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Tour de France 2017 Stage 18: Briançon - Izoard, 179.5kms

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Re:

DFA123 said:
I think the best way to look at Bardet and Uran is to contrast them with Martin and Aru. The latter two lacked the strength of the former two, but stil consistently attacked when they could, rode aggressively and tried to win the race. They will look back with no regrets, knowing that they did all they could. Bardet and Uran on the other hand, just followed wheels and rode with the primary intention of making sure they didn't blow themselves up.

Ultimately, Bardet and Uran may be racking up more podiums from this Tour. But it's no coincidence that Martin and Aru are the racers with the big wins on their palmares. And will be the ones looking back on their careers with no regrets.

Au Contraire, Uran is riding a tactical race. His team is 5 riders short of TEAM SKYS' excellence. I beleive Froome will take time out of Aru in the TT. Froome is the strongest man in the race. Bardet and his team have attacked, but they just do not have it. Tactical race, team Sky are simply to strong.....you can see how many champions they have in the tall mountains.
 
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Alexandre B. said:
Arredondo said:
How bad will Valverde feel atm? He could have won this race. Froome is nowhere near his level of the past years.

It's just that the competition is at a low now. I have never seen such poor rivalry since .... i don't know really :(
http://www.climbing-records.com/2017/07/barguil-sets-tremendous-record-on-izoard.html
What a low competition! :rolleyes:
Easy Tour, easy stage, easy racing situation. First time they finish on the Izoard. When Schleck went full crazy on it it was after the Agnel ffs and with a valley, the Lauteret and Galibier to go.

There's a relative and an absolute level. In relative terms the field is very average. In absolute terms climbing times fluctuate year after year and that's probably best discussed in the clinic.
 
Re: Re:

cipurian said:
DFA123 said:
Arredondo said:
How bad will Valverde feel atm? He could have won this race. Froome is nowhere near his level of the past years.

It's just that the competition is at a low now. I have never seen such poor rivalry since .... i don't know really :(
Yep, really poor GC standard this year. I think Bardet and Uran will look back at this and really regret not having at least tried to do a longer range attack or some other tactical move. This may well be their one shot at winning the biggest race in the world, and neither had the balls to really go for it.

Especially Uran when he had more leeway at the beginning of the race when he wasn't even in discussion for gc.
After stage 9 he became immediately relevant.
 
Re: Re:

This Charming Man said:
Dekker_Tifosi said:
Small time differences, yet easiest Tour for Froome ever.

God that was awful. Thankfully we had Barguil for some awesome climbing skills. Showing the 'contenders' how to do it.

Uran is really the most boring rider of the past 100 years

Ha ha, what a boring rider Uran is....why do you watch Le Tour? https://www.theguardian.com/sport/live/2017/jul/09/tour-de-france-2017-stage-nine-live
Oooh he won a sprint. Big deal.
 
Re: Re:

Brullnux said:
happytramp said:
arvc40 said:
Absolutely crazy to see kwiat pull off and have to stop. At that intensity nobody is doing anything flashy

There's a chance they play it up for the camera.... just to prove how much they're burying themselves.. If they didn't stop brailsford would probably give out to them for still having energy left.
You could see how dead Kwiat was when he took off his sunglasses and just threw them away, instead of putting them on his helmet or on his person somewhere.
Kwia is such a good teammate. He pulls until he is absolutely dead. Nieve, by contrast, frequently drops before Kwiatkowski, and yet somehow finishes ten minutes ahead of him on the stage.
 
Re: Re:

Bullrun said:
GraftPunk said:
Alexandre B. said:
Arredondo said:
How bad will Valverde feel atm? He could have won this race. Froome is nowhere near his level of the past years.

It's just that the competition is at a low now. I have never seen such poor rivalry since .... i don't know really :(
http://www.climbing-records.com/2017/07/barguil-sets-tremendous-record-on-izoard.html
What a low competition! :rolleyes:

Eek!

Isn't this the first time the Izoard is a MtF - even the last climb actually? Highly misleading take. Apples and oranges.

No, sorry. The original post has the rolleyes emoticon, which means everybody saying otherwise or providing context is an idiot.
 
Re:

Bye Bye Bicycle said:
The facts: Bardet DID attack, and was pulled back without problems by Froome.

So my guess is: he just didn't have the legs.

But you have found out something else: he just didn't want to win and he was "too cowardly to take the risks needed to win it". Hard to argue against such a rock-solid analysis...

But didn't attacked when he could hurt Froome the most (aka didn't took big risks), on stage 15 when Froome was down the road, and today right when his last man pulled off. Their climbing level (his and Froome's) was similar, so he needed bigger risks to crack Froome. We'll never know of course would he succeed, maybe he would crack himself, but that's the risk of it.
 
Apr 29, 2017
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shalgo said:
Brullnux said:
happytramp said:
arvc40 said:
Absolutely crazy to see kwiat pull off and have to stop. At that intensity nobody is doing anything flashy

There's a chance they play it up for the camera.... just to prove how much they're burying themselves.. If they didn't stop brailsford would probably give out to them for still having energy left.
You could see how dead Kwiat was when he took off his sunglasses and just threw them away, instead of putting them on his helmet or on his person somewhere.
Kwia is such a good teammate. He pulls until he is absolutely dead. Nieve, by contrast, frequently drops before Kwiatkowski, and yet somehow finishes ten minutes ahead of him on the stage.
And thats the reaseon Kwia is one of the best riders in the world.
 
Mar 13, 2015
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ppanther92 said:
Brullnux said:
Alexandre B. said:
Arredondo said:
How bad will Valverde feel atm? He could have won this race. Froome is nowhere near his level of the past years.

It's just that the competition is at a low now. I have never seen such poor rivalry since .... i don't know really :(
http://www.climbing-records.com/2017/07/barguil-sets-tremendous-record-on-izoard.html
What a low competition! :rolleyes:
Sorry, remind me the last time the Izoard was raced as a MTF on such a flat stage? Obviously it was going to be faster than when it is the first climb on the route of some Alpine odyssey, or as the last climb after the Agnello, or Allos and Vars before a descent into Briancon.

At least 2007 it was the last climb and Ricco was going full gas. So Barguil's time today is really good, as was the Tour level this year. In my opinion at least in the better half of the last 10 Tours.
There was a massive tailwind today
 
Re: Re:

shalgo said:
Brullnux said:
happytramp said:
arvc40 said:
Absolutely crazy to see kwiat pull off and have to stop. At that intensity nobody is doing anything flashy

There's a chance they play it up for the camera.... just to prove how much they're burying themselves.. If they didn't stop brailsford would probably give out to them for still having energy left.
You could see how dead Kwiat was when he took off his sunglasses and just threw them away, instead of putting them on his helmet or on his person somewhere.
Kwia is such a good teammate. He pulls until he is absolutely dead. Nieve, by contrast, frequently drops before Kwiatkowski, and yet somehow finishes ten minutes ahead of him on the stage.

That's because Nieve has the responsibility of being the 3rd rider to come in for for Teams Classification
 
A great ride by Barguil. I was hoping that since he'd pretty much sewn up the mountains competition that he would ride as if he were a GC contender. He did just that. A good sign for the future.

A great battle for the stage, but the GC fight ended in another stalemate between the top 3. Uran couldn't keep on anyone's wheel in the sprint for the line. He has been riding conservatively, but I don't think he's had the legs to light up the tour on any day.

The TT might prove me wrong though. (like pretty much everyone else, I put a low probability on that).

Mike Flowers is now mathematically ensured the "Superdom" jersey in Paris.
 
Sep 12, 2016
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Re: Re:

shalgo said:
Brullnux said:
happytramp said:
arvc40 said:
Absolutely crazy to see kwiat pull off and have to stop. At that intensity nobody is doing anything flashy

There's a chance they play it up for the camera.... just to prove how much they're burying themselves.. If they didn't stop brailsford would probably give out to them for still having energy left.
You could see how dead Kwiat was when he took off his sunglasses and just threw them away, instead of putting them on his helmet or on his person somewhere.
Kwia is such a good teammate. He pulls until he is absolutely dead. Nieve, by contrast, frequently drops before Kwiatkowski, and yet somehow finishes ten minutes ahead of him on the stage.
Same thing with Henao. He was barely able to pull at all but rarely lost much time for a domestique.
 
Re: Re:

wwabbit said:
shalgo said:
Kwia is such a good teammate. He pulls until he is absolutely dead. Nieve, by contrast, frequently drops before Kwiatkowski, and yet somehow finishes ten minutes ahead of him on the stage.

That's because Nieve has the responsibility of being the 3rd rider to come in for for Teams Classification

What WWabbit says is for sure true.

But replace Nieve by Henao, and the original argument holds with extra power :D
 
Re: Re:

Tank Engine said:
wwabbit said:
shalgo said:
Kwia is such a good teammate. He pulls until he is absolutely dead. Nieve, by contrast, frequently drops before Kwiatkowski, and yet somehow finishes ten minutes ahead of him on the stage.

That's because Nieve has the responsibility of being the 3rd rider to come in for for Teams Classification

What WWabbit says is for sure true.

But replace Nieve by Henao, and the original argument holds with extra power :D
Or whoever got first between the two. No reason for any of them not to help Froome or the team. Kwiat have just been fantastic.
 
Aug 8, 2016
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Re: Tour de France 2017 Stage 18: Briançon - Izoard, 179.5km

I agree that the climbing level of this Tour was okay. It wasn't bad at all. But the records we saw had easy recommendations (Peguere and Croix-de-Fer never have been ridden really hard in the past) Still, I really think Valverde could have been with Froome and Uran on the climbs. So at least podium would have been a high probability.

Today's climbing record is not comparable to the last rides. Izoard was never a finish and very often followed by Lautaret, Galibier or Alpe d'Huez. Even in 2007 when it was basically the last climb before a downhill the stage was totally different. Col d'Agnel is much harder than Vars and back then the Col d'Agnel was ridden really hard. Saunier Duval even attacked and decimated the group to around 5 riders if I remember it right. You also had to save a bit of energy for the downhill and the short climb in Briancon itself.
 
I've followed the Tour on this forum everyday, and it is quite fun to see that many people have different point of view on everything.
For me this last stage was quite cool to watch for the last part (I'd rather forget the first 100 kms).

As in the whole Tour, Froome, RU and Bardet had a very similar level. Also it doesn't help that none of them has a "speciality" that could disturb the other. i'm thinking : Valverde/Rodriguez "jump", or Dumoulin steady ride.

I'm now a bit sad that Valverde crashed out because the scenario would have suit him a lot (hmm bonus seconds each mountainous day).

Overall we had some good actions on not so good designed stages.
 
Re:

dercuforever said:
I've followed the Tour on this forum everyday, and it is quite fun to see that many people have different point of view on everything.
For me this last stage was quite cool to watch for the last part (I'd rather forget the first 100 kms).

As in the whole Tour, Froome, RU and Bardet had a very similar level. Also it doesn't help that none of them has a "speciality" that could disturb the other. i'm thinking : Valverde/Rodriguez "jump", or Dumoulin steady ride.

I'm now a bit sad that Valverde crashed out because the scenario would have suit him a lot (hmm bonus seconds each mountainous day).

Overall we had some good actions on not so good designed stages.

I disagree that the top runners are at the same level. Froome is way way above, and didn't really have to try after the time trial. Yeah he lost a few seconds on the steep uphill finish, but thats the only time he looked slightly weak.

He's just had to follow wheels, knowing that he'll smash the time trial, and probably get his stage win there too.

This years route has been horrible, and the fact that the times are close are really just creating an illusion of a good race. I'm sure the organisers will celebrate their amazing work, but for me its all a bit contrived. The times are so close because the course was too easy, with no real places to take a lot of time apart from TT and dangerous downhills.

Losing Valverde and Porte pretty much killed the GC, its been over since it started raining on day 1.
 
Re: Re:

movingtarget said:
Carols said:
wwabbit said:
masking_agent said:
Uran, what an utter disappointment

Oh really? At the start of this season if someone said that Uran will be 2nd placed at the TDF, everyone will be calling him nuts.

THIS. Geez the guy is riding Way Over expectations and all people do is throw abuse at him. Great ride Rigo. Have a great ITT and podium the TdF!

Yes by far his best GT ride since the 2014 Giro.
people put far too high requirements for the atheletes imo. they get paid for delivering the result, not for bringing an entertaining spectacle for the fans. had Bardet and Uran read 'damn, finally do attack idiots', they would've laughed their hearts out. Uran will be staying on the Tour podium in two days, his team status and working conditions will improve tremendously, so there's obviously something to lose. I can fancy him attacking say straight from the bottom of the steepest part of l'Izoard, digging too deep and possibly losing the podium. And what he would've gotten for this? Nothing, but "thanks for trying".