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Gave it a 3.
Few exciting stages, nearly all of them hardly raced until the last 2km or so on the climbs, sometimes even less. This made for stages you could fast forward to the last 10 minutes and just watch that and see all you needed to see. The Tour seems bent on having the race close on the last few days, at the expense of making the race for GC interesting for the first 19 days.
Froome didn't win a stage, and followed his team almost the entire race. May have ridden out front or attacked for a total of 200m the entire Tour, that's it. Can't fully blame him, his team is super strong, and the course was set up for this kind of racing.
Organizers tossed the most exciting rider early on (Sagan) on a very questionable decision.
Crashes took out other exciting riders, Valverde, Cavendish, Fulgsang, Kittel, and maybe most of all, Porte.
Highlights were Warren Barguil riding like a true KOM, and Greg Van Avermaet riding out front and attacking so many times. Dan Martin gets credit for heart, and Eddie Bosan Hagen for stepping up when Cav went down.
Few exciting stages, nearly all of them hardly raced until the last 2km or so on the climbs, sometimes even less. This made for stages you could fast forward to the last 10 minutes and just watch that and see all you needed to see. The Tour seems bent on having the race close on the last few days, at the expense of making the race for GC interesting for the first 19 days.
Froome didn't win a stage, and followed his team almost the entire race. May have ridden out front or attacked for a total of 200m the entire Tour, that's it. Can't fully blame him, his team is super strong, and the course was set up for this kind of racing.
Organizers tossed the most exciting rider early on (Sagan) on a very questionable decision.
Crashes took out other exciting riders, Valverde, Cavendish, Fulgsang, Kittel, and maybe most of all, Porte.
Highlights were Warren Barguil riding like a true KOM, and Greg Van Avermaet riding out front and attacking so many times. Dan Martin gets credit for heart, and Eddie Bosan Hagen for stepping up when Cav went down.
Gave it a five. A pretty dull affair overall, which was to be expected with a course like this. It's about damn time the ASO gave some love to the classics specialists. By all means, give the sprinters some flat stages but for the love of god put some effing cobbles in there or some more stages where puncheurs at least have a chance to attack in the final. Switch things up a bit ffs!
Gave it a 2 because GC battle was predictable from day 1. Mountain stages where disappointing which is just terrible in my opinion. Top few GC contenders did not inspire any sort of excitement.
Highlights came from stage winners. Mollema and Roglic winning where 2 good stages, others too.
Highlights came from stage winners. Mollema and Roglic winning where 2 good stages, others too.
Re:
Interesting, I grew up watching 30 min shows on Channel 4 in UK during the 80s. With adverts and chat it must of been about 20 min footage at best. But it was still more exciting to watch than the hours of boredom available now and enough to inspire a life long passion for cycling.
ebandit said:
Interesting, I grew up watching 30 min shows on Channel 4 in UK during the 80s. With adverts and chat it must of been about 20 min footage at best. But it was still more exciting to watch than the hours of boredom available now and enough to inspire a life long passion for cycling.
Re: Re:
I'm not saying I'd go back to that kind of TV coverage over what we have today, though I do miss the human interest bios, but the racing overall sure was a lot better back then, even if it wasn't live.
Similar in the US. We had John Tesh hosting it for CBS, then Sam Posey for ABC. Tesh was a fan of the sport, and Sam was chosen because he'd raced Formula 1 in Europe, and apparently rode a bike now and then to keep in shape. He knew little about pro cycling, nor how to pronounce some names. Both CBS and ABC focused more on human interest elements of the riders, and the culture, and there was no live coverage, only highlights. But both shows did a great job of generating interest in the sport, driving up curiosity. To Sam's credit, he quickly became enthusiastic about cycling, and an honorable fan.arvc40 said:
I'm not saying I'd go back to that kind of TV coverage over what we have today, though I do miss the human interest bios, but the racing overall sure was a lot better back then, even if it wasn't live.
Re: Re:
Just like me. The '87 and '89 tours were classic. Although we only got the Tour back then. I remember scouring the papers in 1987 to find any sort of report on the Giro to see how Millar and Roche were doing (I even bought the Torygraph from time to time, since they had the best reports :surprised
I guess it's nice having the option of full coverage, but to be honest, I only use it for mountain stages at the weekend and watch until a stable break has formed, then have it on in the background while I cook or read the paper, before fully concentrating when the GC contenders start doing something.
arvc40 said:
Just like me. The '87 and '89 tours were classic. Although we only got the Tour back then. I remember scouring the papers in 1987 to find any sort of report on the Giro to see how Millar and Roche were doing (I even bought the Torygraph from time to time, since they had the best reports :surprised
I guess it's nice having the option of full coverage, but to be honest, I only use it for mountain stages at the weekend and watch until a stable break has formed, then have it on in the background while I cook or read the paper, before fully concentrating when the GC contenders start doing something.
Still higher than last year (Im pretty sure, but bad at math) and that was, IMO, at no fault of ASO's. But its pretty pathetic to score SO low two years in a row, considering many newer posters maybe arent as critical and can't compare the racing now to the one in the past (10-20 years).Dekker_Tifosi said:
Poor ASO they are damned either way. Back last October when the route was announced I seem to remember
the reaction was very positive.It is up to the riders to make the race and unfortunately cycling has had to come to terms with the hard professionalism required.The days so beloved of the dewy eyed romantics have gone for
ever, Pirates such as Pantanni have gone just like motorcyclists like Barry sheene,Alberto has nearly gone and the only real buccaneer left is Sagan and he wont win a GT.The lack of ambition shown by Froomes challengers
was somewhat disappointing though the closeness did add to the continuous daily tension.Whether the result was affected by crashes is one of the great imponderables-At least we spared the carnage of Stage 3 of the 2015
Tour.
the reaction was very positive.It is up to the riders to make the race and unfortunately cycling has had to come to terms with the hard professionalism required.The days so beloved of the dewy eyed romantics have gone for
ever, Pirates such as Pantanni have gone just like motorcyclists like Barry sheene,Alberto has nearly gone and the only real buccaneer left is Sagan and he wont win a GT.The lack of ambition shown by Froomes challengers
was somewhat disappointing though the closeness did add to the continuous daily tension.Whether the result was affected by crashes is one of the great imponderables-At least we spared the carnage of Stage 3 of the 2015
Tour.
Rated it a 9.
I love Sagan and Cav but Im not IN love with them. I still found the tour compelling.
I love Sagan and Cav but Im not IN love with them. I still found the tour compelling.
I started following the Tour in 2012 and have found all the editions since compelling and fairly exciting - even ones which others have found boring.
However this year it has failed to excite me at all to the point where I didn't even bother watching the highlights of stages I missed. The number of sprint stages was obscene and took up nearly half the Tour. The lack of summit finishes was also a serious problem, and there were too many mountain stages with massive descents at the end which I find provides little incentive to attack. However I do feel that some of the riders seem to just give in to a Froome win and don't bother risking daring attacks.
However this year it has failed to excite me at all to the point where I didn't even bother watching the highlights of stages I missed. The number of sprint stages was obscene and took up nearly half the Tour. The lack of summit finishes was also a serious problem, and there were too many mountain stages with massive descents at the end which I find provides little incentive to attack. However I do feel that some of the riders seem to just give in to a Froome win and don't bother risking daring attacks.
I love non-summit finishes in the mountains. Don't get me wrong, summit finishes are good to watch, and a true test of a climber's ability, but the downhill finishes often give us better racing. Groups splitting on descents, groups chasing on descents, the different dynamics of who is and isn't working in which group. Some of the best stages in races this year have been away from the summit, the Asiago stage of the Giro, Foix in the Tour etc, precisely because the riders had to race against each other after getting over the mountain.
For comparison, Flanders and Roubaix have their final obstacles 12-15 km from the finish, but still have exciting finales each year. The Ardennes races finish uphill, and despite being full of attacking opportunities throughout the race generally come down to large group sprints. Case in point; Amstel abandoned their summit finish this year, and got one of the best races they've had in ages.
For comparison, Flanders and Roubaix have their final obstacles 12-15 km from the finish, but still have exciting finales each year. The Ardennes races finish uphill, and despite being full of attacking opportunities throughout the race generally come down to large group sprints. Case in point; Amstel abandoned their summit finish this year, and got one of the best races they've had in ages.
Not too good, but I added a point out of fairness that the highlights I mostly watched were decent, another because the Frenchman whose name I like made the podium, another because it had to follow the 100th Giro, another because I always wondered what three weeks of Catalunya would look like (Piti could have won this), and one last bonus point because I always knew the Dauphine should be the race that decides the best cyclist. I gave it a 7 but it was an average TdF.
rick james
BANNED
if anyone but sky had won then it would have been a closer to a average 9 :lol:Dekker_Tifosi said:
For the sake of distribution: could some of the 2 voters shift to 3 please?
And where is 1? This is sooo annoying.
And where is 1? This is sooo annoying.
What did you rate it? Since you're so sure people are biased, let's hear your reasoning.rick james said:
rick james
BANNED
didn't rate it, its pointless.hrotha said:What did you rate it? Since you're so sure people are biased, let's hear your reasoning.rick james said:
rick james
BANNED
pointing out if sky never won it then the rating would be higher, do you not agreehrotha said:
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