Question Rate the 2020 Tour de France

[(F)lexer]

so yeah, let's do it I guess

 

[Brumdog66]

Very fair points.

That first Alpine stage yes, I can't think of any recent Tour mountain stage since that comes close to it. But the second Alpine stage from 2011 in hindsight, is maybe overrated. It was incredibly exciting straight from the start, which almost never happens, but once it all came back together at the foot of ADH, well, there wasn't a huge amount that happened on the final climb was there? I welcome having my memory refreshed, but by that point in the stage it seemed fairly obvious that Contador couldn't pull back the sort of time that he needed, and because Schleck had already exerted himself so greatly early in the stage (as well as on the stage before obviously) he didn't really have much left to throw at Evans, and the destination of the yellow jersey was as good as decided. What I am suggesting here, is that Contador did attacks later in Tours that were also exciting. I guess those attacks didn't last quite as long in 2015 and 2017, but were they really that much worse (or less exciting) than his attack in 2011?

Maybe AX3 2013 can challenge that stage as the second best Tour mountain stage in recent memory? The first half was probably very boring, but then Quintana attacked long range on Pailhares and got a decent gap at one point. And there was the build up of a first confrontation between Contador and Froome at the Tour, and at the time a lot of us didn't really know how poor - by his standards - Alberto would be. And as we saw, there was action galore on the final climb. Perhaps the definition that I am looking for is "dramatic" mountain stage, rather than "best". Anyway, since that 2013 stage, I don't think anything else comes into this discussion (though last years shortened stage 'could' have).

Last 2 mountain stages in 2015 are up there for me

 

[BlueRoads]

Entertainment of the race: 7
Entertainment of the forum: 9

You guys were the real stars of the show. Including:

Red Rick – For falling unexpectantly, just a little in love with Richie Porte, and for somehow rating a race an 8 that included PDBF, and that did not include the Shark of Messina.

Bob A Feet – For stumbling upon a potential new crashing technique that requires the use of a third leg, and for identifying Mikel Landa as a cuddly creature that is wild and free.

Red Head Dane – For her posts of spontaneous silliness, that can never hide a deep knowledge of our sport.

Libertine Seguros – For Stage 6 and Sepp Kuss.

Roll The Dice – For being as cool as his profile pic.

Tobydawg – For being fully sick….ard.

Blue Roads – For her posts of both a childish curiosity and subtle sense of humour, and for pointing out the security of Tony Martin and the excitement of Julian Alafulleap, both on and off the bike.

Gigs 98 – For not watching the entire race, and for overrating….Dumoulin.

Koronin – For her unconditional love of Alejandro Valverde; without members like her this place would be overrun by Nibali fans.

Shadow 93 – For a shared love interest.

Geister Home – For his profile pic.

Tonton – For keeping her/his (sorry not sure) head held high despite what happened to Pinot.

Vino’s Mum – For correctly identifying Fabio Aru as one of Sacha Baron Cohen’s characters.

Eclipse – For believing in Nibali.

DFA 123 – For believing in Pogacar.

Sandisfan – For being a great fan of so many of us.

And to whoever it was that spotted Sam Bennett not only when he turned the colour of green, but when he turned the colour of pink.

P.S. I will probably add to this post later.

Thank you for mentioning me. Is "childish curiosity" a compliment? It sure is, right?... Might also be a subtle dig

You are right, the forum was great during the Tour, although I find it annoying at times that not everybody agrees with me.

 

[BlueRoads]

The Tour is the Tour.

I don't want to rate it, and I can't.
In the end I like one-day races just way better. But then it's three weeks of high class pro cycling, how can you withstand? I am taking it for what it is.

Highlights and upsides for me:

• Bora giving everything for Sagan, DQS giving everything for Bennett. Bennett's joy after the Paris win.
• Caleb cruising for the win, one of the nicest sprint wins you will see. The decimated Lotto team giving everything for him. (Actually B&B did something similar, with a bit less success.)
• Hirschi, who was not only very strong and going all in, but also smart. He seems to know every trick in the box already. Also his style is a pleasure to the eye.
• Martínez, who after his crash was in danger of getting overlooked despite his hilarious jersey, getting a deserved stage win.
• Alaphilippe attacking and unsheathing the first cracks in Jumbo's strength. Alaphilippe attacking and cracking again and again. Alaphilippe winning that stage, doing everything right. Alaphilippe attacking for no reason. Alaphilippe descending like Freddy Mercury just because he can, ridiculous showman that he his.
• Roglic's white or blue face, not because I liked to see him suffer, but because he finally was human and touching and did not hide anything. Also Roglic's gentleman behaviour on the mountain top towards Pogacar and the great dignity with which he took his defeat.
• The time trial which was exciting.
• Kwiatkowski. Kwiatkowski and Carapaz arm in arm, with all the time in the world to celebrate. Kwiatkowski finally getting his deserved stage win and (almost) everybody being happy for him. Not easy to get this much respect as an Ineos rider.
• The smart tactics of Sunweb
• The unity with which many teams acted

Downsides and disappointments:

• The passive approach of many teams
• The amount of injured top riders and even contenders for the podium. The crashes which preferred to bring my preferred riders down.
• Bardet's crash and the way people in the race acted about it
• A lot of the fans on the mountains and the unwillingness of everybody responsible to hinder people to act like morons. Every year I'm annoyed by these self-promoting so-called fans, but this year a little more was at stake, so I was even more annoyed.
• Carapaz not kom.
• The time trial.
• I had expected more from MS (even though Yates was in yellow and Top10 in the end) because they said they wanted to go stage hunting and I love dedicated stage hunters.
• Ah, and finally I had expected more crosswind action, that is, more wind, I think.

Ambivalent:
Watching Cosnefroy fight for the mountain's jersey. Pure entertainment. Hilarious, due to Perez' crash, the passiveness of a lot of riders, the disregard for the dots and mostly the route and the system the points are given. Funny, a bit sad, as he never had a chance. He was heroic and at the same time failing so badly every day. I suppose he would even have had a better chance if they had gone for green, but he just accidentally got into this funny jersey.

 

[Hugo Koblet]

I rated it 5. Just about average.

There were some good stages, especially breakaway stages, and the battle for green was very fun to follow. However, what matters the most is the GC and that was really dull. Roglic and Pogacar were basically the two only GC riders in the race. The rest of the top 10 I hardly noticed. Porte was only visible when he punctued on the gravel and when he stood on the final podium; Mas attacked for 200 metres; Yates attacked once - back in august; Uran and Caruso I didn't see once all race; Dumoulin was on domestique duties; Landa tried something when it was too late; Lopez at least walks away with a stage victory.

Perhaps an average rating like a 5 is actually too generous now that I think of it.

 

[gregrowlerson]

Thank you for mentioning me. Is "childish curiosity" a compliment? It sure is, right?... Might also be a subtle dig

You are right, the forum was great during the Tour, although I find it annoying at times that not everybody agrees with me.

Yeah, it's a compliment. And actually this is that style of posting I am kind of talking about; you would comment about a race situation, and then add, "It sure is, right?" acknowledging that you may not be right.

Which is rather refreshing, because many of us on here are so certain of our convictions!

But on the other side of the coin, this ending to your post sounds like my exaggerated version of Tony Martin

 

[75Driver]

I gave it an 8 based on the excitement of the TT with the Jersey changing hands on what amounted to the last day of serious racing. Before that I would have only rated it a 5-6 but the dynamics involved in the TT changed my feelings.

 

[Põhja Konn]

6. Fight for green jersey and the drama during the penultimate day TT rose this Tour just above average for me. Pyrenees stages were OK, but most of the GC days were boring and passive, like in 2016 and 17 when the dominant team was likewise used to suffocate and control the race instead of smashing it open. I mean, this is the Tour with all its importance, so I expected significant amount of attrition and less all out action, but not nearly to the extent it transpired on the road.

 

[Leinster]

5/10

Taking out the final time trial, it was a dull race where the yellow jersey and seemingly strongest guy had by far the strongest team, ruining the competition. If it was known Pogacar was so strong in the time trial we could have had a much greater race.

Also a big 'told you so' to those naysayers who said the Tour would never happen and if it did then it would never finish! Well done Tour organizers for keeping the riders away from the virus.

The way this shook out, this should be seen as a good thing. The strongest team that sat on their small GC lead got bitten in the ass. This should serve as a warning to future teams; don't settle for going into a final TT with a sub-1-minute lead.

 

[Simurgh]

5 - most of the first week was boring as hell and overall underwhelming, especially the first two MTFs. The Pyrenees stages were decent though. The only thing I remember from all the mountain stages has been that Richie Porte was either on par or just a step below Roglic/Pogacar. The battle for the points jersey wasn't too exciting from my point of view, since it seemed pretty clear rather early in the race, that Sagan didn't have the necessary level in the sprints to put an in-form Bennett under serious pressure. "Battle" for polka dots was horrible, a dishonor to the jersey. Meribel/Loze stage and that crazy ITT were great, but overall this has not been an impressive tour.
I will not rule out the possibility, that the many crashes and injured riders early in the race has influenced racing negatively, e.g. Orcieres-Merlette and Aigoual, neither the possibility that many riders were unsure of their form and how well they would recover in a GT after this...unusual season. And I do concede that a mere 5 might reflect a disappointment on my side to a degree. A disappointment rooted in a hope, that many months of standstill because of corona would make many GC riders eager to prove themselves on the biggest scene of all and go on the attack.

 

[GenericBoonenFan]

8, solid racing, however my fondest memories of the Tour were the Contador-years, and they didn't live up to that standard.

 

[Leinster]

8, solid racing, however my fondest memories of the Tour were the Contador-years, and they didn't live up to that standard.

Contador's best years were in the time between the Postal Train, and the Sky Train. If he had been riding this year, he would have tried to attack Jumbo, and they just would have reeled him in.

I would have liked to see peak-Bertie in that PDBF TT, though. Except unlike Pogacar, who had the patience to just sit on the JV train and bide his time, Contador would have burnt all his matches trying to attack them in the Alps.

 

[Escarabajo]

I point I forgot to mention is that I was very disappointed at the performance of Astana as a team. I was expecting more from them.

 

[42x16ss]

Hepatitis. There is some 2011-level whitewashing of how bad the first 2/3 of the race was going on in here.

This. The middle of the first week was particularly terrible, even though stages 1 and 2 were quite decent. 6 from me

 

[Leinster]

Hepatitis. There is some 2011-level whitewashing of how bad the first 2/3 of the race was going on in here.

Stages 8 & 9 were great, and if the whole race had continued like that it would've been fantastic.


Unfortunately, the Jumbo train got back on the rails 2nd week, but for a while there on the first rest day you had to be thinking "this race could get very very good..."

 

[movingtarget]

I still think that you give too much credit to 2011. Because 1/3 is an entire week, when in reality, wasn't it more like 3 days (which would be 1/7)? The descent into Gap, and then the 2 Alpine stages. Okay, each of those stages in the Alps could be given 2 'great' points, they were that good. But the final ITT wasn't very good, was it? And were there any other stages towards the end that were better than mediocre?

I suppose what I am suggesting is that there were only 2 great stages in 2011, but it's considered a great week. I'll listen to arguments against that though.

I thought 2011 was better than that. I thought the Gap stage with the downhill attack exposing Schleck's inability to descend once again was a good stage even though Evans didn't pick up much time on Contador but he picked up a minute on Schleck ! I thought the last mountain stage was good though at that point Evans wasn't going to be dropped after Schleck's heroics the day before and Contador's attack was never going to stay away. The TT was still good because even though Evans was in great form there was still some doubt especially after the final TT in 2008 when he couldn't overhaul Sastre but then Evans had more reasons for failing that year.

If Contador hadn't done the Giro it might have been a great race instead of just a good one but then he was crashing as well, something he was plagued with in his later years in the Tour which didn't help his cause. But a Contador in better form would have changed the Schleck's tactics and made it harder for Evans.........maybe. Really the blame lies with the Schlecks for making the 2011 Tour what it was but they both wanted to get on the podium so objective completed ! It couldn't have worked out better for Evans. The crash that wiped out out some of the GC riders didn't help either as far as giving Evans more competition went. The Schlecks kept looking for Contador and each other when they should have been looking in another direction. Re Merckx's comments about Jumbo and this year's race and letting riders hang around on GC instead of trying to kill them off earlier. Easy to say of course. So 2011 maybe not have been a great full final week but as far as Tours go since 2010 still pretty good. Thought 2015 was a much better race because of Quintana's final week and Froome starting to tire. Froome learned from that re 2016 and onwards and he always conserved more for the final week and of course Quintana hasn't been the same since at least in the Tour.