Friebe overestimate that Giro (and I think Richard Moore did as well), which is kinda odd for me since they generally know their cycling.

 

[tobydawq]

Well we know Vaughters is kind of a clown, but both Bernie and Friebe overestimate that Giro (and I think Richard Moore did as well), which is kinda odd for me since they generally know their cycling.

To be fair, I think this forum underestimates it a bit, too, but yeah, a bit strange to celebrate that particular race. And I agree, they definitely know their cycling. It's really a fabulous podcast that I only discovered recently and I just love their humour. Earlier today, I couldn't help but smiling when they were wondering whether E-Rik Zabel was some sort of cyborg antecedent of Rick Zabel, inspired by the eGiro.