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What is your favorite cycling stage/race this year?

What was your favorite stage/race this 2022 Cycling Season?


  • Total voters
    58
I voted Granon for the sheer scale of that stage. The invincible looking rider finally cracked on the hardest stage of the biggest race. That was just something special. I do have to admit though, that I missed most of the smaller races this season meaning there very well might have been better races I just didn't watch.

Also, shout out to a really good edition of Paris Roubaix and stage 18 of the Tour which I also found pretty great. Pogacar's full on attack on the penultimate climb followed by one of the most memorable displays of climbing dominance I can remember.
 
I voted Granon for the sheer scale of that stage. The invincible looking rider finally cracked on the hardest stage of the biggest race. That was just something special. I do have to admit though, that I missed most of the smaller races this season meaning there very well might have been better races I just didn't watch.

Also, shout out to a really good edition of Paris Roubaix and stage 18 of the Tour which I also found pretty great. Pogacar's full on attack on the penultimate climb followed by one of the most memorable displays of climbing dominance I can remember.
As scripture demands
 
I voted for stage 6 of Basque Country. For me most exciting races are the ones where the “script” has a lot of unexpected changes.

Remco being dropped quite early, Martinez with a mechanical. Martinez and mostly Remco getting back on. Everybody racing against Remco again. Martinez eventually winning the race. It was just a tremendous race for me.

I also enjoyed the Higuita/Carapaz stage a lot because it was exciting for such a long time. And because that stage started with 0 expectations for me.

But of course all races listed here have a nice story.
 
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It has to be Granon, the only one we'll still be talking about in ten years. Roubaix, Torino and Arrate were all excellent too, though.

I think there's a lot of smaller races that deserve a mention too, though. This year's awesome edition of Laigueglia was the first that came to mind for me, but I'm sure I've forgotten about or didn't watch a bunch of others.
 
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The smallest one that I'd say was truly epic was the penultimate stage of the Ronda Pilipinas, with Ronald Lomotos overturning a 9 minute deficit on his own teammate Ronald Oranza, after attacking his breakmates that he was monitoring in the queen stage to Baguio with a lot of serious climbing. Oranza had been happily letting Lomotos monitor the break even as the gap got dangerously large, then panicked and attacked his group solo over the last couple of climbs, seeing the time gap drop rapidly, but not quickly enough, as it became a straight shootout between the two solo-climbing teammates, and he fell 21" short - if the last climb was a couple of km longer he'd have held on.

I think Granon is the one though, while a case could be made for some of the others from an entertainment point of view, I think the combination of entertainment, expectation and significance makes Granon the winner, ahead of Torino. While the Granon stage was obviously a stage for action and Galibier north is an absolute monolith, I had the expectation that Galibier would largely be attrition and Granon would be where the action was, as its position in the mountain range and the fact it was followed by an Alpe d'Huez stage with three HC mountains meant I thought people wouldn't take too many risks in the stage until Granon itself lest they pay for it the following day, but instead caution was thrown to the wind, with Jumbo pulling off the kind of tactical masterstroke those of us who've known them since the Rabobank days thought was completely beyond them (especially after the masterpiece of failure-to-capitalise that was the 2020 Tour).
 

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