I'm the only one, aren't I?

iainf72

I found the Tour a fair drab and dull affair. It promised so much but when it came down to it, it was quite often tedious.

Ricco's crazy juice fueled rides were great to watch. We all knew what they were but they were amusing. Sastre's attacks were good and made for a reasonable Alpe d'huez But the rest?

Sigh.

Best guy won anyway.

Notes for ASO

- Finish on top of mountain
- If you insist on having a downhill finish, put more than 2 climbs in on the route
- Opening road stage didn't work. It was ok but prologue TT better bet
- High mountain for 3 days with no rest days breaking them up.

Thank you please.

skavanagh.bikeradar

I'm not sure if you are the only one, but I enjoyed it. I agree on your points for ASO, although if there hadn't have been a rest day in the Alps I think Evans might have been in trouble sooner than he was.

LangerDan

It certainly wasn't a vintage Tour. I think that a good job had been done in the run-up to manage our expectations - everyone was afraid to hope for a good Tour and was expecting some debacle as has become the norm over the past few years. By getting to Paris with "only" four positives and a few reasonable days racing, it appeared to be a good Tour.

As Ardal O'Hanlon says "Where I come from, if you are expecting a kick in the bo!!ocks and get a smack in the face, you tend to regard it as a victory"


What I can't shake off is the feeling that if it wasn't for the development of the CERA test, we'd have seen fewer positives, more agressive racing in the mountains and possibly a different podium in Paris. As has been noted on another thread, the test was probably done with Beijing in mind rather than cycling -ASO may have been lucky to dodge a bullet here.

Pirahna

I enjoyed it. Times were close enough to maintain interest until the last time trial, plenty of nice scenary to look at on the Eurpsport coverage, what more do you want?

andyp

iainf72 wrote:

Notes for ASO

- Finish on top of mountain
- If you insist on having a downhill finish, put more than 2 climbs in on the route
- Opening road stage didn't work. It was ok but prologue TT better bet
- High mountain for 3 days with no rest days breaking them up.

Thank you please.

I agree on these - three mountain stages in a day seperates the men from the boys (and the climbers from the time-trialling all rounders).

Anyway we know why you didn't enjoy it - Andy Schleck didn't win (thus giving you lots of points in PTP) and ASO and AFLD caught dopers.

Kléber

Yes, but the rest days have to come at the right time, same as the mountain stages. What I mean is that you want the mountain stages for weekends, when you get big crowds and big TV audiences, where possible. You also want ,mountain stages close to the end of the race, to maintain the suspense. But you also want rest days at meaningful points in the race.

So all this means you have a big stage on the Sunday, rest Monday and then battle on Tuesday and Wednesday before heading for Paris by the weekend, it's a formula that's hard to avoid.

Remember the Bonnette could/would have been different if there wasn't a big headwind blowing, riders might have attacked more. So you don't always base the formula for stages and their finishes just on this July's samples.

Finally I did find it was a vintage race. A transitional event, from one generation to another, with Sastre likely to pass the torch onto Contador or Schleck Junior.

iainf72

andyp wrote:

I agree on these - three mountain stages in a day seperates the men from the boys (and the climbers from the time-trialling all rounders).

Are you Henri Desgrange? :shock:

andyp

Ahem, that was meant to say three mountain stages on consecutive days. :oops:

beancounter

No, you're not the only one. For me this was the least interesting tour since I began following it i.e about 20 years.

I was glad Sastre won though.

bc

afx237vi

I agree with what's been said already, but I think part of the reason it wasn't a classic is because there were clearly no star riders. Evans v Sastre? Let's face it, they're two journeymen cyclists who've spent their respective careers padding out the top 10. Sastre is the oldest first time winner ever, and he ain't gonna win another.

That's just the way cycling is at the moment. We're waiting for another legend, so at the moment we're making our way through the transitional winners. In 50 years time, when we look back at the history of the Tour, Sastre's name will sit nicely alongside Riis (not in that way), Delgado (not in that way either), Thevenet, Pingeon, etc...

leguape

I disagree about the opening road stage. For your cycling fan the prologue is a given but for the casual punter who makes up the majority of the audience I think a road stage was what they were expecting to see.

Ok the prologue allows the identification of the riders and a certain degree of ceremony but I think the payoff of the first week actually being interesting in terms of the overall race was worth the loss of the prologue TT.

In that respect I think the inclusion of the Massif Central proper was a welcome return to the race. If they could just crack the issue of how to get something like a mountain-top finish up Puy De Dome back into the event then it would be a stormer. Those couple of days were interesting and kept the GC from being 10 days procession, 11 days racing and meant it was a interesting race from the beginning.

Part of me thinks that the best start for next year would be to have a circuit race round that 15km Monaco course for the first stage. That would have a certain glamour and could have a certain appeal to the riders don't you think?

iga

The close time differences kept things interesting for the final time trial but I didn't find the racing itself that exciting, particularly in the mountains. I guess CSC's dominance put pay to that. So not a classic but enough going on to keep things interesting.

inseine

I'm obviously in the minority but I thought it was a great Tour!
4 stage wins by Cavendish (edge of my seat every time)
Winner in doubt 'till penultimate day.
KoM third overall.
etc
In the Lance days it was usually all over after the first mountain stage and it was nice to see riders actually struggling, not a Disco train driving till the last few Kms.
I liked the fact that the GC riders weren't winning the TTs and the mountains.
Above all I believed that, rightly or wrongly, there were less drugs around and accept that because of that it's harder for the riders. You can't wont less doping but also want superhuman rides.

iainf72

inseine wrote:

You can't wont less doping but also want superhuman rides.

No but you can want exciting rides. I came to cycling in the 80's before EPO and things seemed more exciting (could be rose tinted specs) Now it seems we've got EPO-era tactics being used when the leader isn't full of la bomba to finish the job off.

boybiker

It will be much more interesting when i am riding in it

biondino

In the 80s they were just using older drugs, Iain.

Kléber

Yes, but those drugs didn't work so well, they just tended to boost recovery. A clean rider could compete against a doped rider in the 80s, a decade later he'd finish 50th.

Also, training methods weren't as good in those days, it was quite possible to have major favourites show up in July and then ride badly.

inseine

I hear what you're saying Iain, but it's 2008 now and even if it wasn't as good a Tour as the 80's, it's still better tha the last 20 years! I know that's not really true but it was as least as good as the Lance Tours IMO.

Adieu

It wasn't bad. The mountain stages were a bit of a disappointment, though. Next year should be good. CSC train vs Astana train?

richa

I think that it ended up being a pretty good Tour. But that it achieved this by the total adding up to more than the sum of its parts.

I thought that the individual stages generally weren't as exciting as in previous years, mainly because the leading contenders stuck together.

LangerDan

boybiker wrote:

It will be much more interesting when i am riding in it

Assuming you win a jersey to match your hair and can refrain from punching people in the team cars!

biondino

I really enjoyed the tour, taking into account all the stuff going on around the sport.

donrhummy

It wasn't the best TDF but 7 guys wearing the yellow isn't bad. And 3-4 guys having a legitimate shot at yellow going into the last TT is pretty good. Really, if Andy Schleck doesn't have a bad day on Hautacam (when he missed the feed bag), I'll bet the race is much more exciting.

Also, there was only one strong team: CSC. The rest of the GC contenders all had so-so teams that couldn't help keep CSC off balance. That's the real reason it wasn't more exciting. And the one team that could have done that? Astana.

Jez mon

I thought it was good if not classic. Despite what people say, Evans and Sastre are very good riders. Had he not been riding for CSC during the Basso years, Sastre would have challenged for more tour victories. Evans is a very good mountain biker and road rider. If it's true that he's always been clean, than he has done very well.

Nevertheless, they aren't Tour Greats, but is anyone seriously telling me that Armstrong systematically destroying the opposition, more interesting.

secretsqirrel

I quite enjoyed in the final week, I liked the CSC-Saxo team work and tactics vs the Billy no mates Cadel.

I missed the prologue time trial.

I am not sure if anything would have been different if there had been time bonuses, except that Carlos would have won by a bigger margin?

I agree with Iain's suggestions at the top of the thread.

Best bit was the HD coverage on Eurosport, I could have watched those mountain stages over and over, on those days the quality and excitiment of the race did not seem to matter. Even though I had to shut my eyes a couple of times when the camera motorbike was following on the big downhills! :shock:

iainf72

Jez mon wrote:

Nevertheless, they aren't Tour Greats, but is anyone seriously telling me that Armstrong systematically destroying the opposition, more interesting.

Sometimes it was. Sometimes it wasn't.

Both Sastre and Evans are good riders for sure. Sastre has never had the mental strength to be a challenger before. However his win was a well calculated move executed well.

To me the mountains seemed to be dominated by big groups riding along together.

I'd like to see Cadel, Sastre, Contador and even Basso in next years event.

flattythehurdler

I think it was absolutely fantastic. The best tour in 30 years. I loved every minute of it. A worthy winner and a very gallant second place. Only the suspicious form of GST riders (who were cheating at the giro) made it less than perfect.

Arkibal

I agree Iain, it was a very boring race, expect for the last km's, on about every stage.
Very dissaponted in the lack of Cadel's team, how could they perform so badly?

That 5-6 guys are very close at each other doesn't make the race interesting, since none of them attacked each other. Riding like snails on the mountains surely wasn't interesting. The only proper attack we saw was from Carlos on AdH, and that was it.
Kudos for him of winning the whole race, well done.

flattythehurdler

Some people on here really would rather watched doped up half humans racing like motorbikes :shock:

Arkibal

flattythehurdler wrote:

Some people on here really would rather watched doped up half humans racing like motorbikes :shock:

Now that must the most dumbest post I've ever read....... :shock:

Did you follow the race? Vande Velde blaiming others just sitting in, Andy S. barely broke a sweat, etc. Clearly the riders were not giving it all in some stages/mountains.
Saying that I'd rather watch doped up riders in not only insulting, that is incredibly stupid.

Gragi

I enjoyed it, and my non cycling mates, who don't normally follow the tour thought it was really exciting, and are talking about going to watch it next year.

On the issue of cycling "greats", assuming Evans and Sastre rode clean, and assuming (or some might say "given") the previous winners in 1990s and 2000 onwards were doping, and potentially pre 1990s, can we really say Evans and Sastre aren't "greats" and then say that someone like Armstrong (assuming he wasn't clean for arguments sake) was a "great"?