Tour de France 2019

[Gigs_98]

My guess is that simply 90% of the stages that are now labeled as hilly or medium mountain will avoid all climbs and he flat. That's how the tour has always been

 

[Red Rick]

That route will probably lead to me ditching ze flammenwerfer and start advocating for nukes.

 

[rghysens]

Re:

That route will probably lead to me ditching ze flammenwerfer and start advocating for nukes.

If this are the stage towns, and ASO uses them to the best possibilities, it could be a great course.
But they won't.

 

[rick james]

Re:

That route will probably lead to me ditching ze flammenwerfer and start advocating for nukes.

You’d never be happy with any route, you now feel it’s your duty to moan about everything tour related

 

[Red Rick]

Re: Re:

That route will probably lead to me ditching ze flammenwerfer and start advocating for nukes.

You’d never be happy with any route, you now feel it’s your duty to moan about everything tour related

So if something is crap every single time I should just stop pointing it out?

 

[rick james]

Again it doesn’t matter the route you’d moan

 

[Gigs_98]

Re:

Again it doesn’t matter the route you’d moan

To summarize this discussion:
RJ:"You always moan"
RR:"But there is a reason why I always moan"
RJ:"YOU ALWAYS MOAN"

 

[ecw445]

Why would having a more hilly route make the race more interesting? The Vuelta had that this year and was the most boring of the three.

 

[rick james]

Re: Re:

Again it doesn’t matter the route you’d moan

To summarize this discussion:
RJ:"You always moan"
RR:"But there is a reason why I always moan"
RJ:"YOU ALWAYS MOAN"

Aye he’ll never be happy

 

[Valv.Piti]

Re:

Why would having a more hilly route make the race more interesting? The Vuelta had that this year and was the most boring of the three.

Pretty sure the Giro had more vertical gain

But it doesnt matter. The Vuelta probably had the worst route of the three GTs.

 

[Gigs_98]

Re: Re:

Why would having a more hilly route make the race more interesting? The Vuelta had that this year and was the most boring of the three.

Pretty sure the Giro had more vertical gain

But it doesnt matter. The Vuelta probably had the worst route of the three GTs.

Exactly and one of the problems of the Vuelta was that they didn't have all those hilly stages instead of flat stages but instead of proper mountain stages. Compared to previous years both the number of sprint stages and the number of not gc relevant hilly stages increased. If you suddenly include many hilly stages in the tour but you include them instead of mountain stages that doesn't make the route better. If you have hilly stages instead of flat stages the race gets better though.

 

[Red Rick]

It depends on what hilly stages replace.

 

[Robert5091]

Re:

From December ...

Is it too early to say I dislike the 2019 route? (Jeez, can we get past the 2018 race first!)

The 2018 race has not raised my hopes for 2019 ... Dawg wants a 5th title - "oh be still my beating heart!"

 

[ecw445]

Re: Re:

Why would having a more hilly route make the race more interesting? The Vuelta had that this year and was the most boring of the three.

Pretty sure the Giro had more vertical gain

But it doesnt matter. The Vuelta probably had the worst route of the three GTs.

Exactly and one of the problems of the Vuelta was that they didn't have all those hilly stages instead of flat stages but instead of proper mountain stages. Compared to previous years both the number of sprint stages and the number of not gc relevant hilly stages increased. If you suddenly include many hilly stages in the tour but you include them instead of mountain stages that doesn't make the route better. If you have hilly stages instead of flat stages the race gets better though.

Most hilly stages would only have action in the last 10 k like a sprint stage, so there's really no improvement imo.

 

[Bolder]

One thing struck me as I was tooling around the western Paris suburbs is that the Tour should try a WC-style circuit race, say 10 x 15k laps with a finishing loop. Would make for compelling TV and you'd definitely get some good breakaway action. It could be near a major city, so long as there's enough up/down. Even west of Paris, the hauts de Seine offer some short legbreakers with gradients of 15-20 percent. The "mass start" didn't quite work, so why not continue to try things?

 

[SafeBet]

I want moar moan.

 

[rick james]

Re: Re:

From December ...

Is it too early to say I dislike the 2019 route? (Jeez, can we get past the 2018 race first!)

The 2018 race has not raised my hopes for 2019 ... Dawg wants a 5th title - "oh be still my beating heart!"

that's the spirit, hate a route because a rider you don't like might win

 

[Finn84]

Re:

One thing struck me as I was tooling around the western Paris suburbs is that the Tour should try a WC-style circuit race, say 10 x 15k laps with a finishing loop. Would make for compelling TV and you'd definitely get some good breakaway action. It could be near a major city, so long as there's enough up/down. Even west of Paris, the hauts de Seine offer some short legbreakers with gradients of 15-20 percent. The "mass start" didn't quite work, so why not continue to try things?

If there was Grand Depart in Paris, it could be good first Sunday stage after opening TT.

 

[Ferminal]

Re:

I want moar moan.

Vuelta announcement isn't until January I guess.

 

[Tonton]

Re: Re:

One thing struck me as I was tooling around the western Paris suburbs is that the Tour should try a WC-style circuit race, say 10 x 15k laps with a finishing loop. Would make for compelling TV and you'd definitely get some good breakaway action. It could be near a major city, so long as there's enough up/down. Even west of Paris, the hauts de Seine offer some short legbreakers with gradients of 15-20 percent. The "mass start" didn't quite work, so why not continue to try things?

If there was Grand Depart in Paris, it could be good first Sunday stage after opening TT.

Yeah, Paris-Roubaix .

 

[Koronin]

Re: Re:

I want moar moan.

Vuelta announcement isn't until January I guess.

Vuelta rarely announces before January.

 

[OlavEH]

A hypothetical question here. What would be the best route design to minimize Sky's chances next year? A Vuelta-ish route with a bunch of steep and short uphill finished coupled with a minimum a ITT?

 

[Alexandre B.]

Re:

A hypothetical question here. What would be the best route design to minimize Sky's chances next year? A Vuelta-ish route with a bunch of steep and short uphill finished coupled with a minimum a ITT?

Team Sky would adapt.

 

[dacooley]

put 21 gc-eventful stages and people would anyway be moaning about lack of sprinter stages / descent finishes / tricky stage in vosges / presence of tourmalet... relax, gentlemen, it's the tour so everything will be OK.

 

[VO2 Max]

Re: Re:

A hypothetical question here. What would be the best route design to minimize Sky's chances next year? A Vuelta-ish route with a bunch of steep and short uphill finished coupled with a minimum a ITT?

Team Sky would adapt.

Maybe the question is minimising how susceptible the route is to Sky-train boredom. I think to some extent that was the plan in 2016 with the first mountain stage finishing downhill and (you'd have thought...) preventing Froome taking a decisive early lead as in '13, '15 (and as he maybe would have done in '14 on LPdF). Logically you use the tools at your disposal to keep the dominant team out of the lead for as long as possible to stop every mountain stage becoming a procession, and if they have to go full-Bardonecchia at the end to win all the better.

For now though the dominant forces are Froome and Dumoulin who are pretty similar styles of rider, and you could argue that reducing ITT km's actually plays more into Sky's hands. (Maybe Roglic would ask for big descent finishes on every showpiece stage.) It could be from 2020 onward it's mainly Dumoulin vs Bernal and the route balance starts making much more of a difference to the result again.

[old fuddy duddy]Of course the long view of Tour evolution is a reduction in 'boring' TT stages which actually only reduces the requirement for the climbers to take risks and ends up making the mountain stages more dull; let's have proper length ITTs again and a smaller number of really good mountain stages. 1992 only had two mountain stages and they both stick in the mind 26 years later; 2016 had eight(!) and they were all crap.[/old fuddy duddy]