Tour de France 2018 Rumours

[telencefalus]

well giro d'italia was very prestigious in the 70es so i don't think that is distant from the tour de france , the position in the calendare made it less prestigious

 

[TMP402]

According to Rob Hatch on Eurosport, there will be a Tour stage finish in Roubaix, possibly on July 15.

 

[oldcrank]

Re:

According to Rob Hatch on Eurosport, there will be a Tour stage finish in Roubaix, possibly on July 15.

If this is true, I wonder if Il Trattore is ready for his Tour debut?
A super-dom in the mountains and a super-dom on the cobbles.
And there's a TTT next July and he is riding the TTT tomorrow.

 

[Max Rockatansky]

Re:

According to Rob Hatch on Eurosport, there will be a Tour stage finish in Roubaix, possibly on July 15.

This really seems confirmed.

https://twitter.com/A_ParisRoubaix/status/909062989294292992

 

[Alexandre B.]

http://www.lavoixdunord.fr/219056/article/2017-09-16/le-tour-2018-passera-le-15-juillet-par-roubaix
That's good news.

Throw in some ribins and a couple of hills/uphill sprints, and it could be reminiscent of 2015 first week.

 

[jsem94]

Inb4 it'll be like this year's Liege stage and we actually don't hit any noteworthy cobbles. I'd kill to see Carrefour de l'Arbre in the Tour.

 

[deValtos]

Would be cool to have cobbles but just because they're finishing in Roubaix doesn't mean there will be ...

Stage 9 would be an odd place for them, then again it's a weekend stage on sunday and saturdays stage is a sprint right? So I guess it must have? They wouldn't put 2 non GC days before a rest day on a weekend.

 

[Alexandre B.]

It would be criminal to avoid cobbles in a stage that could very well start in Compiègne and finish in Roubaix (the actual start and finish locations of Paris-Roubaix).

Prudhomme and Gouvenou are not that dumb. I think.

 

[Gigs_98]

The reason the ASO made the stage to Liege flat probably was that it would have meant the sprinters get their first chance on stage 4, since stage 3 had a cat.3 uphill finish and that is simply relatively late for tdf standards. In the case of this cobbles stage I'm very sure though, that they will actually include cobbles, since stage 8 will most likely be flat.

 

[Max Rockatansky]

Do it like in 1980 and put 25-30 freaking kilometers in.

And debut Chéreng to Château d’Hem (3200 m).

 

[mikii4567]

Re:

I'd kill to see Carrefour de l'Arbre in the Tour.

we had it in 2014, though it was the very first sector

 

[Googolplex]

Re: Re:

I'd kill to see Carrefour de l'Arbre in the Tour.

we had it in 2014, though it was the very first sector

Not really.

I think it was https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secteur_pav%C3%A9_de_Gruson while the real one is https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrefour_de_l%27Arbre . They are really close to each other though, so they used a popular name.

 

[mikii4567]

So it was, I sincerely apologise

 

[ice&fire]

I recall having read before one of the recent TDF editions with cobbled stages (2014, 2015) that they skip on purpose the most difficult sectors (Trouée d'Arenberg, Mons-en-Pévèle, Carrefour de l'Arbre) to avoid the risk of a big crash or traffic jam that eliminates a large number of GC contenders.

 

[Escarabajo]

Do you want to see half GC contenders eliminated in the pave?

 

[skippo12]

What they don`t understand is that bigger time gaps lead to more risks being taken. In recent years except for 2014 the riders where all close in the GC and no one tried anything in fear of losing seconds.
A stage that would put the best climbers in a bad position early in the race forces them to ride more agressive on the few mountain stages.
2014 could have been on of the best races ever without Contador crashing. A strong rider in the lead and a marginally better climber 2 minutes down but with enough mountain stages left to gain back the time. Nobody can tell me that stage 5 in 2014 wasn`t one of the greatest Grand Tour stages in recent history.
Next year a hard cobbled stage makes even more sense if they want to challenge Froome. TomD and Nibali will both most likely be part of the Tour and are superior classic riders. Imagine Froome losing 2 minutes early in the race. The whole marginal gains and use of a train tactic would be useless. But if they want to make a Roubaix stage important for the GC they need to select hard sectors.
2014 and 2015 they decided to use a relatively easy cours. The results were different because of the weather.
In 2015 even guys like Quintana, Contador and Rodriguez finished with the front group...that is the approach for a meaningless cobbled stage.

 

[Pennino]

Re:

Do you want to see half GC contenders eliminated in the pave?

If that would make for less of a procession in the mountains and a little bit more of real racing, I wouldn't mind.

 

[Red Rick]

Wet cobbles again would be nuts. Should be good for Dumoulin as well.

 

[Red Rick]

Wet cobbles again would be nuts. Should be good for Dumoulin as well.

 

[Singer01]

Re: Re:

I don't get this Giro vs Tour discussion.
It's like UEFA Europa League vs Champions League.

It's more like European Championships vs World Cup

And the Vuelta is the African Cup of Nations

 

[sir fly]

Re: Re:

I don't get this Giro vs Tour discussion.
It's like UEFA Europa League vs Champions League.

It's more like European Championships vs World Cup

And the Vuelta is the African Cup of Nations

'Cause of the temperatures?

Copa America!

 

[TMP402]

Re:

Inb4 it'll be like this year's Liege stage and we actually don't hit any noteworthy cobbles. I'd kill to see Carrefour de l'Arbre in the Tour.

Just run the actual course. Do it, Prudy.

 

[jsem94]

Re:

Do you want to see half GC contenders eliminated in the pave?

Yes. I'm a bit sadistic I guess. I want entertainment value.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Re:

Do you want to see half GC contenders eliminated in the pave?

Well there aren't going to be any hills, mountains or TTs that are going to create time gaps before the first rest day otherwise. This is heading into 2011-level, where we arrived at stage 12 with the only thing to have created any time gaps bar Evans winning a few seconds on Mûr-de-Brétagne being a TTT and crashes.

The suggested rumours are even worse than the Tour usually is for weekend stages - two featureless sprints on the first weekend (got to make sure Kittel gets to wear yellow, God forbid anybody have to actually do any work to earn the most prestigious jersey in the sport), another sprint on stage 8, another one on stage 15 and the final procession on the Champs Elysées. We literally won't see a climb above cat.3 until stage 10. One of the reasons there were so many crashes and injuries in 2011 was that there was nothing that sorted out the GC contenders from the pretenders early on, so everybody was still riding with something to protect, everybody was still afraid of dropping time. This could be even worse for that, because you'll have a week of every GC rider under the sun - including plenty who have no realistic prospects of victory - trying to protect their position in the bunch while the GC is settled based on TTT times, and then adding cobbles after eight days on which we have six sprints.

Eight days: six sprints and a TTT. I can't believe that this is going to be the real route, unless ASO are actively conducting an experiment to see just how much more ingrained the Tour is than other races, by producing a race that simply cannot be interesting to anybody not recovering from a lobotomy, and measuring the audience drop-off to see how many watch simply because it's the Tour and not out of any genuine enjoyment of the sport of cycling.

 

[jsem94]

Actually remove one or two of those flat stages for a brutal Amstel/LBL type race and maybe one Tro-Bro-Leon stage and I'd have few complaints.