Rate the TdF 2017 route

[hrotha]

"36 km of chrono, that's a lot," Bardet said

This is beyond ridiculous. Do pro riders these days even like cycling? Did they watch it when they were kids? Why aren't the journalists calling them out on this kind of thing?

 

[Tonton]

Re:

"The riders make the race" is an utterly absurd platitude in a discussion about the route and nothing but the route.

I shall ignore your negativity and borderline insulting words, my friend. I wouldn't do that to you. The route is OK by me, for reasons that I already explained. Nothing but the route? I don't see it that way. In the Indurain era, a TdF with 100K of ITT would have been a bad design IMO. Maybe good on paper (what you seem to refer to), but terrible. You are one dimensional, if I may say: a route is only as good as the riders who race it: designed to make it entertaining.

In '17, it's Froome, Quintana, a few good climbers, in the end riders will make this race. I like the set up. Strong for three, not one or two weeks, a short "all hell breaks loose" opportunity, why not?

I'm on record bashing ASO, many times. I don't need you lecturing me. I was riding the Lacets de Septmoncel in '82, stage 8, when I was 13. I have the right to my opinion. You can disagree. But spare me the "platitude" and the BS please. Thanks.

 

[hrotha]

Of course this is about nothing but the route. The thread is called "Rate the route", not "Rate the show we're likely to get next July". "The riders make the race", on top of being a misleading half-truth, is an absolutely meaningless thing to say in this context.

I won't insist on the matter, though - LS has already explained this many times and with far better posts than I could put together.

 

[Escarabajo]

Re:

"The riders make the race" is an utterly absurd platitude in a discussion about the route and nothing but the route.

Very hard to separate the two.

Descents, attrition, TT's, sprints, etc. They all depend on riders.

 

[Tonton]

Rate the route, in the context of '17, Froome will defend his title against a rejuvenated Quintana, French (and Dutch) hopes should be alive, Ritchie feeling good, Bertie? That's what I'm looking at. A good route has to match the powers in presence. There's not one route, a perfect route, a one size fits all years. How about '77? Weird design, most would give it a 3, a very good Tour.

Rate...on the paper. That should be the disclaimer.

 

[Big Doopie]

I voted 1.

if only there had been a 0 as a choice.

this absolutely sucks.

shortening stages and looking for steeper and steeper hills to climb just bastardizes precisely what a GT is supposed to test - all around strength and recovery.

what a joke.

where were they when they provided hinault and indurain 120+ km of flat ITT?

clearly, they want to try and make quintana win.

with bardet a close second.

what happened to having the strongest win? not the best climber only. we already have two GTs that have switched to the latter.

the reason quintana (and other little climbers before him) have always failed to win the TDF is precisely because of those "boring" long flat stages that takes their climbing legs out from them.

I had given up on the joke that is the Vuelta.

the giro was close behind.

now the tdf.

Fuq them.

 

[gregrowlerson]

Re:

OK, so now the first few days starts to suck balls.

S1 Short ITT is cool I guess to start a race
S2 Sprint stage is fine usually, but in freaking Liege there are so many opportunities.
S3 Longwy climb is 1km at around 8% or so I think? A few opportunities in the area, but a dollar to doughnuts the stage is like this____________/
S4 Vittel is a sprint stage.
S5 PDBF is a good climb, although it would be nice to see a new one. I have no issues with the timing of this.
S6 Troyes is a sprint stage.
S7 Nuits Saint Georges is a sprint stage. A "globally flat course" no less.
S8 I like the Station des Rousses stage. Looks like a decent climb near the end, and I don't mind the relatively flat bit at the top as it gives us something different.
S9 This stage is great. Really great. Sure there is a chance that it won't be used but this is a work of art in my book. Again, the flat bit at the end could contribute to the chaos.

At this stage the route is going along nicely. I would prefer the PDBF stage to have more climbs, and I hate what they are doing in Liege, but at the same time, this is a nice balanced first week. The problem is, the overall shape of the race starts to deteriorate.

S10 Sprint stage. Meh. As somebody says, this would be a great ITT stage to homage a previous one between these two towns.
S11 Another sprint stage in Pau. Now we will be getting sick of the sprinters.This is the sixth sprint stage. Seven if you could the uphill sprint to the citadel. Ridiculous in my book.
S12 This is a solid mountain stage. Decent length, and hallelujah, I believe we are avoiding Tourmalet!!!
S13 I think this stage will be good. Nicely placed after a tough stage. Avoids the stupid loop around Foix. But are we really leaving the Pyrenees?
S14 This is the same GVA - Sagan uphill sprint we saw last year.
S15 Classic breakaway stage. I don't mind this as there are very few of these in this year's route.

But what the hell? Middle weekend is completely wasted with two OK ish stages. There is no way the Rodez stage will be that interesting. There is very little chance of GC action in Stage 15. Route has gone from above par after the first week to below par.

S16 is a sprint stage. Chance of wind.
S17 is absolutely fine. Not the best mountain stage in the TDF, but not bad.
S18 is dirt. Izoard might work as a MTF finish, but the route before the last climb is not only unlikely to provoke GC attacks, but also they seem to have gone out of their way to avoid going to interesting place.
S19 is a sprinter stage because they couldn't make them wait an extra two days for Paris. Never mind the fact that they could have gone nuts in the southern Alps.
S20 is a ludicrously short ITT. Everyone else has complained about this, so I won't go there again.
S21 parade in Paris. And the sprinters get another go.

I typically tend to be a bit more moderate than others on here when it comes to routes. This route has a lot of potential. But they have made a bollix of it.

I would make the following three changes to the route to make it more interesting.

* Proper hilly stage in Liege.
* Scrap stage 19 and replace it with a proper southern Alps stage. Something with Col d’Allos (16.3 km @ 6.7%), Col des Champs (11.6 km @ 7%), Col de la Cayolle (21 km @ 6.8%) would do nicely.
* Next day (Stage 20) have the ITT of around 40km

Bish bash bosh. A poor route becomes a good route.

Very good write up. The more that I think about this route, the more that I like it.

So okay; 36 kms of ITT is not enough. Not nearly enough. Difficult to rate as high as an 8 just on that basis. But this is still about as many flat kms (assuming that these are flat TT's) as this year, and more than in the disaster that was 2015.

3 MTF's is good. We are seeing a nice recent trend to move away from just MTF's and to include numerous descent finishing stages. Why are the organisers not being applauded for this? It has often been a major claim/reason to the Giro routes being better; the variety in mountain stage finishers. Now the Tour is giving us a great mix, yet everyone is silent.

This route is also not backloaded, and that's great. PBF is a good opening MTF to result in small time gaps; for a stage 5 the design is right. If there were more mountains beforehand then people would complain that they are being wasted because the riders won't attack from far out so early in the Tour.

And we have Mont Du Chat on stage 9. Mont Du Chat! It is perfectly placed in the stage too.

This route gives us some familiar climbs (Galibier most notably, Perysourde), but is not just giving us the same old, same old. There is no Tourmalet and no Alp Du'ez. That's a big positive.

This route in general is not wasting climbs in the way that it has in the past (2009 and 2010 Pyrenees particularly).

Many wish for the final mountain stage to be much harder, but this a) makes the route more backloaded, and b) makes riders more hesitant to attack on the stages prior. Having the Izoard stage being relatively *** can actually work. Being relatively easy for an Alpine stage means that the riders won't fear it, and won't hold back on the stage before. And that stage happens happens to be a fantastic one. It could do with being longer; that is all.

Given that we have the Jura, Voges and Massif Central all in this route, we don't need more than 4 stages in the really big passes. Reduce stage 18 by 30 kms and add that to the beginning of stage 17, and that would be better, creating more of the queen stage/short stage combo which can bring about great racing.

They have tried to do this in the Pyrenees, but have made it far too obvious. Only 100 kms for the Foix stage screams "We want another Formigal!" Every rider will be 100% alert and it is most likely that little will happen. This stage would be better to be at least 130 kms. The stage prior to it is very good though, and at least having such a short stage the following day will not detract from the racing on that MTF.

I don't know why there seems to be an emphasis though on Froome proofing the route (well, Bardet maybe, but if so I hope that Froome beats him by ten minutes still). To make it close? This supposedly helps to popularise their product? The TDF became the world's biggest annual sporting event, whilst Indurain and Armstrong were winning multiple tours by big margins, largely due to ITT. If the 'product' didn't suffer then, why would it now??

And regarding the 9 or so sprint stages: 10-20 years ago it seemed like there was more than that, so this will probably help the GC more, as in that it will make the stages that are GC better raced. It does harm the hilly/classics specialists, but for me the Tour is 95% about GC, so I don't mind that.

I'm giving this a 7.

 

[Eshnar]

For the second year in a row, ASO is trying to shake the tree with different designs. Last year, the GC battle was great, so why not try again?

 

[Red Rick]

I'm still waiting for Libertine's book uuhhm post about 329 ways for every stage to be designed better.

 

[18-Valve. (pithy)]

Re: Re:

Very good write up. The more that I think about this route, the more that I like it.

So okay; 36 kms of ITT is not enough. Not nearly enough.

It's only "not enough" if you want to give Froome / Sky an even bigger advantage that they can then even more easily defend. If a rider like Bardet is seven minutes back instead of one and a half it makes a long-range attack even less likely to succeed, if the purpose is to win the GC with that move, rather than to win a relatively unimportant stage, as Sky can then more easily pace themselves without going into the red too early.

You can't ignore the riders/teams and their strengths/weaknesses. If a rider like Dumoulin could actually climb like Wiggins in his GT prime then it would have made sense to load the route with ITT kms, but as it stands I don't see how that would help.

 

[Eshnar]

Am I the only one who sees the irony in stating that a guy who won three of the Tours with less TT in history would get an even bigger advantage with more TTs?

 

[18-Valve. (pithy)]

Re:

Am I the only one who sees the irony in stating that a guy who won three of the Tours with less TT in history would get an even bigger advantage with more TTs?

How is that ironic when it's obviously true? Yes, he would likely win with an even bigger advantage. Or even more likely: he and his team wouldn't have to try as "hard."

He's the only "complete" GT specialist in the bunch who's still in his prime. The other riders have major weaknesses. Even Andy Schleck in his prime was way more complete than Quintana or Bardet.

Froome's main weakness is that he depends on his (way too strong) team more than others, but that's another issue.

 

[Alexandre B.]

For the second year in a row, ASO is trying to shake the tree with different designs. Last year, the GC battle was great, so why not try again?

Contenders were pretty close to each other the whole race but there was no passion in the yellow jersey battle as soon as Froome murdered everyone bar Dumoulin in the first TT. And the backloaded last week stages made it even worse because it was more about 'survival' than 'attacking'. We saw Van Garderen, Valverde, Mollema and Aru cracking in a spectacular way, that's true, and that's what the race design intended to do, but the strength of Sky annihilated anything else.

And that's what people remember.

 

[malakassis]

gave it an 8. its not as packed as the alps this year, GCs can shine from early MTF in belle filles until ITT in marseille. i think with the two last high mountain stages being both ~180k its a huge difference to the last editions with 140k stuff.

if i were to design, id offer a big flat 50k ITT and two proper high mountain queenstages (200k+,5000-6000D+).

historically TDF routes of 1986 and 1987 were pretty 10ish id say...and they offered interesting GC battle.

 

[Eshnar]

Re: Re:

He's the only "complete" GT specialist in the bunch who's still in his prime. The other riders have major weaknesses. Even Andy Schleck in his prime was way more complete than Quintana or Bardet.

Then he is the only one who should win. If you design a GT in order for the only complete rider to not win it, that is not a GT anymore...

Yes Froome has other weaknesses, but somehow ASO (and fans) seem unwilling to focus on those and instead they just want to limit his strengths. That's what I don't like.

 

[jens_attacks]

5

great jura stage
horrific alps
two prologues

blergh

 

[kingjr]

I'll cast my vote when the race is over.

 

[OlavEH]

6/10, and that's only because we the route finally includes Mont du Chat. That's about f****** time!

+++ Mont du Chat!!!
++ Good distribution of hilly and mountain stages througout the Tour.
+ Peyragudes and Galibier stages also seems pretty good.

--- The Izoard stage and the fact that there is only 2 stages in the Alps.
-- The stage to Foix. I could be onboard with one shorter mountain stage, but not only 100 km and almost 30 km from the last climb to the stage finish isn't something I like!
- Still no long (at least 220-230km) hilly/medium mountain stage.

We also have the issue regarding the low number of ITT kms, but 80 km of ITT would only have favorized Froome too much.

 

[18-Valve. (pithy)]

Re: Re:

He's the only "complete" GT specialist in the bunch who's still in his prime. The other riders have major weaknesses. Even Andy Schleck in his prime was way more complete than Quintana or Bardet.

Then he is the only one who should win. If you design a GT in order for the only complete rider to not win it, that is not a GT anymore...

Yes Froome has other weaknesses, but somehow ASO (and fans) seem unwilling to focus on those and instead they just want to limit his strengths. That's what I don't like.

They could mix it up and see what type of route drives the ratings more. They go with what they think the casual fan wants to see - apart from them appeasing the host towns. It's all about money in the end.

If significantly fewer people will tune in (relative to 2015) then they probably won't repeat this kind of route. we'll see. There hasn't been an old school GT route with both two 50-60km flat ITTs (without an excessive amount of cornering and/or short climbs/descents to minimize differences) and 3-4 really hard Alpine stages at high altitude in quite a while, though.

The casual fan probably just wants to see more actual mountain stages with HC MTFs, and at least one stage with plenty of unpaved roads. I'd have more of the latter in particular if a higher viewership was my main concern.

 

[Red Rick]

I really think this route is a one-time thing rather than a new trend. Next year is the 100th Giro, and French riders have stated their interest in it. With Bardet getting 2nd in the Tour last year, getting the French to peak for the Tour rather than letting them ride the Giro is a huge thing for the audience of the Tour. I think its lame though.

 

[SergeDeM]

It's ridiculous to think that there's a "Colombian" effect bringing down the number of ITT Kms, when we know there are three main reasons for this: One, the top french riders are bad TTers; Two, more ITT Kms means more certainty of Froome winning which is bad for the show as it becomes easier to predict; and Three, the average viewer gets bored with long ITTs.

The days of more than 70 ITT per tour are not coming back soon, deal with it. It's boring for the average Joe and severely reduces the amount of contenders, which translates to less TV revenue.

Want to have lots of ITT again? You'll have to wait until most of the main GC contenders do it well so it becomes a part of the show that brings uncertainty. Good luck with that.

 

[OlavEH]

Re:

Want to have lots of ITT again? You'll have to wait until most of the main GC contenders do it well so it becomes a part of the show that brings uncertainty. Good luck with that.

Or until we have a group of GC contenders that are shitty time trialists, but can gain 5+ minutes in the mountains on the GC contenders that are top time trialists. Type Quintana in peak form vs a type similar to Wiggins.

 

[Netserk]

Or maybe, I don't know, proper mountain stages to compensate. The route may be balanced (in the context of who will contend), but that is as much about the mountain stages as the TTs.

 

[18-Valve. (pithy)]

Re: Re:

It's ridiculous to think that there's a "Colombian" effect bringing down the number of ITT Kms, when we know there are three main reasons for this: One, the top french riders are bad TTers; Two, more ITT Kms means more certainty of Froome winning which is bad for the show as it becomes easier to predict; and Three, the average viewer gets bored with long ITTs.

The days of more than 70 ITT per tour are not coming back soon, deal with it. It's boring for the average Joe and severely reduces the amount of contenders, which translates to less TV revenue.

Want to have lots of ITT again? You'll have to wait until most of the main GC contenders do it well so it becomes a part of the show that brings uncertainty. Good luck with that.

Or until we have a group of GC contenders that are shitty time trialists, but can gain 5+ minutes in the mountains on the GC contenders that are top time trialists. Type Quintana in peak form vs a type similar to Wiggins.

Yep to all of the above, with the disclaimer that pretty much every ITT - long or short - is boring to the casual fan. ASO may as well skip them altogether with the current GT specialist hierarchy in mind.

I suppose long TTTs could prove to be reasonably popular if you design them in ways that it becomes much more likely that the teams will fall apart too soon. The TTTs of the recent past have all been too short to create sufficient drama. And yes, I know they're unfair. That's not the point. They do have an advantage, though: fewer climbers per top team, which could lead to mountain stages that are harder to control. But the former would, once again, hurt Bardet, so this won't happen either.

 

[OlavEH]

Re:

Or maybe, I don't know, proper mountain stages to compensate. The route may be balanced (in the context of who will contend), but that is as much about the mountain stages as the TTs.

How could they design the mountain stages in the Tour to compensate for 80-100 kms of ITT if you want somebody to give Froome a fight for the win?