Re: Re:
tobydawq said:
Gigs_98 said:
Salvarani said:
I think what we learned is people will compain no matter what. Doesnt matter how the race is going.
What, why? Who was complaining about this tour?
Just look at the post above. It's not entertaining for the right reasons.
A bit like the 2012 Vuelta, though, the problem is trusting the organisers to take the right lessons out of why the race was entertaining. The 2012 Vuelta was entertaining because of some serious convergence of luck factors - Contador's ban through July and a clearly Wiggins-tailored TT-heavy Tour route meaning Rodríguez focused on Giro and Vuelta that year, plus a Valverde who had underperformed at the Tour and a Froome whose form was fading meant you had an exciting GC battle led by home favourites, two of whom specialised in the short to mid length steep finishes they were serving up ad nauseaum, so the race was far more entertaining than would have been expected. As a consequence, the Vuelta started spamming that format of stage, which guarantees 15-20 minutes of action at the end of each stage but often neuters longer distance moves because there are very few platforms for them (which is ironic when you consider how that race was eventually won) and so many of the final climbs are on garage ramps that mean little incentive exists even for the kind of move Mikel Landa tried on Sunday.
Like the 2012 Vuelta, there has been a real convergence of factors that have combined to make this Tour entertaining: an unexpectedly good home rider at the front, who doesn't specialise in the high mountains and whose team didn't expect him to be in this position, so is weak for race control, and a surprisingly under-strength performance from the defending champions and long-time controllers of the race, mean that no team or rider has really been able to stamp authority on the race. The stage 10 crosswinds effectively resetting a number of the contenders (plus Landa being crashed out causing him to lose time in that stage) has left climbers with the kind of deficits they
should have but the meagre TT mileage of recent years hasn't been generating - necessitating attacks from earlier in the climbs (e.g. Pinot) or further than that (e.g. Landa) than would otherwise have been the case. There is, for the first time since at least 2011, more likely 2008, a genuine feeling coming into the final week that we don't actually KNOW who is going to win (Evans was clear favourite after Andy failed to take advantage in the Pyrenees, but then that changed after Galibier), and that breeds intrigue, which makes people want to tune in to find out what happens, rather than know what's going to happen, and check the stage report to saee if it's worth picking up the highlights later, as has all too often be the case when there's a dominant champion, regardless of who that may be.