How do you rate the 2024 la vuelta a España?

[Ilmaestro99]

This a thread for expert race analyses, thanks everyone

 

[Rou]

The Vuelta was the best Grand Tour of the season by far. And I am a Pogacar fan.

 

[SafeBet]

2 points for the O'Connor raid.
2 points for the Yates / Carapaz madness on stage 9.
1 point for Kung finally winning a GT ITT.
1 point for Roglic cementing his legacy.
1 point for UAE turning it around after Almeida went home.
1 point for Castrillo proving to be the new cagnaccio.
1 point for North Spain scenery.
1 point for WVA being WVA until...

- 2 points for WVA crashing out and ending his season.
- 1 point for the Cattaneo fiasco.

Overall a solid 7.

 

[Cassirer]

Easily best GT of the year! For a long while it was very unpredictable, everyone was vulnerable at points, freaky things like the BOC-break happened, many attacks which were exciting because one didn't know if they would succeed. And Roglic getting his 4th after another tdf crashout is great! UAE fighting themselves was strange but no doubt entertaining.
That said points must be deducted for the many illness cases, the loss of wva which hampered the jersey competitions and the lack of will/capability of mas, carapaz etc. to really fight for second in the final phase.
7/10 I'd say.

 

[Gratemans]

Well, literally everything what Cassirer just said. But I'm in a good mood so went with an 8.

 

[Devil's Elbow]

7/10.
Basically a better version of the Tour - both started brilliantly and then tailed off in the second half, but the Vuelta petered out to a far lesser extent because the battle for KOM, white and podium places remained alive until the final weekend. Add in the lack of sprint stages and Roglic never having the stranglehold Pogacar did and the difference is clear. That being said, it needed stronger action/tension for the actual GC win to move into the 8 or above, which I did think was going to happen halfway into the race.

 

[Squire]

7/10.
Basically a better version of the Tour - both started brilliantly and then tailed off in the second half, but the Vuelta petered out to a far lesser extent because the battle for KOM, white and podium places remained alive until the final weekend. Add in the lack of sprint stages and Roglic never having the stranglehold Pogacar did and the difference is clear. That being said, it needed stronger action/tension for the actual GC win to move into the 8 or above, which I did think was going to happen halfway into the race.

It needed some more inviting serious mountain stages, I'd say.

I agree on best GT of the year for entertainment value, but the Vuelta will always feel a bit mickey mouse compared to the Tour.

 

[Red Rick]

7 or 8 for me. The ordering of the crazy stages really seems to work against it cause now it seems like it petered out a bit too much with O Connor being consistently not good enough leaving Roglic to be able to bleed him slowly without getting too muchout of his comfortzone

Also few too many big mountain stages going to breakaways.

Aside from that first week was a 10/10 in my view and that lifts it up

 

[iBanesto]

7/8 out of 10 for me.

- It was great to see Roglic methodically carve up O'Connor's lead stage by stage.
- Van Aert was on top form with 3 stages win to lead both the points and mountain jerseys.
- Kern Pharma winning 3 stages was great for a smaller team.
- Breakaways were allowed to win stages again with the likes of Soler, Dunbar and Woods.
- I enjoyed watching Skejmose and Lipowitz battle it out for the white jersey, both were consistent throughout.

 

[scribers]

No surprises outside of BOC which was still a loss by a lesser combatant. Not particularly interesting for me at least.

 

[spicelab]

What would have made for a proper crazy race would have been Roglic crashing/abandoning the race after BOC gained all his time. Very interesting to speculate how Mas and Carapaz would have raced in that scenario, among others.

 

[Rob5091]

Roglic the big favourite before the start and he duely won, but there was some dodgy moments on the road, even before the food poisoning or whatever it was.
One truely laugh out loud moment was Castrillo's attack on stage 15 with 3km to go. The man is the new Vockler, although Soler had his moments with at one point looking like he had just eaten unexpectedly a very hot pepper.

 

[IndurainsTdF1994]

Stronger Kuss (Cian, Visma) and Yates, & Almeida staying in the race, would have added to the fun. The green jersey was uninteresting, with or without WvA. The latter's fall was sad. By far the most compelling GT of the year. Absence of an alien helps, even if Rogla had it pretty much under control.

 

[jmdirt]

Best VaE of the year!

 

[Rackham]

I gave it a 9.

It's as close as you're going to get to a great GT in the current modern cycling landscape. I think UAE & Visma not showing up with their TdF power numbers made everything more... exciting. Certainly for neutrals. That and fewer sprint stages as well.

Even though by Vuelta standards (at least going back to 2010), Rog's winning margin is still one of the biggest gaps in what is usually a very tight GT anyway.

 

[Coffeeplanter]

I give it a 6, for effort. It was quite fun the first week when every DS was trying to out-dumb one another, but ultimately, it became a Vuelta as basically all other Vueltas. It was the best Grand Tour of the season, but that ultimately speaks volumes of how boring the other two were, because this one wasn't that spectacular either.

Something drastically needs to change about this race. Push it back to October, make it 18 days. The 2020 edition should be the standard. Having these guys ride in 48 degrees isn't doing the racing much good. Give me more altitude (Hello, Pico Veleta. Hello, Collado de Sahun), give me less Unipublic Unipuerto stages. _______/ is boring, it will always be boring.

La Vuelta, in the grand scheme of grand tours, no matter how good or bad the racing is, will always be a big nothing. It is time we treat it as such, by devaluating it a little. It is a place where riders come to salvage their season, but nobody is devastated if they do not win it. There is a reason the only two type of riders that make la Vuelta their major goal are Spaniards of PCT level and neopros.

 

[Scarponi]

I give it a 6, for effort. It was quite fun the first week when every DS was trying to out-dumb one another, but ultimately, it became a Vuelta as basically all other Vueltas. It was the best Grand Tour of the season, but that ultimately speaks volumes of how boring the other two were, because this one wasn't that spectacular either.

Something drastically needs to change about this race. Push it back to October, make it 18 days. The 2020 edition should be the standard. Having these guys ride in 48 degrees isn't doing the racing much good. Give me more altitude (Hello, Pico Veleta. Hello, Collado de Sahun), give me less Unipublic Unipuerto stages. _______/ is boring, it will always be boring.

La Vuelta, in the grand scheme of grand tours, no matter how good or bad the racing is, will always be a big nothing. It is time we treat it as such, by devaluating it a little. It is a place where riders come to salvage their season, but nobody is devastated if they do not win it. There is a reason the only two type of riders that make la Vuelta their major goal are Spaniards of PCT level and neopros.

Needs to be swapped with the Giro which is clearly the third rate GT now going by startlists and excitement.

 

[Coffeeplanter]

Needs to be swapped with the Giro which is clearly the third rate GT now going by startlists and excitement.

Nah, the Giro is fine as the first GT of the year. It just needs to be pushed further up the calendar by a few weeks, which would significantly drop the chances of queen stages getting cancelled due to weather and/or rider protests.

 

[Red Rick]

The extremely obvious answer to the weather issues is swapping Vuelta and Giro, but the Vuelta would never go for it.

 

[Scarponi]

Nah, the Giro is fine as the first GT of the year. It just needs to be pushed further up the calendar by a few weeks, which would significantly drop the chances of queen stages getting cancelled due to weather and/or rider protests.

No one targets it anymore except one rider a year. Truly the forgotten race of the three. Time for the Veulta and its legendary 4 time winner to be moved to its rightful place. Maybe Remco could win a Giro if they move it to September

 

[proffate]

2 points for the O'Connor raid.
2 points for the Yates / Carapaz madness on stage 9.
1 point for Kung finally winning a GT ITT.
1 point for Roglic cementing his legacy.
1 point for UAE turning it around after Almeida went home.
1 point for Castrillo proving to be the new cagnaccio.
1 point for North Spain scenery.
1 point for WVA being WVA until...

- 2 points for WVA crashing out and ending his season.
- 1 point for the Cattaneo fiasco.

Overall a solid 7.

At this point how can you say that WVA failing to fulfill his potential is anything but WVA being WVA?

I would also like to add that Mas cemented his legacy of being a caballero who puts others' results in front of his own, and Soler cemented his legacy of giving commentators something to talk about.

 

[Coffeeplanter]

No one targets it anymore except one rider a year. Truly the forgotten race of the three. Time for the Veulta and its legendary 4 time winner to be moved to its rightful place. Maybe Remco could win a Giro if they move it to September

Riders targeting la Vuelta: Skjelmose.
Riders targeting il Giro: ehh... everbody in that peloton sans Pogacar?

 

[Rou]

About the weather issues that some people mentioned. Let me point out something obvious that you guys don't talk about. When were the last cool and rainy days in the Tour that had any meaning. 2021 Stages 8 and 9. For the last 3 years the Tour has been dry as Sahara and hot. The Vuelta literally every year has a rainy, cool or foggy mountain stage to bring some excitement. The cantabrian and asturian stages are awesome for me. I'm willing to bet that the average temperature of the 21 days in the Tour was higher than the Vuelta. This is a grand tour for me: scorching 40 degrees days combined with cool and rainy 15 degrees days. Not every day the same boring 30-35 degrees ovens.

 

[Tim Cahill]

In 20 years time, teenagers on social media will be posting compilations set to Public Enemy tunes of Marc Soler's antics in the 2024 Vuelta breakaways. 9, best GT since Giro 2018 for me.

 

[Rou]

One more thing. The Giro for the last couple of years has become the worst and weakest Grand Tour in my opinion. All you need to do is look at the startlist every year to see that the quality is always lower than the Vuelta for example.
The reasons for me are several.
The Giro for years has adopted the strategy of paying millions of bucks to star riders to ride. In the long run this has decreased the prestige of the race.
The route is always super boring and backloaded with the organisers having to pray to not cancel or decrease a mountain stage because of the weather.
The top stars don't see a reason to mess up their Tour preparation by going to the Giro.
The cycling megastars set the trends. It was Lance who did not care about the Giro for 7 years that started the process of lowering the prestige of the race.