Rate Tour De France 2018

[loge1884]

Re:

1,every time you can predict the result and the way the result was achieved in sports,its garbage competition...only question throughout the tour was how will sky handle 2 leaders situation

pre Tour, Team Sky was certainly the most named favorite, but definitely rather Froome than Thomas ... there were many other names (Porte, Nibali, Dumoulin, Quintana and some others) put up as well

after week one the race was pretty open ... Porte gone, ok, but apart that, the GC ranks were not settled at all ...
after week to it came down to Froome, Thomas, Dumoulin and Roglic ... my prediction at that stage would have been 1. Froome, 2. Dumoulin 3. Roglic and Thomas to be anywhere between 4. and 24. (depending on how hard he would fail ...) .... from the quartet it was Froome who partically cracked, the most unlikely of the four to do so (he did recover in time for the ITT though) ...
so yes, in the end the best team won the race (not with the guy who looked most likely to do so though), but the way they got there was nowhere straighforward and the tension was definitely there ....

 

[Durden93]

I gave it a 6. I enjoyed the cobbles, Alpe, the short stage, Froome getting dropped, and competitive sprint stages. I also thoroughly enjoyed Bala’s aggressiveness on the first mountain stage was nice. Quintana’s win was great but it felt empty. Overall, this tour just seems dissatisfying. I thought Nibali was the strongest prior to the tour and nothing the other competitors did showed me otherwise.

 

[IndianCyclist]

5
Better than last year. At least there were attacks from the GC guys. Dumo, Kruijswijk, Roglic did some long range attacks. In fact Kruijswijk came very close to destroying Sky train. Bernal saved the blushes for Sky for most of the mountains. The reason why Froome is 3rd is because of Bernal. The biggest mistake in the parcours is the coupling of a TTT stage with a cobbled stage which i believe shifted the odds to the bigger guys. The mountain stages that end in downhill/flat are utterly useless as it doesn't favor the attacker. I think 7-8 MTFs with 1 long TT are needed for the proper battle for tiny climbers vs bigger stage racers. The Giro got it correct this year but some fine tuning would be require

 

[hfer07]

It was a not watching event once the Announcement on Froome's case was made & his participation secured by the UCI & WADA. At that point -and with the World Cup's last week, I literally omitted the Tour's 1st week. After that, I barely watched the stage's highlights, and over the weekends, I bothered watching the last 5K, well knowing how upsetting the results were going to be.

I voted 2 out of respect for some few riders that I still like, but everything else was TRASH....

 

[Blobs]

Re:

...the winner wasn't ever in doubt...

Bookmakers and many experts had Froome as the favorite to win until after stage 17, so that might be a bit of a stretch.

I actually found it quite entertaining this year exactly for the reason that all of the top guys could potentially falter towards the end. Not like all 4 times where Froome won, where the race basically seemed over after the first mountain stage.

 

[jmdirt]

Re:

I am not quite sure about those who (as they do or someone else does every year) label this "the worst TOUR ever" .... either their memories fade quick or they don't have any memories (due to their youth), or, of course, they are just trolling around ...

When I started following cycling, Merckx was still active (albeight nowhere near his cannibal years) and from my memory, those years were among the best ... the first time we had something of a team imposing itself on others was the La Vie Claire-team around Hinault, but in the 80s that was an exception ....
the really bad years started early 90s with Miguel Indurain - his first win was ok, but after that he just crushed everyone in the ITT and could hold the time in the mountains, everything began being predictible and boring ,.. what a relief, when Bjarne Riis finally could finally beat the Spaniard in '96, then Ullrich, then Pantani and in '99 was the start of the worst years in Tour de France cycling (in my opinion): Lance 'Voldemord' Armstrong was just so dominant and somehow it was more than clear that his rivals, be it Ullrich, Basso, Beloki or Zülle, were like amateurs competing with a pro .... at some stage of this US-Postal tour de force I stopped watching the whole thing and only came back in 2007 I think (Contador's first Tour that was) ... so compared to the early 00-years, Sky might be as dominant as US-Postal, but the individual contenders are way stronger ... the tour lives ....

The shocking thing to me is people comparing years: "on par with '12, better than '10...". Amazing memories!
:surprised:

 

[on3m@n@rmy]

Gave it a 6. Did not like the cobbled stage because of the carnage we all knew would happen & the predicament it put some riders in for the remainder of the race. Green jersey: boring as all the heavy sprinters who could not get over the mountains were not there to contest the sprints in later stages of the Tour. Polka Dot: again boring and I don't have a good reason why, although I like this Alaphilippe guy. Yellow jersey: agree with everyone else who said just to predictable, Sky too strong for others to contest. But why? I guess some of the blame is on teams and racers, although I did like the final Pyrenean stage that followed a flat stage, which appeared to give some rest so the GC contenders/teams would have some punch left to attack - and hats off to Dumoulin & Roglic for trying their best to crack Sky on that stage. But some blame is on the route selection. Or length. By analogy, I hate the NBA and MLB because seasons are too long, players wear down, and single games don't mean as much. So as blasphemous as it may sound regarding the Tour, I would like to see race organizers reduce the Tour to a one week stage race. At least give it a try to see what happens. Every race would mean more to teams, racers, and sponsors as you have the same number of guys going for much fewer stage victories - each stage would be more important. And racers would have more energy and motivation to go on attack. Either try that or reduce length of stages to 60-90 km, but anything to encourage attacks.

I can hope, but as with many pro sports these days there is just too much money to be made for organizers to reduce the length of anything.

 

[saganftw]

Re: Re:

...the winner wasn't ever in doubt...

Bookmakers and many experts had Froome as the favorite to win until after stage 17, so that might be a bit of a stretch.

I actually found it quite entertaining this year exactly for the reason that all of the top guys could potentially falter towards the end. Not like all 4 times where Froome won, where the race basically seemed over after the first mountain stage.

what bookmakers and experts think is irrelevant,because at no point were we given a signal there is weakness in both thomas and froome at the same time,and thomas was pretty much flawless and would win final TT if he wasnt taking it carefully

sure you can always assume at some point a favourite blows up,but there was never any indication,in fact even when froome showed weakness,he got his teammate dragging him back and then obviously froome got so much better in final TT

 

[slosada]

3. And I'm being generous.
It started with a very crappy route. that everybody was asking after 9 stages, why it was so bad.
Then the sprinters bailed out in the next two stages, leaving the rest of the sprints to a less than stellar field.
The UKpostal train was so strong that stages were dull
Giving the breakaway huge amounts of time was also boring.
The GC leader only showing up for uphill sprints.

 

[Escarabajo]

Gave it a 6. Did not like the cobbled stage because of the carnage we all knew would happen & the predicament it put some riders in for the remainder of the race. Green jersey: boring as all the heavy sprinters who could not get over the mountains were not there to contest the sprints in later stages of the Tour. Polka Dot: again boring and I don't have a good reason why, although I like this Alaphilippe guy. Yellow jersey: agree with everyone else who said just to predictable, Sky too strong for others to contest. But why? I guess some of the blame is on teams and racers, although I did like the final Pyrenean stage that followed a flat stage, which appeared to give some rest so the GC contenders/teams would have some punch left to attack - and hats off to Dumoulin & Roglic for trying their best to crack Sky on that stage. But some blame is on the route selection. Or length. By analogy, I hate the NBA and MLB because seasons are too long, players wear down, and single games don't mean as much. So as blasphemous as it may sound regarding the Tour, I would like to see race organizers reduce the Tour to a one week stage race. At least give it a try to see what happens. Every race would mean more to teams, racers, and sponsors as you have the same number of guys going for much fewer stage victories - each stage would be more important. And racers would have more energy and motivation to go on attack. Either try that or reduce length of stages to 60-90 km, but anything to encourage attacks.

I can hope, but as with many pro sports these days there is just too much money to be made for organizers to reduce the length of anything.

Wait, what?

That day I won't bother to watch.

 

[OlavEH]

5. Really medicore, on par with 2012 as the worst Tour edition the last years.

The Tour really needs a couple of extremely talented climbers (Quintana in peak shape and at least one more on the same level) to battle the Sky train and diesel engines like Dumoulin. Otherwise the next versions of the Tour will also be on the same level since 2012 and onwards.

 

[More Strides than Rides]

I gave it a 5. It wasn't good, but there wasn't anything outright frustrating from the race itself.

Nobody got thrown out for dumb reasons. No neutralization for weather or course. The Froome situation at least got to a resolution by the time the flag dropped.

 

[Flamin]

Re:

i voted 6. the boring first week is normal for the Tour, almost every Tour in history has a bad first week. still, the end of stage 1 was exciting and stages 5 and 6 were fine. the cobblestone stage was fun to watch live but i was expecting a lot better. i thought the Alps were quite good aside from the LGB stage, especially the last half of stage 11 and Kruijswijk's raid over the Croix de Fer. the 65km pyrenees stage was underwhelming but the Laruns stage was one of the best stages in a long time. if Sky weren't so dominant this would have been a really fun race.

This is just your (false) perception. In recent years, 2014 and 2015 actually had pretty decent first weeks.

 

[barmaher]

I gave it a four as the first week was absolutely terrible, and there weren't enough hilly stages with a chance to have an impact on GC if someone was off form. I think of stage 4 of the 2015 Giro as the gold standard of such stages, but even the Vuelta has had more of them recently than the Tour. They are of particular interest in the first week as they give a taster as to who the GC contenders will be, without spoiling the appetite.

I don't know if we will ever get a great Tour de France while Sky are so dominant (not their fault).

 

[zlev11]

the 2014 first week was very good, I agree, but it's a rarity. the topography of France doesn't lend itself to good first weeks most of the time. that year the first week was great because of the decent hilly stage in Yorkshire and then the amazing wet cobblestone stage, the other stages were all normal boring flat stages until they got to the Vosges for stage 8. 2015 wasn't that great from what I remember, there was stage 2 in the crosswinds in the Netherlands and that was basically the only good stage.

 

[Flamin]

Re:

the 2014 first week was very good, I agree, but it's a rarity. the topography of France doesn't lend itself to good first weeks most of the time. that year the first week was great because of the decent hilly stage in Yorkshire and then the amazing wet cobblestone stage, the other stages were all normal boring flat stages until they got to the Vosges for stage 8. 2015 wasn't that great from what I remember, there was stage 2 in the crosswinds in the Netherlands and that was basically the only good stage.

Huy ascent was also a good one.

Anyway, this year shouldn't be perceived as normal and inevitable, unless you've really adjusted your standards to the Sky boredom (which I won't). It was just ***.

 

[JosephK]

I gave it a 2. Another dog (but not Dawg), this year. Had Froome won, it would have been another 1 . . . buzzard food.

 

[guncha]

Topography of France allows to reach Massif Central from Vendee/Bretagne in two transitional stages. It is possible to have medium/high mountain stages in first week regardless of the place of Grand Depart. Only the will is necessary.

 

[Tank Engine]

Re: Re:

Five. In many ways, I found this similar to the 2014 Tour. There were a number of interesting supporting roles, but the main plot line failed to hot up. Martin, GvA and Alaphilippe were often on the attack. I think the short stage (not the grid) was a nice idea, but Sky were too dominant there. Roglic added interest in the final week. Although the GC was closer than when Nibali won, after G took the yellow jersey, the racing was almost entirely between Froome, Tom D and Roglic and G simply defended his position.

2014 was far worse in terms of the excitement once Contador had crashed out, there was no challenge to Nibali it was ever more dominant than Froome in 2013

With this tour at least there was the suspense would G crack, of course he didn't but you could not be certain of the result before the end of the last mountain stage.

True, in terms of the GC suspense, there was more this year than in 2014. For me the similarity (at least from the point of view of the GC) comes in the fact that from halfway through these races, nobody seemed to be racing against the yellow jersey (apart from a couple of digs by Tom D in the final mountain stage). Of course, Nibali in 2014 was more dominant than G.

 

[rick james]

Voted 9....and that's just seeing the hate on here, would have been a 10 if Dawg won

 

[42x16ss]

Re: Re:

Extremely bland first week, and then the rest of the race smothered by Sky.
We need a budget cap for teams.

It was said many times here. Budget caps are impossible as long as we have countries like Russia, Kazakhstan even Italy. who would be able to control these caps?

Yet Sky still outspend them all

 

[oldcrank]

This Tour was a 10 just for the opportunity to learn from the brilliant daily masterclass
taught by Nico Portal in the Team SKY car and Luke Rowe on the front of the peloton.

 

[Leinster]

Topography of France allows to reach Massif Central from Vendee/Bretagne in two transitional stages. It is possible to have medium/high mountain stages in first week regardless of the place of Grand Depart. Only the will is necessary.

The mountains have featured early in Tours in the past, but they tend to eliminate the old tradition of allowing rouleurs, classics specialists, and sprinters to wear the yellow jersey for a few days before the racing gets serious.

 

[yetiyeti]

I gave it a 3. It took way too long to get to a real GC stage, the Sky Train is too strong, I'm not a fan of the TTT. I'm not sure what I'd have scored it if I were only able to watch it live on weekends, but it would have been even lower. The weekend stages were mostly trash IMO.

 

[yaco]

Organisers have never learnt that if you a TTT ( of which i am a fan ) they must be stage 1 when all riders are fit and fresh - TTT's this year and in the past have been affected by crashes in earlier stages.