My end of Tour grades for the teams

RichN95.

Grade A

Astana - 1st,3rd, 6th, three stages, team classification
Saxo Bank - 2nd, 5th, white jersey, three stages, six days in yellow
Columbia - six stages, Martin unlucky on Ventoux

Grade B

Cervelo - green jersey, two stages, a disappointing Sastre stops them getting an A
Bbox - they're in it for stage wins and they got two
Agritubel - A stage win the most they can hope for and they got one.
Liquigas - polka dots, combativity award, two top tens
Garmin - two top tens, Farrar showed in the sprints, Millar unlucky in Barca
AG2R - eight days in yellow, Roche also very visable.

Grade C

Katusha - a stage win but otherwise invisible
Euskatel - Astarloza did well and won a stage but little else to see
Fr de Jeux - LeMevel in top ten is good, but no stage win
Caisse d'Epargne - a stage win, but could do better

Grade D

Rabobank - a stage win doesn't hide an otherwise terrible tour
Skil-Shimano - Kenny van Hummel gained a cult following, presumably Beppu did to too back in Japan
Cofidis - got in most of the breaks

Grade E - all of these may as well have gone on holiday instead

Quick-Step
Silence-Lotto
Milram
Lampre

SpaceJunk

Great post - I did one of these in my head yesterday whilst watching the last stage.

I nearly agree with you on all except:

I gave Caisse d'Epargne a 'D' and
Rabobank an 'F' even considering Garate's win

BTW - we don't use 'E's' in our education system - it's A.B.C.D.F

I agree with all your 'E's - they are just 'F's in my book.

greeny12

Based on relative resources and 'cleanliness' surely Garmin must be very close to an A too??

I guess lack of a stage victory counts against them though...

thomasmc

Hi RichN95
I think AG2R deserve an "A", as considering they are a much less resourced team than most they defended the yellow jersey very well!

attica

greeny12 wrote:

Based on relative resources and 'cleanliness' surely Garmin must be very close to an A too??

I guess lack of a stage victory counts against them though...

Not forgetting Millar's visibilty and VdV's efforts on behalf of BW and 2 men in the top 10 is a good show, they did seem to be a 3 man team at times though, Zabriskie and Farrah occasionally showed their faces but I can't name another team member.

TheStone

Great Post.

I'd be tempted to give AG2R and BBox an A.
I think they both did way better than expected.

Rabo maybe lower.

FJS

If counting expectations, I would put Skil-Shimano higher - they were always in breakaways, Timmer came close to stage victory twice, they did great in the early echelons, whereas expectations were, well....

RichN95.

FJS wrote:

If counting expectations, I would put Skil-Shimano higher - they were always in breakaways, Timmer came close to stage victory twice, they did great in the early echelons, whereas expectations were, well....

I was definitely counting expectations (hence Agritubel much higher than Rabo with one stage win each). May be I was little harsh on Skil - but it's just my opinion and I will have forgotten a lot of things.

I was deliberately stingy with my A grades (unlike GCSE examiners these days)

Stuey01

I'd give Milram a D, on the basis that they were often at the front doing a lot of work chasing down breaks. Ciolek was there or thereabouts on most of the sprints.

Otherwise I can't really disagree. Is there something lower than an F we can give to Lampre and Quickstep? They were both shite.

FJS

RichN95 wrote:

FJS wrote:

If counting expectations, I would put Skil-Shimano higher - they were always in breakaways, Timmer came close to stage victory twice, they did great in the early echelons, whereas expectations were, well....

I was definitely counting expectations (hence Agritubel much higher than Rabo with one stage win each). May be I was little harsh on Skil - but it's just my opinion and I will have forgotten a lot of things.

I was deliberately stingy with my A grades (unlike GCSE examiners these days)

I think you've got it on the whole spot on - and it's great to see an overview and a reminder of teams that apparently also were in the race.

Quick Step at least got some negative/semi-comical publicity through Boonen, but Lampre?? Really cannot remember them doing anything at all, completely invisible.

RichN95.

FJS wrote:

Quick Step at least got some negative/semi-comical publicity through Boonen, but Lampre?? Really cannot remember them doing anything at all, completely invisible.

When I did the initial post I had nineteen teams down but couldn't for the life of me remember Lampre (I had to look it up)

GreenJersey

what riders would you have given an A?
Alberto Contador
Brice Feillu
(t)Wiggo
Cavendish
Andy Schleck
all spring to mind.

How about F grades?
Cadel Evans
Tom Boonen

timoid.

FJS wrote:

Quick Step at least got some negative/semi-comical publicity through Boonen, but Lampre?? Really cannot remember them doing anything at all, completely invisible.

Spillak won the combativity award after a long breakaway before Bertie trashed the field and Ballan wasn't a million miles away from a stage win on stage 19.

Other than that? Nada

Pokerface

Garmin deserve an "A" surely? Wiggins alone gives 'em one in my books.

GreenJersey

Don't Forget Vande Velde aswell he did a great job after his injury in the giro

attica

GreenJersey wrote:

what riders would you have given an A?
Alberto Contador
Brice Feillu
(t)Wiggo
Cavendish
Andy Schleck
all spring to mind.

How about F grades?
Cadel Evans
Tom Boonen

If Cav gets an A, then surely Thor should too, just for using his head to get green.

GreenJersey

Attica wrote:

GreenJersey wrote:

what riders would you have given an A?
Alberto Contador
Brice Feillu
(t)Wiggo
Cavendish
Andy Schleck
all spring to mind.

How about F grades?
Cadel Evans
Tom Boonen

If Cav gets an A, then surely Thor should too, just for using his head to get green.

Thor was very clever so i think he should get an A
Franco Pelizotti I also overlooked

RichN95.

GreenJersey wrote:

what riders would you have given an A?
Alberto Contador
Brice Feillu
(t)Wiggo
Cavendish
Andy Schleck
all spring to mind.

How about F grades?
Cadel Evans
Tom Boonen

There's 180 of them. I'm not doing that! Tony Martin and Nicolas Roche were my unsung heroes though.

Le Commentateur

I give Eurosport an A for their choice of music at the end, Empire Of The Sun's "We Are The People", so apt at times for Lance and Alberto:

We are the people that rule the world.
A force running in every boy and girl,
All rejoicing in the world,
Take me now
We can try.

We lived an adventure
Love in the Summer,
Followed the sun till night
Reminiscing other times of life,
For each every other
The feeling was stronger,
The shock hit eleven
Got lost in your eyes

I can't do well when I think you're gonna leave me,
But I know I try,
Are you gonna leave me now,
Can't you be believing now.

…

I know everything about you,
You know everything about me,
Know everything about us

Cumulonimbus

RichN95 wrote:

There's 180 of them. I'm not doing that! Tony Martin and Nicolas Roche were my unsung heroes though.

Roche rode a great tour. He came 5th in the points competition too.

How about Pierre Rolland for the best performance by someone who may not even have been mentioned by ITV4. Made the top 25 at the age of 22.

Eau Rouge

Timoid. wrote:

FJS wrote:

Quick Step at least got some negative/semi-comical publicity through Boonen, but Lampre?? Really cannot remember them doing anything at all, completely invisible.

Spillak won the combativity award after a long breakaway before Bertie trashed the field and Ballan wasn't a million miles away from a stage win on stage 19.

Other than that? Nada

There was usually one of them in the big break most days, but yeah. They will mention crashes in the first few days and the TTT (Bruseghin had to do the TTT on his road bike, and still crashed when Furlan did).

Cumulonimbus

Stuey01 wrote:

I'd give Milram a D, on the basis that they were often at the front doing a lot of work chasing down breaks. Ciolek was there or thereabouts on most of the sprints.

Otherwise I can't really disagree. Is there something lower than an F we can give to Lampre and Quickstep? They were both shite.

Yeah, Chavanel was the most agressive rider last year and he had a go for Quickstep this year but his breaks ended disappointingly. He got away on several stages but wasnt able to make it stick. On the stage to Barcelona he got dropped by Millar in an ultimately doomed attack and then got dropped in a break with Haussler :? in the Pyrenees when you'd have thought he could have taken the stage. Then in stage 19 he was in a break that looked promising but Rabobank and Milram decided to chase it down. Ended up coming 20th. I think they were a bit unlucky that that guy had to retire on the first sunday.

moray_gub

cant disagree with too much of that but Tony Martin unlucky on Ventoux ? as i saw it he was beaten by the stronger climber on the day luck played no part in it.

RichN95.

Moray Gub wrote:

cant disagree with too much of that but Tony Martin unlucky on Ventoux ? as i saw it he was beaten by the stronger climber on the day luck played no part in it.

Just a turn of phrase. But most of the time I saw the two of them Tony was on front - and looking like he was on the verge of a breakdown. I felt he deserved it for all his hard work throughout the Tour