Tour de Suisse, Stage 2 Sunday, June 10 Verbania - Verbier 218 km

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dlwssonic

dlwssonic

May 27, 2010
5,376
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Lanark said:
I agree with the gist of your point, but I don't think the ASO can be completely blamed for that. The first half had some good stages (Mont des Allouettes, Mur de Bretagne, Super-Besse, Saint-Flour). But the riders made a complete mockery out of the stages to Luz-Ardiden and Plateau de Beille, both great stages that are more difficult than anything we have in this year's Tour. It was still backloaded to the second half, but there was some interesting stuff in the first half of the course, it's just that the riders did little with it (certainly Luz-Ardiden).

This year's Giro route was almost a bigger disgrace, with the first real difficult mountain stage on the last thursday.
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Luz ardiden was ok I thought. The schlecks were pretty aggressive there.
Yeah plateau de beille sucked.
 
L

Lanark

May 12, 2010
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dlwssonic said:
Luz ardiden was ok I thought. The schlecks were pretty aggressive there.
Yeah plateau de beille sucked.
Click to expand...

Strictly speaking Plateau de Beille was worse, but my expectations were a lot lower as well.
 
Libertine Seguros

Libertine Seguros

Feb 20, 2010
33,064
15,272
28,180
Lanark said:
I agree with the gist of your point, but I don't think the ASO can be completely blamed for that. The first half had some good stages (Mont des Allouettes, Mur de Bretagne, Super-Besse, Saint-Flour). But the riders made a complete mockery out of the stages to Luz-Ardiden and Plateau de Beille, both great stages that are more difficult than anything we have in this year's Tour. It was still backloaded to the second half, but there was some interesting stuff in the first half of the course, it's just that the riders did little with it (certainly Luz-Ardiden).

This year's Giro route was almost a bigger disgrace, with the first real difficult mountain stage on the last thursday.
Click to expand...

But while Mont des Alouettes, Mur-de-Bretagne, Super Besse and Saint-Flour could have been raced more aggressively, they were still short enough that gaps created would be small enough that every contender would still have something to protect. You need to have something that sorts out the status quo and separates the contenders from the pretenders, otherwise you're left with 16 teams trying to get contenders, no matter how fanciful, up towards the front in case of splits, and the other 6 trying to set up their sprint train, and because everybody still has something to lose you're left with a nervous péloton, which causes more crashes and paradoxically causes the elimination of contenders. If you sort out the GC status quo, even if it's just with a fairly simplistic mountain such as Arcalis in '09 or Siusi in the '09 Giro, you remove a bunch of those guys who weren't realistic hopes for the GC, so you lose their guys trying to protect their GC position and adding to the melée in the péloton, whilst not removing major contenders (if you can't stay with the bunch on, say, Montevergine di Mercogliano, you were never a serious threat in the first place), plus adding to the list of potential stage hunters who can make the race more exciting. It doesn't have to be a mountain; a reasonable early ITT can do it - the Cholet one in the '08 Tour made Super-Besse a lot more interesting than it was last year, and that was only a mid-length TT, not a full-length one like, say, the '08 Vuelta early one.

I'm not saying we need to put Mont Ventoux on stage 4, I'm just saying that both for the spectacle and for safety, something needs to give people something to gain rather than just having everybody with something to protect.
 
L

Lanark

May 12, 2010
1,998
0
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Libertine Seguros said:
But while Mont des Alouettes, Mur-de-Bretagne, Super Besse and Saint-Flour could have been raced more aggressively, they were still short enough that gaps created would be small enough that every contender would still have something to protect. You need to have something that sorts out the status quo and separates the contenders from the pretenders, otherwise you're left with 16 teams trying to get contenders, no matter how fanciful, up towards the front in case of splits, and the other 6 trying to set up their sprint train, and because everybody still has something to lose you're left with a nervous péloton, which causes more crashes and paradoxically causes the elimination of contenders. If you sort out the GC status quo, even if it's just with a fairly simplistic mountain such as Arcalis in '09 or Siusi in the '09 Giro, you remove a bunch of those guys who weren't realistic hopes for the GC, so you lose their guys trying to protect their GC position and adding to the melée in the péloton, whilst not removing major contenders (if you can't stay with the bunch on, say, Montevergine di Mercogliano, you were never a serious threat in the first place), plus adding to the list of potential stage hunters who can make the race more exciting. It doesn't have to be a mountain; a reasonable early ITT can do it - the Cholet one in the '08 Tour made Super-Besse a lot more interesting than it was last year, and that was only a mid-length TT, not a full-length one like, say, the '08 Vuelta early one.

I'm not saying we need to put Mont Ventoux on stage 4, I'm just saying that both for the spectacle and for safety, something needs to give people something to gain rather than just having everybody with something to protect.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I agree. The stage to La Planche des Belles Filles and the earliesh time trial this year are good moves, but as always with the ASO, it's one step forward and two steps back, because with this route La Planche des Belles Filles isn't a stage that only serves to seperate the wheat from the chaff, it's suddenly one of the premier mountain stages in this Tour. Combine this year's first half of the Tour (and replace 2 bunch sprints with something more interesting, and move the ITT to the 5th stage) with last year's second half, and you have a great route. Maybe they'll learn one day.
 
T

theyoungest

Jan 11, 2010
15,615
4,551
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The most inexcusable fail about this year's TDF course is not having one single HC mountain finish. That's just ridiculous, for any grand tour. The first week, on the other hand, seems pretty interesting.
 
Fidolix

Fidolix

BANNED
Jan 16, 2012
997
0
0
The time difference stays more or less steady at 5:06 - Liquigas is at the forefront of the peloton.
Bazzana and Anderson have increased their advantage by 15 seconds. They seem to be climbing well
 
E

el_angliru

Mar 11, 2010
308
63
9,380
Peloton at 7:45 with 68 km to go. Gaetan Bille, Lotto, has jumped from the Peloton and has a 1 minute lead to the pel.
 
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