Rate this year's three Grand Tours

[The Hitch]

Dude writing today's lead on The Podium Cafe, rates them thus:
My final Grand Tour ranking for 2010:

1. Vuelta a Espana
2. Tour de France
3. Giro d'Italia

How can anyone, who saw all 3 GTs possibly rate the Giro bottom of the pile?

IMO, he must be spending too much time in his cafe and has become lost in cyberspace.

http://www.podiumcafe.com/

This is such a weak article. He dismisses the Giro by citing faults which the Vuelt had, and more of them. He praises the Vuelta for having advantages which the Giro had, and more of them.

He dismisses the Giro by saying Basso won handily and says the competition was weak. So the Vuelta field, won by the guy who came 3rd in the Giro, was stronger?

But the Vuelta? He romantisises some supposed Vuelta long battle between Anton, Nibali, Mosquera Rodriguez, talks about how great stage 20 was and recalls the emotion Gilbert showed when he won a sword in Toledo.

Thiswithout mentioning a single battle, a single stage and a single moment of passion from the Giro.

If you want to see passion, look at Cadel Evans, exhausted, covered in mud, riding away from Cunego and Vino on a false flat. You want passion look at Gilberto Simeoni aknowledging the fans at the top of the Zoncolan. You want passion, look at Manuel Belletti crying after accomplishing his dream, and winning a stage near his home.

You want great stages, Stage 5 stage 7 stage 12 stage 14 stage 15 stage 16 stage 19. All of those had drama for more than the last 4 km.

You want battles?
Evans vs Vino vs Nibali for week 1.
(Evans vs Scarponi vs Basso, vs Nibali) vs (Richie Porte vs Carlos Sastre vs David Arroyo)
Thats a real gt battle.

The equivalent of this article would be to compare Purito to Contador by saying that Purito is better because he is fast up mountains, while Contador is weak because he cant time trial, hence Purito is way better.

And i wont be surprised if this Chris from Podium Cafe, writes something like this in the near future.

 

[roundabout]

probably a sign of a short attention span

Vuelta - ended yesterday
Tour - 2 months ago
Giro -

 

[Moncoutie]

Giro - 10

Tour - 5

Vuelta - 7

 

[flicker]

The tour 3. My Lord Lance Armstrong crashed out otherwise he would have opened a major can o whup- azz on that Alberto guy. 3 because Andy took second and I think him quite a charming fellow.

Giro uh also a fantastic race with Il Charmalito Basso winning. Just a wonderful charming guy.

Vuelta, who cares. End of the season race, training for another late season race that most of the heavy hitters miss. the Worlds.

That race should be run 3 weeks prior to the tour. Why scedule the worlds at the end of the season. Is it an afterthought or an afterglow for the UCI?

 

[lancaster]

giro 9.5 almost perfect

tour 6 i like that they tried to mix it up, didn't like that there was little real fighting on the climbs and the second best stage was neutralised.

vuelta 8 i didn't mind that big names missed it but epic bola del mundo, and more difficult sprint finishes than one usually sees made it exciting. eze, nieve, anton, gilbert, ++++++++++ sad that some names contributed little canc, menchov, sastre, freire, but all in all really good

 

[theyoungest]

Dude writing today's lead on The Podium Cafe, rates them thus:
My final Grand Tour ranking for 2010:

1. Vuelta a Espana
2. Tour de France
3. Giro d'Italia

How can anyone, who saw all 3 GTs possibly rate the Giro bottom of the pile?

IMO, he must be spending too much time in his cafe and has become lost in cyberspace.

http://www.podiumcafe.com/

Yeah, I read that too. I think he's a Nibali fan, but even then you'd think that the Giro would at least be 2nd, since Nibali was in it. I'd suggest anyone who's actually followed all three GTs pretty much can't do otherwise than place the Giro firmly at the top. Excitement every day.

My ratings:
Giro d'Italia - 9. It could have done with some more top contenders, other than that you couldn't really ask for more. Fantastic.
Tour de France - 6.5. Considering it's the Tour, it wasn't too bad. Nice try on the Paris-Roubaix stage, nice suspense in the final TT, some drama in the mountains.
Vuelta - N/A. I didn't follow the race closely enough to really have an opinion, mainly because I couldn't be bothered. Which probably amounts to a low rating because of zero excitement.

 

[jaylew]

giro 8.5
tour 6
vuelta 7

That said, I think back and I still enjoyed watching the Tour the most even if the racing wasn't as exciting.

 

[peloton]

Giro 9
Tour 7
Vuelta 8

Really liked all GT's this year, hope next year will be as good.

 

[icefire]

Giro: 9
Basso taking the maglia rosa one day too early prevents me from giving the highest mark.

Tour: 5
It had the highest number of boring stages. The Alpine stages were above my expectations. The Pyrenees were completely dull, were it not for the chaingate. At least the race wasn't decided until the last ITT. I would probably have given a higher mark if they had raced stage 2.

Vuelta: 6
It had more exciting moments than the Tour 2010 or the Vuelta 2009, but they all lasted for very short time. The long climb to Sierra Nevada last year with Samu and Evans dropped provided more minutes of drama than all stages this year put together. I fear that the success that Unipublic and Spanish media are trying to sell today sets a trend for future editions full of punchy finishes and single climb MTFs, turning a GT into a 3-week long Tirreno-Adriatico.

 

[icefire]

Interesting point. If my memory isn't failing me i remember watching a superb stage of the Vuelta in full in 1998 over some of the roads used yesterday.

http://autobus.cyclingnews.com/results/1998/vuelta98/stage20.html

Only 20 riders within 10 minutes of the winner (!)

Even with the lousy weather i thoroughly enjoyed the action even if the result wasn't to my liking.

Question is why do we got 3 hours at the very most 12 years later.

The stage in 1998 had 6 climbs, whereas this year it only had 3. And mind the date: all Spanish teams abandoned the Tour after the Festina affair, so they had their best men fresh and racing like rabid dogs, in more sense than one

Last year the front group in Navacerrada had around 10 men. This year, before Fränk Schleck's attack, they were more than 20. I'm growing suspicious about stages finishing earlier than expected as an indicator of a high pace. The pace may have been high, but not high enough to wear the main group in the last climb. It didn't prevent Pablo Urtasun from arriving to Bola del Mundo 21st in the stage just 2:11 after Mosquera.

 

[ulrikmm]

My ranking of the 2010 three grand tours:

1) This years Giro was a 10/10. Excellent suspense, great mountain stages, and the fantastic mud/gravel stage. Due to the mountainous geography, the Giro can allways put exciting mountain stages anywhere in the race.

2) The Tour de France this year 9/10: The problem with le Tour is that the geography in France makes the race layout quite predictable. However, this years race was less predictable, and very exciting, mainly due to the cobblestone stage.

3) The Vuelta this year 9/10: Great racing and suspense in the extremely steep mountains. The team time trial in the beginning looked fabulous, being ridden at night. The Vuelta lacks a lot in terms of the number of roadside spectators.

A great year for stage cycling! And completely covered on Danish national television and Eurosport!

 

[jmspinto]

Vuelta: 0

Who cares, it's football season.

Why do you bother come here????? Quite stupid to let a zero to an exciting race this year. The only downside thing was Anton fall, because surely he would have won!!!

 

[Francois the Postman]

I think these days the best way to measure the excitement of a cycle race is how many posts the thread on CN Forums had.

So i will use this method to confront your theory that the 1st 2 weeks were better. Here is the list of posts for each thread.



1 - 624-
2- 373
3-405
4- 684
5- 151
6- 394
7- Strade Bianchi 851
8-572
9- 191
10-151
11- Laquilla – 1042
12- 237
13 - 192


For me, just like people say the 60’s ended in 68, I say Monte Grappa, being the entrance into the Alps, started the 3rd week, but if you want you can choose it as part of the hilly flat first 2 weks.

14 – Monte Grappa – 755
15 – Zoncola – 1008
16 – Kronplatz – 704
17 - 245
18 - 95
19 – Mortirolo 920
20 – Gavia (despite poor coverage) – 651
21 itt – 256

I present to you therefore the theory that week 3 was in fact better than weeks 1 and 2.
Here i stand, i can do no other, and take that

Uhm, I always wondered how some people here fill the time when the cycling season was slowing down. I guess your pick above is one way too

Never trusts someone who bring in reams of stats. They are hiding something.

For starters, starting week 3 two days early with a nice sleigh of hand that fools no-one, "taking 2 and then giving 1 back, generously". Nope, week 3 starts after the weekend climax of week 2. And here, it started after the rest day, so you lose stage 14 and 15 already.

Only highlighting how tame the posting in "crescendo" week 3, with 2 ITTs and 2 mountain stages, actually was, even on a causal glance.

But more importantly, and here might lie the life saving raft for your feeble protestations, raw post data means nada.

You are gonna have to go back and strip out the Formula 1 spoiler ***** fests, etc. Strip out all troll backlash. Normalise figures to take into account that a brilliant week 1 and 2 drew in more people for damp-squib week 3, so uniformly uninspiring that the gathered pumped up hordes simply couldn't muster genuine poster frenzy. Week 3 just couldn't maintain the high-octane enthusiasm pumping that week 1 and 2 generated.

You're also gonna have to measure each post according to the pre-approved individual poster excitement scale (not too sure what the 0 was, but it's the one which has ACF's postings about how he just spotted Cadel breathing -sorry- winning as the gold standard mark 10 around these forum pages).

Luckily for you, the season's gap between Lombardia and the start of the new cycling year is considerable. And given how you appear to prefer to fill RDDs (reasonably dull days), there should be plenty of appropriate time coming up. If you prefer doing the sums with some cycling action in the background -and I am stretching the meaning of those words here - you can even do the sums watching the half-time winter-stop entertainment, aka the Tour Down Under, whilst all of us wait for the Belgians to stop toying with their muddy winter cyclo cross bikes, and kick off the real cycling calendar again, with De Omloop.

Factor all those subtleties in, do the sums again, and if you still feel you have a point, come back to me.

 

[The Hitch]

Uhm, I always wondered how some people here fill the time when the cycling season was slowing down. I guess your pick above is one way too

Never trusts someone who bring in reams of stats. They are hiding something.

For starters, starting week 3 two days early with a nice sleigh of hand that fools no-one, "taking 2 and then giving 1 back, generously". Nope, week 3 starts after the weekend climax of week 2. And here, it started after the rest day, so you lose stage 14 and 15 already.

Only highlighting how tame the posting in "crescendo" week 3, with 2 ITTs and 2 mountain stages, actually was, even on a causal glance.

But more importantly, and here might lie the life saving raft for your feeble protestations, raw post data means nada.

You are gonna have to go back and strip out the Formula 1 spoiler ***** fests, etc. Strip out all troll backlash. Normalise figures to take into account that a brilliant week 1 and 2 drew in more people for damp-squib week 3, so uniformly uninspiring that the gathered pumped up hordes simply couldn't muster genuine poster frenzy. Week 3 just couldn't maintain the high-octane enthusiasm pumping that week 1 and 2 generated.

You're also gonna have to measure each post according to the pre-approved individual poster excitement scale (not too sure what the 0 was, but it's the one which has ACF's postings about how he just spotted Cadel breathing -sorry- winning as the gold standard mark 10 around these forum pages).

Luckily for you, the season's gap between Lombardia and the start of the new cycling year is considerable. And given how you appear to prefer to fill RDDs (reasonably dull days), there should be plenty of appropriate time coming up. If you prefer doing the sums with some cycling action in the background -and I am stretching the meaning of those words here - you can even do the sums watching the half-time winter-stop entertainment, aka the Tour Down Under, whilst all of us wait for the Belgians to stop toying with their muddy winter cyclo cross bikes, and kick off the real cycling calendar again, with De Omloop.

Factor all those subtleties in, do the sums again, and if you still feel you have a point, come back to me.

First of all ill get the on topic part out of the way. The trolling is just something you have to accept in posts. There is absolutely no evidence to suggest it is more likely to appear in the 3rd week of gts than in the 1st week. And the 15 posts per minute i saw on these epic mountain stages, they were all taken up by real posters expressing shock and ecstasy at the magic the Italian mountains were providing.
Besides, I would expect more posts from ACF and the other aussies (sportszick and that guy most thought was trolling) on the days where Cadel led a the gc, won an epic stage, was ahead of all his challengers, and got into punchups, with domestiques, than i would in the week he cracked big time, and in which ACF eventually boycotted the giro threads. And many troll posts have been deleted so dont appear in my count. That includes f1 results and the guy who said that if Evans didnt win he was going to post disgusting pictures on the forum which thankfully for me, were deleted before i got to that page ( i heard others were not so fortunate)


And now the other thing.
I found your post Francois, to be, as always very well written. Lucid, clear and some nice metaphors. Which makes it all the more surprising that you fail to see the irony of your post. Because while half of it mocks the time it took me to scribble down a bunch of numbers (which as i said, are easily available to all) i assure you the 5 minutes it took to do this are minor compared to the 3 days it took for you to think up and write down your response

And i gather from your last 2 paragraphs that you are not looking forward to the approaching cycling off season. If you are worried about the "RDDs" of the coming months I suggest you go to page 50 downwards, scribble down the number of posts for each Tour de France thread, and see just how quick it is. Feel free to share the results with us. Once finished, you can do it all over again, and try to beat your previous time.
No copying from memory though. thats cheating

 

[movingtarget]

Giro 9.5
TDF 7.00
Vuelta 7.5

 

[Francois the Postman]

And now the other thing.
I found your post Francois, to be, as always very well written. Lucid, clear and some nice metaphors. Which makes it all the more surprising that you fail to see the irony of your post. Because while half of it mocks the time it took me to scribble down a bunch of numbers (which as i said, are easily available to all) i assure you the 5 minutes it took to do this are minor compared to the 3 days it took for you to think up and write down your response

You should know by now that day one posts are mainly the way to let the less fortunate amongst us (one day registration wonders never to be heard of again, snappy punch line sprinters, and Cadel Evans fans) have some time in the sun, basking in yellow. On day three you always get the participating heavyweights coming to the front. Slipping through day one as unnoticed as Menchov, only needing one or two points to reclaim yellow, like Contador, and with the natural gravitas of Cancellara, always keeping the bunch of youngerlings from faltering in the mighty Ardennes, or becoming a bit too lippy for the moderator's good.

But since this thread isn't Mont Ventoux, I'll let you have this one

 

[sublimit]

F**k it I've gone off cycling.

Ronnie O'sullivans 147 break a couple of days back.

 

[fox1981]

I would say that it was another amazing Giro this year, but I was slightly disappointed by Basso winning.

I'm not some Basso hater, he just didn't really strike be as the best rider out there. Nibali really carried him in that last week. Cadel can perhaps lament the poor timing on the Tour of California and an underpowered team to missing yet another GT chance.

Well done to Nibali in the Vuelta, it is just reward for the work he put in during May.