Tour De France Route 2011

[dgodave]

In my world it's like this:

75% Climbing up mountains
20% Climbing up steep hills
5% Sprints, cobbled classics

but that's just my world.

In my world add another:
10% climbing up grades
12% climbing up inclines
6% misc ascending, mostly ramps & pitches
.

 

[dgodave]

...Maybe replacing the TTT with an ITT of 25-30km like Cholet in '08....

I like that a lot... a small ITT to kick things off.
.

 

[Angliru]

What about descending down mountains? I love a good descent.

Well that goes with the climbing of mountains, one of the rewards of course if one is good at it and enjoys it.

 

[jens_attacks]

i said last year in that thread epic fail route by tour de france or something that the route is lame.i said there that luz ardiden won't be ridden hard because it's the first mountainous stage like morzine last year.so the first big decisive stage for gc comes right after two weeks.that's unnacceptable in my book,at least put a 50 km itt at the end of the first week.
of course the crashes happen every single year but i'm sure the nervuosity was higher this time because everyone still got a shot at the yellow even after so many days of racing.
let's hope they will learn this lesson.

 

[Andre.J]

What a dreadful stage!! The organizers are crazy or doing it on purpose. When will they learn to construct an interesting stage in the Tour? What a waste of a HC mountain.

 

[Andre.J]

Next year stage 1= L'Alpe D'huez...allez opp!! And then turn around and climb it again from the other side.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

What a dreadful stage!! The organizers are crazy or doing it on purpose. When will they learn to construct an interesting stage in the Tour? What a waste of a HC mountain.

2009 stage to Le-Grand-Bornand. Brilliantly designed stage.

Shame it came in a race where the other 20 stages were all godawful.

They could at least have put the Col du Lein before Verbier! (North side is 14,3km @ 8,3% and the descent puts you right at the base of the Verbier climb)

 

[roundabout]

It's unpaved. No go. Tour is not Giro. Etc, etc, etc.

Col du Lein that is.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Pah. From Saxon it's paved all the way to Boveresse and beyond. There's well under a kilometre where you'd have to go unpaved. And you're back on paved roads barely a couple of hundred metres after the top and well before you get to Levron.

 

[Dundee]

I have enjoyed the Tour so far, I like the sprint stages as much as the Mountains. I like some anticipation in a Tour. I even liked the team time trial.

I do not like a 21 day tour over in the first week.

 

[Parrulo]

Thats a pretty good point.
.
But then again, look how people moan in boredom when a rider gets a significant GC lead early on.
.

yes but if contador was on his giro form those people would spend the last week moaning anyway because on that form contador would have done to the schlecks, evans and basso exactly what he did to nibali and scarponi. and since this year 50% of the top 10 candidates were eliminated by crashes we wouldn't even have a proper fight for the top 10.

and btw what thomsena isn't understanding is that neither me nor libertine are asking for a MTF on the first days, all that is needed is a stage that opens some gaps btw the contenders. a ITT can do it, a liege bastogne liege kind of stage can do it and i mean a proper L-B-L kind of stage with 250k and plenty of hills, or a paris roubaix stage like last year that did a perfect job creating these gaps, a TTT can't do that because the teams are too equal just like we saw and the only thing the TTT will do is remove guys on smaller teams that can't afford to have guys that are good at the mountains and time trials(those guys are expensive) just like it happened to samu this year. he is also ignoring the fact that we are not saying that the first week flat stages should be changed for mountain stages. no we are asking them to even the route a little bit better. there is no need for 7 flat stages in the first week and 7 mountain stages on the last one. you can perfectly spread them evenly across the race.

the tour is exactly like those movies where for the whole movie the plot moves slowly and apparently nowhere and then on the last scene there is a tremendous plot twist with lots of excitement that changes everything. that last scene won't make up for the 2 hours of boredom that we had to suffer to reach that scene. just like an exciting last week won't make up for the 2 weeks of boredom we had to endure

 

[Angliru]

Personally I'm just happy to watching, participating and discussing the sport. I'll watch any cycling competition that is on but I just prefer the climbing because that is the discipline that I personally find the most difficult. I'm actually learning to love the cobbled classics just not close to the level that I look forward to a good mountain top finish or the Ardennes classics.

 

[El Pistolero]

What about descending down mountains? I love a good descent.

But you just complained about Phil still being in top 10. It's all because of descends he's still in there. The moto rider said he had never seen anything like this before when commenting on Phil's descend of the Aubisque.

 

[movingtarget]

I think it's been good. How many MTF's do you want ? The intermediate stages in the first week with plenty of hills made the racing hard. Even the team time trial was a good one this year and I usually don't like them at all. Some of the mountain stages in the Giro may have been better but the flatter stages are generally dull compared to the same types of course in the TDF.

 

[slim charles]

it's been ok, but unfortunately too many crashes. and too many GC contenders out. other than that it's been exciting tour. not epic, for sure, but exciting. i expect it to be like that until the end.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

I think it's been good. How many MTF's do you want ? The intermediate stages in the first week with plenty of hills made the racing hard. Even the team time trial was a good one this year and I usually don't like them at all. Some of the mountain stages in the Giro may have been better but the flatter stages are generally dull compared to the same types of course in the TDF.

Once more:

We're not asking for more MTFs.

We're asking for the race to be paced better so that we don't have two weeks with precious little GC gaps, causing nervousness and crashes, followed by one week of back-to-back GC stages. We're asking for the race to have something that is relevant to the GC (but doesn't involve people getting injured) sometime in the first 66% of the race.

I think the 21 stages they have could make for a much better race, but they'd have to be in a different order. As it is we have about 2 minutes separating the top 10 (Voeckler excepted), and all GC gaps not caused by the TTT have been caused by crashes. Many of those crashes could have been avoided if there had been an earlier shakeup of the GC to establish the running order, because then you wouldn't have absolutely everybody still trying to be at the front to protect their hopes, which paradoxically damages them by making crashes more likely.

I'm not asking for 7 MTFs like the Giro. The 4 they have is plenty. I'm asking for a race that doesn't wait 2 weeks before the first GC-relevant stage (in which case why not make it a one-week race and quit the pretence?), and then stick the only non-GC relevant stage remaining on at the weekend.

 

[Fus087]

Libertine, I see your point, and I understand it.
But whenever the Tour starts in Northern France, it will take some time to get to serious mountains.

And even when there are mountain stages in the first week, that's no guarantee for an established GC: Look at the 2009 Giro for instance (although stages 4 & 5 were the worst excuses for a mountain stage in recent Giro history).

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Libertine, I see your point, and I understand it.
But whenever the Tour starts in Northern France, it will take some time to get to serious mountains.

You mean like in 2008 (2nd cat. Super-Besse stage 6, the Col d'Aspin stage in stage 9 before the first rest day)? Or 2010, when they started in the Netherlands (2nd cat. Station des Rousses and 1st cat. Morzine-Avoriaz at the end of the first week)? Or 2007, when they started in London (Le-Grand-Bornand stage over the Colombière and the epic Tignes stage at the end of the first week)?

Even in 2006 they'd got to the high mountains by stages 10 and 11. The nearest we've had to as route as lopsided as this year's recently is 2004, where we had a prologue, a TTT and this:

And that was all, for nearly two weeks. And that was one of the lamest Tour routes in memory. Even 2009 managed to put Arcalis in the first week even despite neutralising the Pyrenées with some of the most pathetic courses in living memory.

 

[bicing]

Once more:

We're not asking for more MTFs.

We're asking for the race to be paced better so that we don't have two weeks with precious little GC gaps, causing nervousness and crashes, followed by one week of back-to-back GC stages. We're asking for the race to have something that is relevant to the GC (but doesn't involve people getting injured) sometime in the first 66% of the race.

I think the 21 stages they have could make for a much better race, but they'd have to be in a different order. As it is we have about 2 minutes separating the top 10 (Voeckler excepted), and all GC gaps not caused by the TTT have been caused by crashes. Many of those crashes could have been avoided if there had been an earlier shakeup of the GC to establish the running order, because then you wouldn't have absolutely everybody still trying to be at the front to protect their hopes, which paradoxically damages them by making crashes more likely.

I'm not asking for 7 MTFs like the Giro. The 4 they have is plenty. I'm asking for a race that doesn't wait 2 weeks before the first GC-relevant stage (in which case why not make it a one-week race and quit the pretence?), and then stick the only non-GC relevant stage remaining on at the weekend.

This I agree with. I think the stages have been designed very well to create good racing: Cav's unpredictable solo win, slightly uphill finishes, rolling stages, Thor's Aubisque (I don't agree it was a waste, it was great to see Thor take that day). But definitely, the GC moments should have started earlier for the abovementioned reasons and to spread the attention on green and yellow jerseys throughout the whole 21 days.

I don't think the route has turned out to be an epic faile if we consider the quality of racing and the interesting-ness of the race days.

 

[Finn84]

For me, I think five mountaintop (2nd category or higher) finishes should be in. Two in both Pyrenees and Alps, one in Massif/Jura/Vosges.

This year's route is however the best Tour in recent history regarding small uphill finishes.