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Rate the 2015 Tour de France !

Page 3 - Get up to date with the latest news, scores & standings from the Cycling News Community.

How good was this years Tour de France ?

  • 1

    Votes: 5 3.0%
  • 2

    Votes: 4 2.4%
  • 3

    Votes: 6 3.7%
  • 4

    Votes: 9 5.5%
  • 5

    Votes: 25 15.2%
  • 6

    Votes: 40 24.4%
  • 7

    Votes: 40 24.4%
  • 8

    Votes: 29 17.7%
  • 9

    Votes: 4 2.4%
  • 10

    Votes: 2 1.2%

  • Total voters
    164
Fight.The.Power said:
Carols said:
I gave it a 5. The GC battle was no battle very early so much of the drama was already gone. The first week was good. It scored on 1-Tony Martin's 4 day quest for yellow and his awesome run in to accomplish it. 2-Nibali's long range stage win. 3-Bala's podium :). 4-MTNs performance and win on Mandela day. 5-The 3 French stage winners, especially Bardet. 6-Purito doing his thing twice and Nairo's great ride on the Alpe. There were Long periods of utter boredom though, hence the 5.

Hi Carol :)

I think the 'utter boredom' derived itself from the polarised tactics from Sky and movistar. No one expected Astana and Tinkoff (v) to be so out of it. Sky tactics was for froome to get a lead on day1 and defend. Movistar was to hammer the last two days.

In between you would have expected Contador and Nibali to attack and so did the respective teams. This lead to the hiatus that you refer to. ??

Any time one team has a strangle hold on affairs boredom is the result :). Thank goodness for some decent breakaways!
 
Jul 4, 2011
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Carols said:
Fight.The.Power said:
Carols said:
I gave it a 5. The GC battle was no battle very early so much of the drama was already gone. The first week was good. It scored on 1-Tony Martin's 4 day quest for yellow and his awesome run in to accomplish it. 2-Nibali's long range stage win. 3-Bala's podium :). 4-MTNs performance and win on Mandela day. 5-The 3 French stage winners, especially Bardet. 6-Purito doing his thing twice and Nairo's great ride on the Alpe. There were Long periods of utter boredom though, hence the 5.

Hi Carol :)

I think the 'utter boredom' derived itself from the polarised tactics from Sky and movistar. No one expected Astana and Tinkoff (v) to be so out of it. Sky tactics was for froome to get a lead on day1 and defend. Movistar was to hammer the last two days.

In between you would have expected Contador and Nibali to attack and so did the respective teams. This lead to the hiatus that you refer to. ??

Any time one team has a strangle hold on affairs boredom is the result :). Thank goodness for some decent breakaways!

I don't think it was a stranglehold . . .

By the sounds of it Nairos plan was always to attack in the alps ?
 
Fight.The.Power said:
The Hitch said:
Fight.The.Power said:
fungusbear said:
ILovecycling said:
Probably the best Tour since 2011, so 6/10.
Yep. At least in his tour there was some suspense on stage 20. We have not had that since 2011


Hitch - get down from your horse sometimes eh ?
Yep you are right. No one who disagrees with you is allowed an opinion.

Now that's not fair.

Hitch you are THE KNOWLEDGE and I I know that as does everyone else. Therefore you require to be criticised.

I'm no KNOWLEDGE. I'm just a guy with an opinion, especially on something as subjective as race enjoyment. Ive already said if people enjoyed this, good for them.

Me, and a handful of other regular old school posters I think - LS, hrotha, Descender, perhaps Eshnar, Serious Sam, simply hold cycling to a higher standard than many (maybe some of these will now disagree with me and say this was a great tour, but im betting from previous experience, they won't).

I don't tune into cycling for the scenery or to hear commentators blabber on about breakfast while the peloton holds hands day after day week after week. I want to see a gc battle, tension, finger biting, changes in the storyline, unpredictability, like I do for any sport. Without that cycling can really be as boring as most non fans claim. Just some riders riding around a country.

This TDF had none of those. I don't recall anything particularly special or unpredictable. Different non gc guy winning a stage every day. Quintana settled for 2nd very early. Take a look back at the mountain threads in week 2 and 3. Some people argued that Quintana was dumb to settle for 2nd, others said it was clever of movistar to settle for 2nd and 3rd. Either way it was clear he had settled for 2nd. All the mountain stages went to waste. They just settled for mtfs. They might as well have used the 2012 Vuelta profiles, cut out the mountain stages and just have loads of mtfs cos thats how they raced it.

SS can maybe post the odds graphs for Froome winning the TDF. He was favourite before the Tour. Favourite in the first week. His odds rose steadily basically every day and by the end of PSM were well above 50 and never dropped from there. It was never in doubt.

To give this race anything above 5 is to suggest that there isn't much room to improve and perfection is only slightly better than what we saw. I'm more optimistic. It was a below average gt that had no surprises or turns. Like quite a lot of TDFs recently. And its not even in the same league of entertaiment, as those gts that actually have a battle.
 
Apr 29, 2015
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Underwhelming GT. Think the Giro was so good that Le Tour was up against it from the off but it still disappointed. Felt genuine enjoyment watching one or two stages but overall it was a mediocre race,GC over after first week and IMO some of the stages lacked imagination.
 
nelsonsmen71 said:
this years Tour was over after STAGE 2 , Quintana was the real winner end of, fact, he lost 1.28 mins and it was his team not him just as it was froomes team not him that gained the 1.28mins froome was second rate yet won, pish poor tdf . quintana was winner fact. best man came 2nd end of fact. stop your analysis
nonsense..... Every team and rider would have raced differently ...strategy for teams and individuals evolves with the race... Sky and Froome wouldn't have had to defend for 15+ stages even Movistar would have raced differently ... AV would have become a pure domestique
 
Nov 16, 2011
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Probably right in the middle. I appreciated the lack of pancake flat stages, with classics-oriented finishes. That was great, and seeing the weakness of GC riders exposed. However, the cobbles stage was overrated for difficulty when in fact it was just too easy. Would like to see some really hard cobbles next time, else let's just take them out of the race entirely. Mountain stages lost their appeal on day 1 when Froome cemented his lead. Disappointed seeing a weak Contador, Nibali, and Quintaka is not quite ready for prime time - if there was an individual long TT stage he would have been way down so this was a special year gifted for him yet he couldn't do it. Piti made the race entertaining, as did Sagan.
 
It was just okay. In the first week I enjoyed stage 2 the most. I enjoyed the final of stage 3. Stage 4 was a let down (Though I was glad to see Martin get a win and the yellow jersey.)
In the 2nd week I was glad to see Jrod and Cummings win. There wasn't anything real thrilling in my opinion though.
The 3rd week was the best week, but still not super great imo. My favorite stages were 19 and 20, the final on Alp d'Huez. Got to love Nibbes and his cheekiness. :) Alp d'Huez was nice because Froome got beat :D and because Thibaut had a little redemption.
I personally liked the parcours. I think it was lacking because AC and Nibbes weren't in top form and because Quintana wasn't aggressive enough. He could have made the GC battle much more interesting if hadn't waited until the final two days.
 
May 4, 2010
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Rated it a 3 up until the last two stages where Quintana tried to made a game of it. Which brought it up to a 6.
Nibali was never going to win with real competition.
Yates boys showed some promise.
Sagan showed he is capable of anything - just has to make his mind up what sort of a cyclist he wants to be.
Froome was plain boring. Someone needs to tell him he has more gears before he spins one of his legs off. And his confronting Nibali was wrong. If Nibali had broken the unwritten law there would be plenty of others to tell him. Seemed a little superior.
Quintana is the rider of the future.
Contador was disappointing - even with the giro under his belt I expected better of him.
Porte proved he is not a gc rider - too inconsistent. But certainly a future stage winner if he is given a free hand by bmc.
Not into sprinters but Greipel was sharp. Cavendish wasn't.
................
 
Rate it an 8. Best Tour since 2010. Did not bother me that Contador was not strong, knew he would not figure after the Giro. The final week and the first week were good, First mountain stage in the Pyrenees was where Froome cemented his victory. Surprised by Valverde's strength over three weeks and glad he finally got his podium. GreenEdge were gutted in the first week and their best chances were already gone. Bad luck for TJVG getting ill. Nibali came to life in the last week. Quintana could not have done much better in the mountains but Froome is sure to miss Porte. Entertaining race and good return to form by Gesink. The French prove once again that they can win stages but are no closer to beating the best GT riders. Bardet and Pinot are their best hopes and time is on their side of course. For some reason Pinot reminds me of Andy Schleck on descents but of course Andy was a level above as a GT rider at least for most of his career. Bardet has no problems with descending of course and maybe can win a GT in the future if he improves his TT riding and becomes stronger with age. All in all an enjoyable race.
 
The site broke on me when I voted for a ten. But that's what it was. The echelons, the cobbles, the attacking wins. Martin's win. J-Rod's PdB victory. Froome's incredible form and Quintana's soft but deadly attacks. Valverde strong throughout. Nibali's recovery and victory. Sagan's stageless strength. The routing or outing of the ninjas: eg, Frank rides in the beautiful light and makes the top ten, and another accidentally jumps in a car :eek: . Bertie's sportsmanship in completing his attempt at the double. Stage 10 was incredible. The MTF after the first rest day proved decisive for so many. Not at all a happy day for anyone but Froome :D . Would have been an eleven if Pinot could descend like Bardet, had Tony Martin not crashed out, and a few stupid spectators been tackled, tripped, punched, etc. That's just how I feel.
 
I gave it a 6. There was always a feeling that Froome needed a buffer heading in to the Alps, just a shame that it was so big. Still, he surprised me at times with his handling and descending, as well as the way he handled the scrutiny of having an offensively strong team.

The racing for stages was decent at times, but the crashes were again a disappointment and too many teams left things too late to take it up to Froome (yes, you Movistar!).

A decent race but not one for the ages
 
The Hitch said:
Me, and a handful of other regular old school posters I think - LS, hrotha, Descender, perhaps Eshnar, Serious Sam, simply hold cycling to a higher standard than many (maybe some of these will now disagree with me and say this was a great tour, but im betting from previous experience, they won't).
Just for the record - gave it 6. Can't add much to what has already been said...
 
Re:

Dazed and Confused said:
Gave it a 5, lifted by some action outside of GC.

But the inactivity and defensiveness by the GC contenders dragged the event down.

95% placement racing. Meh.

Perhaps low rating, but action never really inspired me this time around.

Had exact same impression, but gave it a 6 for the first week and the Lacets du Montvernier scenery.

Seriously, the first week was all I could have hoped for. Stage 10 -- kudos to Sky -- pretty much halted any suspense. I would have liked to see Contador, Nibali and Quintana gang up on Froome but it never happened -- Contador was cooked from Giro. Not that I wanted Froome to lose but it would have really added some spice to the last week. I was really impressed by Valverde, too. Amazing he never podiumed before.

Not sure how I feel about the lack of a long ITT. Didn't really miss it this time, tbh.
 

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