Re: Re:
tobydawq said:
Libertine Seguros said:
yaco said:
Pharazon said:
yaco said:
My only query with the stage cancellation is the decision to give bonus seconds - This is a blunder by the officials.
they wern't stage winner bonus seconds. the 8s bernal got were at the top of that climb anyway, not matter if it was the stage finish or not
Ultimately you shouldn't be awarding bonus seconds on the second last climb because the stage was still in motion and no rider had been informed that the stage would be cancelled Alaphillippe was 90 seconds clear of Bernal at the start of the day - He made 2 min and 10 seconds at the finish of the climb which is 130 seconds - So by my reckoning Bernal should be 40 seconds clear of Alaphalippe and not 48 seconds. And if you look at the stage results - yates is 13 seconds behind Bernal and in fact Yates was not 13 seconds behind at the top of the climb - I suggest you check the stage classifications.
There were automatic bonuses at the top of Iseran, like the ones Alaphilippe picked up in the first week.
Now, whether you think giving bonus seconds atop climbs is a stupid artificiality introduced to paper over the cracks of poor route design in a desperate bid to entice some racing from a soporific péloton is another question.
Yeah, such horrible design, nobody would have raced the race as entertainingly as they dif if it had not been for those bonus seconds.
I know you have all your theories about how everything should be and you will probably never admit to being wrong, but this year's Tour has been awesome and there has been plenty of terrain to work with, which a lot of riders have done. Sadly, the Alps become ruined but that's not the organisers' fault.
Hey, I was really happy about stage 15, because we finally got a well designed mountain stage of proper length, which was used in the right position (after the MTF that would create gaps in its own right), so that both would be raced well, not neutralising one another. I thought they were becoming extinct due to ASO's obsession with the short mountain stage, patterned after one successful trial in the 2011 Tour, which came one day after a 200km mountain stage which I personally thought was better, but ASO decided long mountain stages were boring and started to phase them out.
However, while this race may have been pretty well raced, the reason the artificiality of those bonus seconds was introduced was as a reaction to several years of poor racing and poor design. The fact that the race has been good does not change that the bonus seconds on summits increases the level of artificiality (though for the most part, through the majority of the race, the only one of the GC men to have acquired much time that way was Alaphilippe anyway, seeing as most of the stages with that bonus time available were in the final week).
This year has been much better than 2011 in terms of racing throughout, but let's not forget that at the end of week 1, we'd had around 1km of actual aggression from the perceived GC threats. Alaphilippe may have become a key story in this race which means his stage 3 attack definitely belongs in consideration of the key GC moves of the race, but it wasn't perceived thus at the time. Much like 2011, the big mountains have been hugely backloaded this year. However, what this year has over 2011 is that the medium mountain stages that covered the second weekend were far better, both in design and execution, that we had a real echelon stage that meant something for the big names, and that there isn't a dominant sprinter, meaning that the flat stages had some intrigue as multiple teams were getting involved.
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