Rate the 2019 Tour de France route

[qwerty16]

Re:

8/10
My impression is that reactions will be negative whatever they come up with. This is a classic course with tough mountain stages and not much time trialling. Time trialists will be disappointed that there isn't a second ITT in the final weekend, but I want the Tour to be decided by attacks in the mountains, and this course creates the opportunity, so I'm happy.

The first week is mostly warm-up. Short TTT won't be very important. Planche dBF is becoming cliché, but it's better than a flat stage. Some more middle mountains mostly interesting for stage hunters or early yellow.

Three Pyrenees stages. The first won't be interesting. Finish on Tourmalet is an excellent opportunity for climbers to attack. No excuses here. The best climbers will prevail. Not sure about the third stage; the best GC riders might stay together, or an attacker might be rewarded.

The Alpine stages are great. The three giants Izoard, Galibier and Iséran are all there. I really hope there's a climber with good legs who can destroy the field.

I agree with the 8/10. People who give this a very low rating are either delusional or biased against the Tour de France, or both.

 

[Kwibus]

Re: Re:

8/10
My impression is that reactions will be negative whatever they come up with. This is a classic course with tough mountain stages and not much time trialling. Time trialists will be disappointed that there isn't a second ITT in the final weekend, but I want the Tour to be decided by attacks in the mountains, and this course creates the opportunity, so I'm happy.

The first week is mostly warm-up. Short TTT won't be very important. Planche dBF is becoming cliché, but it's better than a flat stage. Some more middle mountains mostly interesting for stage hunters or early yellow.

Three Pyrenees stages. The first won't be interesting. Finish on Tourmalet is an excellent opportunity for climbers to attack. No excuses here. The best climbers will prevail. Not sure about the third stage; the best GC riders might stay together, or an attacker might be rewarded.

The Alpine stages are great. The three giants Izoard, Galibier and Iséran are all there. I really hope there's a climber with good legs who can destroy the field.

I agree with the 8/10. People who give this a very low rating are either delusional or biased against the Tour de France, or both.

Thats too easy. Just 28km itt gives plenty of reason to give a lower rating. A ttt is beautiful and awesome, but in a GT its very unpopulair for obvious reasons.

I could say its delusional and biased in favour of the TdF to give this route an 8.

I give this route an 6. I dont think its pretty good, but lacks itt miles.

 

[dercuforever]

I find the route is correct.

Stages I like :
Epernay : the last kilometers are up and down and that might create some surprises, or at least an interesting ending (for non GC).
Colmar : same
PDBF : Very nice route in this stage. I think it's a real occasion for climber to gain time on skys.
Saint etienne : cool route as well.
Tourmalet : I like that it's not being the last pyrenee stage. But way too short.
Foix : looks good.
Valloire : looks very good
Val thorens : the stage looks great, sadly it also is the last stage so it means previous stages will be boring. also it's perfect for power meter climbing.

What looks bad :
TTT .... What an abomination.
ITT : a bit too short. Remove the TTT and put a 50km flat ITT.
Order of mountain stages : stop putting a hard summit finish in last. It hinders too much action in previous stages.

Overall, except on PDBF, I think sky train will be very hard to beat. You'll need to be able to attack in the last kilometers (S. Yates style) and not lose too much in TTT+ITT...

Gave 6/10

 

[OlavEH]

Re: Re:

I agree with the 8/10. People who give this a very low rating are either delusional or biased against the Tour de France, or both.

If this is a 8/10 route, the best designed versions of the Giro deserves a 13/10. Except for perhaps Prat d'Albis stage, there are none mountain stages that can be described as more than mediocre stage design. The Val Thorens stage is mostly interesting because of the high altitude finish and because Val Thorens haven't been used for 25 years.

 

[qwerty16]

Re: Re:

8/10
My impression is that reactions will be negative whatever they come up with. This is a classic course with tough mountain stages and not much time trialling. Time trialists will be disappointed that there isn't a second ITT in the final weekend, but I want the Tour to be decided by attacks in the mountains, and this course creates the opportunity, so I'm happy.

The first week is mostly warm-up. Short TTT won't be very important. Planche dBF is becoming cliché, but it's better than a flat stage. Some more middle mountains mostly interesting for stage hunters or early yellow.

Three Pyrenees stages. The first won't be interesting. Finish on Tourmalet is an excellent opportunity for climbers to attack. No excuses here. The best climbers will prevail. Not sure about the third stage; the best GC riders might stay together, or an attacker might be rewarded.

The Alpine stages are great. The three giants Izoard, Galibier and Iséran are all there. I really hope there's a climber with good legs who can destroy the field.

I agree with the 8/10. People who give this a very low rating are either delusional or biased against the Tour de France, or both.

Thats too easy. Just 28km itt gives plenty of reason to give a lower rating. A ttt is beautiful and awesome, but in a GT its very unpopulair for obvious reasons.

I could say its delusional and biased in favour of the TdF to give this route an 8.

I give this route an 6. I dont think its pretty good, but lacks itt miles.

The comments about the low number of itt km's are justifiable, although that's just personal. Sure, the numbers nowadays are really low. But that isn't a reason for handing out 1's and 3's for the route.

 

[Salvarani]

If they gonna have one ITT, it should at least be +35km and preferably around 40-45km

 

[Pantani_lives]

I would replace the TTT by an ITT with a climb, but not too tough. Otherwise I like the course. If a climber can't make the difference on the Tourmalet or the Galibier, then I can't think of a climb in France where he will be able to do so.

 

[Pantani_lives]

Re:

I guess those of you who like this route are looking forward to the most boring Sky train in history. Every mountain stage seems like it was designed by Sky themselves: long climbs of moderate steepness, wide roads, easy to control on the descents.

Then which climbs in France should they use? It doesn't get much harder than Tourmalet, Izoard, Galibier and Iséran.

 

[OlavEH]

Re: Re:

I guess those of you who like this route are looking forward to the most boring Sky train in history. Every mountain stage seems like it was designed by Sky themselves: long climbs of moderate steepness, wide roads, easy to control on the descents.

Then which climbs in France should they use? It doesn't get much harder than Tourmalet, Izoard, Galibier and Iséran.

Really, you think it's about using toughest possible single climbs?

For example, I consider a 145 km km stage from St.Girons to Pla d'Adet via Portet d'Aspet, Mente, Portillon, Peyresourde and Azet as much more interesting stage than the 207 km stage to Valloire next year. Or if we use the Alps, a less than 150 km stage from Albertville to Morzine via Saises, Aravis, Colombiere and Joux-Plane.

I could also give you several other examples of short stages with no Galibier, Iseran or Tourmalet which still would be much more interesting stages. A stage to Tignes via Iseran would also be much better if it was somewhat longer and included for example Mont Cenis first.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

I think it was a very bold decision by ASO to extend the Tour de l’Avenir to three weeks. I mean, sure, they’ve been tending towards these overly short mountain stages for a few years now, but when you consider that we’re talking two and a half weeks into a race, the cumulative fatigue effect will mean that the espoirs will surely create acti…well, the 2019 Tour de France. As noted by guncha we can’t give a concrete evaluation because a few details are missing; after all, ASO could of course surprise us with some really interesting curveballs in some of the flat stages, that could keep us on the edge of…

…speed seemed strange to me. We drove so quickly that in half an hour we reached the Spanish border. However, there are railroads everywhere in Europe now, and steamships drive very fast. Spain is a strange land: when we entered the first room I saw a lot of people with shaved heads. I guessed, however, that they must be either grandees or soldiers, since they shave their heads. The behaviour of the lord chancellor, who led me by the arm, seemed extremely strange to…

*blink* *blink*

Ah, that’s shaken it off. Where was I? Oh yes, the 2019 Tour de France route. It’s… well, I’m struggling to come up with reasons that I shouldn’t give this the full hepatitis / 10. This is almost upsetting from the details we’ve been given and I’m really hoping that ASO have some interesting surprises in store for us when the full details of the stages we’ve yet to see come out.

Does your boss know you’ve come to see me? Did you leave the van parked outside? Yes, did you know they used to have this race that went all the way from Milan to San Remo in a single day?

Firstly, we already knew about the Brussels beginning, and that is a pretty godawful way to get going. What we’ve been presented is, if Grand Départ maps were full Grand Tours, the full 2009 Tour level of awful. Way to take away literally any possible meaning to the first stage, wilfully avoiding every potential obstacle that could give us anything other than a snooze fest, and then that classic fetish of recent Grand Tours, the TTT. I know we’ve been over it a dozen times already, but the TTT does not achieve anything that an ITT can achieve without imbalancing the parcours further in favour of those who are already advantaged by the strength of their respective teams. And if the biggest problem for the spectacle in recent years has been that the strength of one team has led to them exerting an excessive amount of control, then the absolute first thing that needs to be taken out of the route is a TTT, because this will generally put the teams best suited to controlling the race at the head of the field.

Stage 3 is the first time we see something that could potentially be of interest, although looking at that finishing map, that final rise before the uphill finish - which looks to be as steep or steeper than the final ramp - climbs 105m in a little over 2km so the average is at most 5,1%; without knowing the roads they’re on it’s hard to tell if that stands the chance of being decisive as we’ve had that little Croix-Rousses climb in Lyon be on wide roads and won by sprinters, but not have too dissimilar stats from the Côte de Cadoudal which was very selective in 2008. They might have dug out some narrow or tricky roads that would help to produce some early time gaps.

No, no, I swear, Claudio Chiapucci was a real person. I didn’t make it up. I promise! That happened!

The Vosges are actually pretty decent; I worry that stage 6 will neutralise stage 5, but still. The problem that I have, however, is simply an issue of complete saturation with regards to Planche des Belles Filles. This will be its fourth time in Le Tour in seven editions; in the time since its introduction it has also appeared twice in the Tour Alsace and twice in La Route de France. In seven years we’ll have seen it eight times. And it’s not like it’s even that good a climb - it’s that kind of mid-length but steep climb that the Vuelta has by the bucketload; it’s not as good or as interesting a climb as Peña Cabarga, Urkiola, Cordal, Más de la Costa or Xorret del Catí. And adding that extra 800m sterrato at the end may build up a lot of hype, but it just increases the likelihood that everything gets left until then. Not to mention that ASO will probably give Côte des Chevrères cat.1 again to artificially inflate the on-paper difficulty of the race even though it’s significantly shorter than Planche des Belles Filles and even that should probably be cat.2. Even Unipublic probably wouldn’t give Chevrères cat.1!

The Saint-Etienne stage is our first glimpse of what seems to be a new ASO tactic, to continue to legitimise their tendency towards short stages by ensuring that all of the longer stages are boring. This can also be seen elsewhere in the mountain blocks, where they have specifically gone out of their way to make sure that the longer mountain stages will not incentivise action, because then they can point out that the short stages begat action and therefore they are the wave of the future. Although to be honest, at this stage, it’s become a self-fulfilling prophecy; the short mountain stages do indeed produce action, but that’s because they’re the only game in town when it comes to mountain stages as it appears we’re on our way to seeing queen stages become a thing of the past. See, a well-designed long mountain stage can incentivise action just as much as a well-designed short mountain stage. The Schleck stage in 2011 was 200km. Sestriere 1995 was 190. Monte Petrano 2009 was 240. Aprica 2010 was 195, Sestriere 2015 was 195. Rifugio Gardeccia 2011 was 230. What do they all have in common? They didn’t suck. But we don’t look at them and go “those races were great! We need more long mountain stages!” - so why do we look at, say, Le Semnoz 2013, Alpe d’huez 2011 and Andalo 2016 and say “we need more short mountain stages!”?

In fact, before Contador launched his move on the way up the Télégraphe seven years ago, short mountain stages weren’t a byword for excitement at all. They were experimented with in the early 2000s in the Vuelta, without any particular success (the 136km stage to Arcalis, 130km to Ávila and 128km to Abantos in the 2000 edition being particularly notable), and of course the 2004 Giro tried to go for a ‘more humane’ route to keep focus on Italy’s sprint superstars, with the last three mountain stages being 153, 118 and 122km between them. And ironically, the only stage from that awful edition that anybody remembers fondly is the admittedly excellent stage to Pfalzen, which was… 217km long.

A short mountain stage does serve a purpose, and, when used correctly, it can be a real addition to a race, because it doesn’t discourage attacking on a hard multi-col stage before it, but cumulative fatigue can mean that it is more effective than its meagre profile would suggest sometimes - like in the 2016 Vuelta where the easy Formigal stage was turned into a massacre because nobody was afraid of it compared to the 200km Aubisque stage, but that meant people had raced too hard in the Aubisque stage to fully recover, or indeed the 2011 Tour which was the genesis of this fad - notwithstanding that had the Schlecks not raced in a manner so tame that it made Andy and Contador holding hands like a pair of giggling schoolchildren on Tourmalet the year before look like Contador and Rasmussen on the Aubisque, then Andy would never have taken that risk on the Agnello and the short mountain stage the next day may never have been as good causing Prudhomme to mistakenly believe that backloading everything and short mountain stages is all you need for a critically acclaimed race (thanks for nothing, Andy). Next year’s Giro putting the short stage in the Valle d’Aosta after a hard MTF is likewise a positive use of the trope.

…to be a general simply to see how they’ll fawn and perform all those various courtly tricks and equivocations, and then to tell them I spit on them both. Devil take it. How annoying! I’ve torn the stupid dog’s letter to shreds.

December 3
It can’t be! Lies! The wedding won’t take place! So what if he’s a kammerjunker. It’s nothing more than a dignity; it’s not anything visible that you can take in your hands. He’s not going to have a third eye on his forehead because he’s a kammerjunker…

Here though, it’s just… eugh. In the Pyrenees the short stage doesn’t serve any purpose because you can’t be scared into preserving your energy in the only ITT of the race the day before, and it's to my absolute least favourite HC mountain in the world (well, debatable. Arcalis is not as overused and probably doesn't deserve the HC categorization it is given, but it is awful. Tourmalet is not as bad a climb, but is so ridiculously leant on that every rider knows every inch of it by now and ASO just chuck it out there every year knowing that simpletons whose only knowledge of bike racing is the Kraftwerk song will know the name and think this somehow makes the route good), and then in the Alps we have two back to back like it’s the 2004 Giro or something. And the harder one is the second one, neutering the first one further. Awesome show, guys, great job. Altitude is the only saving grace. The mountaintop finishes are at the most hateful of locations, save for Val Thorens, and that stage could be so many hundreds of times better. Devil take it. And not Didi either. The only long mountain stage of the Alps features climbing up the easier side of the Galibier - and not after the Agnel this time - and is still probably the nearest thing the route has to a decent mountain stage. Then we have the short stage fetishizing stage that completely wastes Izoard (Mont-Cenis…) and considering it’s over a decade since we saw the highest pass in France (the actual Col at Bonette is lower, but the loop road over to the Cime de la Bonette is the one that goes up to 2800m) and Tignes last time gave us a classic breakaway ride (of the kind rendered obsolete by the progressive anæmia blighting mountain stages in recent years), it’s a telling indictment that the only thing I’m actually looking forward to about this stage is seeing the Bessans biathlon facilities as we might see the Fourcades and Justine Braisaz and co cheering on Romain Bardet by the roadside. With the much harder MTF the following day and without sufficient difficulties in the stage itself, I just hope I’m wrong about this one.

And I haven’t even mentioned the ITT yet. 27km? 27km. TWENTY SEVEN. I mean, for Christ’s sake. For Allah’s sake. For Buddha’s sake. For the sake of all nine million deities of Shinto. Back in the 1970s José Manuel Fuente, a rider whose time trial would have been brought in for questioning on suspicion of terrorist offences had he been Basque, won a Vuelta despite the only mountaintop finishes being Formigal and Arrate. Even then there was 36km of ITT. The short “set the scene” ITT in the 2008 Tour - which was won by vaunted Cancellara-clone Carlos Sastre of course - was longer than this. There are Grand Tours in recent memory - that were actually quite well received by fans in fact - that had more than double this distance in ONE ITT (the 2015 Giro, for the record). And to balance out those mountains in this monolithic, epic 27km time trial... they've put a couple of hills in it.

Now, the Vuelta reacted to seeing small time gaps in anaemic mountain stages by going one way, deciding to spam that style of stage because “small gaps x lots of times = bigger gaps!” But the Tour appears to be going in a different, and equally fruitless, direction. It’s almost like the response to small time gaps in the anaemic mountain stages is just to make everything else anaemic too.

We’ll thee if your blood ith ath red ath mine, Mithter Flair…

On the plus side, the Prat d'Albis stage is not that bad and they at least deigned to put a decent stage on the penultimate weekend for the first time in forever. That's been a real bugbear of mine in recent years.

 

[Dekker_Tifosi]

A 3. Again very poorly balanced route that's 90% for climbers which means everyone will wait too much for the final mt stages instead of doing something to gain an advantage on the TT specialists.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

...and I haven't even got to the thing that has pissed me off more than anything else - apparently the course of La Course by Le Tour de France next year consists of... 5 laps of the Pau ITT course.

That's not just lazy. That's not just dull. That's active, wilful sabotage.

Not to mention that another race is likely to have to move its position on the calendar to accommodate ASO's whims (the BeNe Tour this year is the next in line to feel ASO's wrath), there are so many problems with this that I can't even comprehend how this decision would have been made without coming to the conclusion ASO actively want the race to suck so they don't have to pretend they care about the women anymore.

For one thing, there's an espoir-length mountain stage THE VERY NEXT DAY if they wanted to clone a Tour stage. How can they look at the epic day of racing that was La Course this year, and the way the women were hailed and greeted by the crowds as stars in a way that seldom happens elsewhere in the calendar, and even got a more positive response than most of the men's péloton a couple of hours later, how can they watch the women put on a spectacular show including top young riders attacking 50km from home and then an epic chasedown that finished right on the very finishing line between the two strongest riders in the world today, how can they watch that Cecilie Uttrup Ludwig interview, and come to the conclusion that, actually, what they need to do to help the women establish their sport in the public eye is provide a slightly hilly circuit race - on a weekday - instead?

I mean, the race on the Champs Elysées didn't give the women much chance to really showcase what they could do seeing as it was a pan-flat circuit in the usual pseudo-crit style, but at least it was a Sunday in front of the huge audience, and gave the women some exposure for their race, and given the non-contested nature of the men's Champs-Elysées stage, it didn't do anything harmful in the comparison with the men because both races were generally sprints. I had conflicting feelings about the MTF+Pursuit gimmick in 2016, but at least they were trying things. Last year's race was great. So... why this? There's also logistical problems - 5 laps of that course is 135km, which means the women will be out there for well over 3 hours. In order to run through 160 riders (allowing for 10% dropout rate over just under two weeks, which might be a little high) you'll need a good 3 hours of start times (150 going at minute intervals and the top 10 at 3 minutes from one another) plus the time to actually do the race - so the women could be starting their race at 8-9am and a good seven hours before the maillot jaune sets off - how many people are going to be up and about for that? Also, more than that, what's the USP? It's not like there isn't already a colossal glut of women's races that are slightly hilly on circuits, it's by far the most common format of women's racing and a major point of why there's been an issue with developing specialists in particular types of course, because of struggling for a better balance of races across the calendar to allow everybody sufficient time to shine. La Course moving towards a mountainous style actually was a good thing for that, especially on the 2018 route which was conducive to good racing from afar, selective AND coming off the back of the Giro Rosa allowed for a further measure of competition - it led in well, because we'd see who was going well in the Giro Rosa, which extended its highlights coverage to give a much better overview of the race this year, and it built a sense of anticipation which is one of the best things for women's cycling - especially when the Worlds and the Olympics seem to be going out of their way to try to prevent the women's race being anticipated like the elite men's by preventing them from doing the obstacles attracting the pre-race discussion.

I mean, it's nice of ASO to basically come out here like this and state publicly and openly, as they are doing by releasing this parcours, that they are actively trying to stop people from being entertained by women's cycling, in order to avoid having any obligations towards it. I can stop forlornly hoping that one day they'll think to turn the cameras on during La Flèche Wallonne Féminine now.

 

[May0maniac]

Re:

A 3. Again very poorly balanced route that's 90% for climbers which means everyone will wait too much for the final mt stages instead of doing something to gain an advantage on the TT specialists.

A bit harsh, I'd give it a 5 or someting like that because the first week isn't that bad for TdF standarts.
The Tigns stage looks like a nice training ride that I'd do, not like a hard mountain stage.

 

[Koronin]

I'm going with a 5 as it could have been a lot worse. Not great, but not totally horrible. Too many useless flat sprint stages though.

 

[Pantani_lives]

Re: Re:

A 3. Again very poorly balanced route that's 90% for climbers which means everyone will wait too much for the final mt stages instead of doing something to gain an advantage on the TT specialists.

A bit harsh, I'd give it a 5 or someting like that because the first week isn't that bad for TdF standarts.
The Tigns stage looks like a nice training ride that I'd do, not like a hard mountain stage.

I congratulate you on your excellent shape if you do a 2770 m col as a nice training ride.

 

[May0maniac]

I'd change the postion of the Val Thorens and the Tignes stage while keeping the start of stage 19 and 20.
The new, short Val Thorens stage: http://www.cronoescalada.com/index.php/tracks/view/498935 (yes, ASO would probabl cut the 2n climb)
The longer, harder Tigne stage as the final mountain stage: http://www.cronoescalada.com/index.php/tracks/view/498938

 

[May0maniac]

Re: Re:

A 3. Again very poorly balanced route that's 90% for climbers which means everyone will wait too much for the final mt stages instead of doing something to gain an advantage on the TT specialists.

A bit harsh, I'd give it a 5 or someting like that because the first week isn't that bad for TdF standarts.
The Tigns stage looks like a nice training ride that I'd do, not like a hard mountain stage.

I congratulate you on your excellent shape if you do a 2770 m col as a nice training ride.

I don't mind hig altitude and I do rides with similar distance and over 2,200m of altitude gain, but the point was that a queenstage should be harder and you should have another climb before a great climb like Iseran, I fear that we wont see attacks before he final climb on such a route.

 

[hrotha]

Re:

In fact, before Contador launched his move on the way up the Télégraphe seven years ago, short mountain stages weren’t a byword for excitement at all. They were experimented with in the early 2000s in the Vuelta, without any particular success (the 136km stage to Arcalis, 130km to Ávila and 128km to Abantos in the 2000 edition being particularly notable), and of course the 2004 Giro tried to go for a ‘more humane’ route to keep focus on Italy’s sprint superstars, with the last three mountain stages being 153, 118 and 122km between them. And ironically, the only stage from that awful edition that anybody remembers fondly is the admittedly excellent stage to Pfalzen, which was… 217km long.

I remember thinking about how well short, explosive stages worked after the Courchevel stage of the 1997 Tour. And that was 148 km, and was sandwiched between two 200-km stages. What happens when these ultra-short stages become the new normal?

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Re: Re:

In fact, before Contador launched his move on the way up the Télégraphe seven years ago, short mountain stages weren’t a byword for excitement at all. They were experimented with in the early 2000s in the Vuelta, without any particular success (the 136km stage to Arcalis, 130km to Ávila and 128km to Abantos in the 2000 edition being particularly notable), and of course the 2004 Giro tried to go for a ‘more humane’ route to keep focus on Italy’s sprint superstars, with the last three mountain stages being 153, 118 and 122km between them. And ironically, the only stage from that awful edition that anybody remembers fondly is the admittedly excellent stage to Pfalzen, which was… 217km long.

I remember thinking about how well short, explosive stages worked after the Courchevel stage of the 1997 Tour. And that was 148 km, and was sandwiched between two 200-km stages. What happens when these ultra-short stages become the new normal?

We're already on our way to a future where Milano-Sanremo is seen as just as comically overlong and unbelievable as Bordeaux-Paris is now.

 

[rghysens]

The 2019 TdF has some race designers favourits (Chevrères+PdBF, Croix de Tel + Croix Plaquet, Mur d'Aurec-sur-Loire, Iseran+Tignes), but why, oh why, are they so horribly placed?
What's the point of a 3km @ 10% climb with 133.5km to go in a stage that's rolling at best, while you could place it in another stage (to Saint-Etienne) with 25km to go,followed by a 1.5km @ 13% climb with 15km to go. What's the point of having a nice hilly stage (to Colmar) followed by a difficult medium mountain stage (PdBF), if you can easily swap those two finish locations, having a mtf followed by a "mini-Lombardia". What's the point of crossing the massif Central in two stages when the finals of those two stages combined contain 2 3rd category and 2 4th category climbs at best?
The first pyrenean stage needs a Riccardo Ricco on fire to achieve anything interesting, the Pau itt has a nice profile, but is too short, the Tourmalet mtf is hard, but preceded by too little to favour the climbers and the final pyrenan stage is good.
The Alpine stages seem to beplaced in the wrong order, with every stage having a more difficult finish than the one before. I know it ain't easy to swap those finishes from a logistic point of view, but is this all ASO could come up with?
And what good have ttt's recently done to having a nice race?

However, there are good points too. I expect some action in the final to Epernay (possibly due to crashes on the descent of the Côte de Mutigny), I'm curious on how the final to Nancy will look like (can be nice, can be boring), the two Vosges stages are good (but, as already mentioned, in the wrong order) and the final Pyrenean stage is good.


So a 4? maybe 5?

 

[Kwibus]

Too many short stages!

 

[roundabout]

Embrun-Tignes (Montgenevre-Mont-Cenis-Iseran)

Albertville - Valloire (Galibier)

SJDM - Val Thorens (Chaussy-Madeleine)

Same transfers as the real life Tour but in different order

 

[OlavEH]

Re:

Embrun-Tignes (Montgenevre-Mont-Cenis-Iseran)

Albertville - Valloire (Galibier)

SJDM - Val Thorens (Chaussy-Madeleine)

Same transfers as the real life Tour but in different order

A much better design. Especially the Tignes stage, but also the Val Thorens stage. The latter would have been only 110 km but first the Chaussy-Madeleine combo followed by the long MTF to Val Thorens is defintely better than the real short stages to Tignes and Val Thorens.

 

[railxmig]

Re: Re:

In fact, before Contador launched his move on the way up the Télégraphe seven years ago, short mountain stages weren’t a byword for excitement at all. They were experimented with in the early 2000s in the Vuelta, without any particular success (the 136km stage to Arcalis, 130km to Ávila and 128km to Abantos in the 2000 edition being particularly notable), and of course the 2004 Giro tried to go for a ‘more humane’ route to keep focus on Italy’s sprint superstars, with the last three mountain stages being 153, 118 and 122km between them. And ironically, the only stage from that awful edition that anybody remembers fondly is the admittedly excellent stage to Pfalzen, which was… 217km long.

In between Bormio 2000 and the Milano parade there was also the 120km Presolana stage from Bormio with Mortirolo and Vivione (that's a really underappreciated combo). If my memory is correct, it saw Simoni going for it on Mortirolo against his teammate. Yes, Damiano had a commanding lead in the GC but it was IMO very tense.

That stage to Falzes was horrendously designed with Staluanza and Valparola before a long flat towards Furcia and another long flat to Terento and the finish line (one of the worst designed Dolomiti stages outside of the 70's/80's). It just happened it was possibly the best stage of that edition and one of the better (if not best) of Giro's decade.

 

[Tonton]

Well, I promised that I would...it's a 8 .

I agree with Pantani_lives and others who echoed the fact that TdF route bashing is to this forum what baseball is to the US: the national pastime .

I agree that few if any stage were designed to derail the Sky train. That is true. But I also chuckle when I read some posts that come across as wine connoisseurs discussing the pros and cons of a Bordeaux. How much petite verdot (i.e. ITT) should be in there, how much merlot (flat stages)? There is a route, and after that, there's what the riders do with it. The platitude according to hrotha : riders make the race.

To be fair to the critics, ASO's propaganda makes people who know better a little angry: come on ASO say it: first you got the Bruxelles money, and then it became about Eddy Merckx. Marketing...telling a story. And once upon a time, there was a race named Le Tour de France...

Riders make the race: how often have we seen not so good designs produce a great race? More often than not, and Le Tour often comes last when compared to the other two GTs...because Sky and other teams bring their A team.

ASO wants a thrilling race. So do we. Will this be a thrilling race? We'll see.

In order to achieve the thrilling race, big TV ratings, cash tsunami, ASO did this:

1. Just like we agreed a couple of weeks ago about wanting a strong Nibali at Lombardia, ASO needs a huge French following, and arouse two big constituencies: the Pinot and Bardet fan bases. With the Brioude and PDBF stages, that's a big bait. They will come. Some Alaf friendly stages...

2. ASO doesn't want more controversy, ET riding his bike in the Sky at night on Bastille Day. Enough. Less ITT. Let Vegni put up with the BS. Il Giro will now roll the carpet for a Dumoulin-Froome showdown...fine by me.

3. Keep it close: the TTT won't do much, week 1 looks better than usual, a French rider may be in yellaut, I mean yellot, I mean yellow . And there are several opportunities to re-shuffle the deck. The ITT is placed in a spot that could get Sky in yellow, some freak out, and with mountains left, go for it. The Alps may be the theater for desperate attempts, guys falling apart, adding to the drama.

Simon wants Il Giro, but I can see him change his plans. He would be super dangerous on a route like this. Pinot and Bardet: one will podium. Uran could be a tough customer, MAL same thing, many others can podium if they play their cards well.