Before voting I was looking at what my vote was for the last two years. I gave 2016 a 2 and 2017 a 4. I'd say 2018 was as much better than 2017 as 2017 was better than 2016 but giving it a 6 or even a five would mean it was an average gt and imo it was clearly below, so I go for a four again and think I overrated last years race. What I have to say is that I didn't have much time this July and very often only saw the final kilometers of a stage which especially in some high mountain stages where I only saw the last climb might mean my view differs from the one of other people.
My biggest complaint about the tour is that there were once again too many bunch sprints (9 to be precise although some might not count Sagan's 2nd win as a bunch sprint) plus the stage to the Mur de Bretagne which didn't end in a sprint but was still only interesting for two kilometers. I know the tour has always been a sprinter friendly race but 9 is too much and completely nonsensical in a sport which first and foremost should still entertain the fans. I'm also not saying every stage has to be gc relevant (I'm not a huge fan of just putting a climb at the end of every other stage as it's often done in the vuelta) but gt's need variation and this tour, especially the first week, didn't have that. The 2nd week of this years giro showed how it should be done.
Despite some criticism I was therefore quite a big fan of the 3rd weekend of the tour with the two medium mountain stages in the massif central. Yeah stage 14 was basically a one climb stage and yeah the long descent and flat run in made stage 15 irrelevant to the gc battle, but at least those stages offered something no other stage offered. A mtf on the Pic Noir would have made it just another mountain stage but instead we has a unique breakaway battle.
I also really liked the cobbles stage although it didn't really influence the gc.
I'm not really sure what to think about the high mountain stages. I think they were quite a lot better than the ones in the last two years, although both stage 10 and stage 16 were massively disappointing from a gc standpoint. Still they were just lacking that extra bit of excitement. The sky domination on stage 11 was kinda funny even for someone who can't stand the team like me, the battle to Alp d'Huez was really exciting (although Nibali's injury was ofc massively disappointing) and while I think the Pyrenees stages weren't quite as good as the Alps stages we at least had some serious attacks on the yellow jersey and generally a gc that wasn't already decided before the peloton tackled the last mountain range. What the tour was missing though was a really great mountain stage, which I would argue is something the tour has been missing every year since 2011 but this year it especially stood out. A mediocre stage here and there happens in all gt's but there was no stage that will be remembered for years. Even if you don't have big gc action from 50 k out in the past we at least often had stuff like the Ventoux in 2013 and 2016, LPSM in 2015 or Ax3 in 2013, which were or are talking points for years.
Also a few things about the riders in this tour. Firstly, the narrative of Thomas vs Froome was probably the stand out narrative of this race but because Froome cracked this won't be remembered as a big duel. There was no betrayal or a domestique being clearly stronger than his leader. At the end it was really just as if the two were riding for different teams. Freaking Froome vs Landa last year ended up being more interesting.
Secondly, the competition in this tour. Maybe I'm reading too much into things but I think this race was again prove that the competition for the last two years has been really bad. What I found really interesting is that Thomas, Roglic and Dumoulin, who all haven't been gc contenders in the tour so far were all in front of the contenders of the previous two years. People have talked about Bardet and Landa being out of shape but if you compare them to Froome they are actually at a quite similar point to where they were last year. Don't get me wrong, I still think Froome was clearly the best gc rider in the world in the last two years, but I still think a very weak competition made it even easier. Froome in last years shape would have had difficulties to win this year. Unfortunately Porte and Nibali both crashed out, otherwise I think they would have been somewhere in the Roglic/Froome/Dumoulin region as well.
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