is The Tour getting easier
Gazzetta67
Posts: 1,890
Hi just want to gauge opinion on what you guys think about seeing this years Tour Route. over the past 10 years i have enjoyed watching the Giro rather than the Tour..i am not a Fan of Mountain Stages that finish with a Downhil run in....OK i know there are a couple of Summit finishes but are they Tough enough for proper time gaps.. i feel the mountain stages in the Giro are more spectacular... maybe the Tour organisers and other race organisers are cutting the stages in answer to cut riders possibly cheating....but after this year i think they could cut the all stages to 50 miles and you would still get some using CERA or EPO what do you guys think ? cheers
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Haven't seen the route but I think mountain stages with a downhill run in are generally more exciting than mountain top finishes. The trouble with mountain top finishes is they generally end up as a battle of fitness - power to weight - whereas downhill finishes or finishes where there is something a bit different introduce tactics, skill, courage and even luck to the mix.
it's a hard life if you don't weaken.0 -
Some stages in the Giro and Vuelta border circus events. Making riders go up 20% slopes, unpaved even, makes for good TV but a lot of riders complain. Please remember this is a real sport, not some extreme fitness competition designed purely for TV!
Still, the 2009 Tour has four summit finishes including the cliffhanger up Ventoux.0 -
Kléber wrote:Some stages in the Giro and Vuelta border circus events. Making riders go up 20% slopes, unpaved even, makes for good TV but a lot of riders complain. Please remember this is a real sport, not some extreme fitness competition designed purely for TV!
Still, the 2009 Tour has four summit finishes including the cliffhanger up Ventoux.
And you won't get a better climb to race up than Ventoux. Never steeper than 10-12% but a killer with no bends.0 -
3500km of sheer hell as usual?
the tour tends to be the most heavily contested.. the riders make it hard by going hard"If I was a 38 year old man, I definitely wouldn't be riding a bright yellow bike with Hello Kitty disc wheels, put it that way. What we're witnessing here is the world's most high profile mid-life crisis" Afx237vi Mon Jul 20, 2009 2:43 pm0 -
In the next olimpic games 100m are going to be 60m to avoid doping........rides dope to win, no because climbs!
This route is very, very bad (the worse that i have seen, just Monaco, TTT, Barcelona, Colombiere an Ventoux are good stages).....Giro´s is always is better, this year even Vuelta´s could beIf you like Flandes, Roubaix or Eroica, you would like GP Canal de Castilla, www.gpcanaldecastilla.com0 -
Kléber wrote:Some stages in the Giro and Vuelta border circus events. Making riders go up 20% slopes, unpaved even, makes for good TV but a lot of riders complain. Please remember this is a real sport, not some extreme fitness competition designed purely for TV!
Still, the 2009 Tour has four summit finishes including the cliffhanger up Ventoux.
Nothing wrong with unpaved roads, or at least not bowling green smooth surfaces. The Paterberg is 20% and cobbled, I've never heard any complaints about it.0 -
You weren't riding near me at last year Flanders sportive then! :Pleguape wrote:The Paterberg is 20% and cobbled, I've never heard any complaints about it.0 -
I see a pyrenean stage of 1991 TDF was 238KM-140 miles!!! FFS- 3 or 4 cols en route...to summit finish...first hour was ridden at 31mph and that was with train crossing barrier delay..0
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Ha! In defence of the Giro they are trying to innovate, get bums on seats watching it (expanidng their global and marketing reach etc etc) and attempting to capture some attention away from the Tour. If that means a TT up a steep unsealed mountain road, then so be it. In some ways it's in the truest traditions of the Tour to do something unspeakable to the riders like that for a bit of publicity. Werent the Tour mountain stages introduced in order to make it harder (no derailures remember) and sell more newspapers??!!!
Certainly as a fan of the sport I enjoy that stuff. Without that streak of opportunistic suffer mongering by organisers there would be no mystery, history, romance, suffering or heroes - "what do you mean you didn't operate the bellows yourself? That's a disqualification sonny!"0 -
Yes, the Tour is getting easier, at least the route is; in the early 90s there were still stages of almost 300 km. The last couple of years the Vuelta has lead the way to shorter stages, and the TdF has followed further; less TT kms, les terrible mountain stages, shorter stages.
One of the reasons could be a response to calls from riders to make it less tough ' so they don't have to dope'; I don't buy that argument because you don't need doping to ride even an extremely tough route, only to ride it very very fast and faster than others. But maybe it played with the ASO as an argument.
But what I think has been the main reason is to make the Tour more competitve till the end. If you put in a very long ITT and very tough mountain stages, the classement will be over after the first week and a half. With less TT kms and the climbs more spread out over relatively easy stages there will be more competition untill the end. I think that's a good thing.
Of course it's the riders who make the race - if Bertie destroys everyone on Arcalis all this is just theory...0 -
I meant the Kronplatz road and theFinestre. A quick cobbled climb is fun but some of the other roads are very tough. By all means include them but organisers need to shorten the stages or make sure there is no big transfer before or after.leguape wrote:Nothing wrong with unpaved roads, or at least not bowling green smooth surfaces. The Paterberg is 20% and cobbled, I've never heard any complaints about it.0 -
mididoctors wrote:3500km of sheer hell as usual?
the tour tends to be the most heavily contested.. the riders make it hard by going hard
Exactly, as Lemond once said: 'it doesn't get easier, you just get faster'
BTW Tom Butcher makes a good point but for me the duelling on the slpes of the final climb to a summit finish is the finest theatre this sport has to offer.pm0 -
Kléber wrote:
I meant the Kronplatz road and theFinestre. A quick cobbled climb is fun but some of the other roads are very tough. By all means include them but organisers need to shorten the stages or make sure there is no big transfer before or after.leguape wrote:Nothing wrong with unpaved roads, or at least not bowling green smooth surfaces. The Paterberg is 20% and cobbled, I've never heard any complaints about it.
This year's one, Plan Des Corones was an ITT wasn't it? That's surely short enough. I agree that they need to sort out the transfers either side of them or have an easier stage off the back of it.
Man if I was a pro, I'd want to race up that Finestre one. So much more fun than slogging up a Pyrenean climb with melting tarmac.0 -
It doesn’t matter how easy it appears, it still has to be won - Liverpool v Barnsley 1-2 (FA Cup, Feb 2008)
Fortunately for TdF cyclists, they get a more than one chance.
What I find the most disappointing in the 2009 route is the lack of middle-mountain routes, because it’s often these which give groups or an individual the chance to escape, the odd rider of which occasionally then becomes the yellow jersey or even a contender (Chiappucci 1990, Vasseur 1997, Voeckler 2004, Pereiro 2006).
They also usually provide the overall winner of the most aggressive rider, while the playing tactics amongst the group in the last kms, as one or another tries to break away, or as they jockey for positions for the final sprint, are often fascinating to watch.
* Did Vasseur ever explain what his disagreement with LA was about, the reason why he left US Postal?0 -
knedlicky wrote:It doesn’t matter how easy it appears, it still has to be won - Liverpool v Barnsley 1-2 (FA Cup, Feb 2008)
Fortunately for TdF cyclists, they get a more than one chance.
What I find the most disappointing in the 2009 route is the lack of middle-mountain routes, because it’s often these which give groups or an individual the chance to escape, the odd rider of which occasionally then becomes the yellow jersey or even a contender (Chiappucci 1990, Vasseur 1997, Voeckler 2004, Pereiro 2006).
They also usually provide the overall winner of the most aggressive rider, while the playing tactics amongst the group in the last kms, as one or another tries to break away, or as they jockey for positions for the final sprint, are often fascinating to watch.
1995 was a good tour for mixing it up a bit.. moyenne mountain stages can be exciting but I think he 2009 route may surprise a few in creating quite a see-saw event* Did Vasseur ever explain what his disagreement with LA was about, the reason why he left US Postal?
the rumour I heard was that he didn't pull hard enough in the line and it was also a complaint of the other super domestiques
pinch of salt whatever"If I was a 38 year old man, I definitely wouldn't be riding a bright yellow bike with Hello Kitty disc wheels, put it that way. What we're witnessing here is the world's most high profile mid-life crisis" Afx237vi Mon Jul 20, 2009 2:43 pm0
