Why is this year's Tour less than exciting?

Lichtblick

Bit of a risk in this ferocious forum, but here goes.

Why is this year's Tour less than exciting?

a. Because the GC competition is (seems to have been) sorted so early on. It's much more interesting when it goes into the second group of mountain stages and even more when it goes down to the final TT. Both of which I've seen in previous Tours.

b. After the Yellow, the Green jersey competition is (seems to have been) sorted so early on too. It's much more interesting when it goes on for longer.

c. Alpine stages, where were they? I realise that they can't do the Telegraph/Galibier every year (the only one I've been on) but somehow it seemed all wrong that they were in and out of the Alps so quickly.

d. No TTT.

e. No one really cares that much about the polka dot or the white, do they?

I hope Wiggins succeeds, I really do. It will be great to see an Englishman win the Tour de France for the first time. But somehow, it's just lacking pazzazz, this year. IMO.

afx237vi

You just named all the reasons. One GC rider head and shoulders above the others, with a strong team, and a parcours that suits him perfectly = no suspense.

Mikey23

yup, thats why i spread tacks on the course ... (no i didnt). this is the first year ive really got into it and understood all the tactics that goes on and i find it fascinating but the sky train do seem to have it well sewn up barring a catastrophe which makes it less of a spectacle. i love france and just enjoy the scenery in HD and the commentary on eurosport when they spend hours just gassing because there isnt really very much going on. the next couple of days looks to be interesting up in the pyrenees though

Lichtblick

Yes it is usually interesting going through the second lot of mountain stages, but much as I will clear the whole of Wednesday afternoon to watch the horrifically hard 4-peaks, methinks it'll all come down to Sky keeping Wiggins safe, at the front, as usual.

I hate to prejudge, but why should any other team bust their guts on Wednesday, unless Wiggins and Froome have some appalling accident/mechanical failure. In which case BMC will jump on it.

Or would they jump on it, since Sky waited for BMC yesterday? Seems to me that the entire rest of this year's Tour is now neutralised. IMO.

LeicesterLad

afx237vi wrote:

You just named all the reasons. One GC rider head and shoulders above the others, with a strong team, and a parcours that suits him perfectly = no suspense.

I assume you DO mean Christopher Froome?

pat1cp

I think we could still have a good last week. Wednesday and Thursday could be good. Evans, Nibs and J VDB have to attack Sky and Wiggins, perhaps collectively. I hope Pinot has got his legs back too.

campagone

It doesn't help that the favourites just watch each other closely and cancel each other out in the mountains either, but it's been that way for the last few years In my opinion. This year would have been better with Contador there, he would definitely have given Sky something to think about. Time trials ruin it for me, they only suit a small handfull of GC riders so the guys who normaly go well in the mountains are often minutes behind before they even begin. Just my tuppence worth.

thamacdaddy

Just a note to say everyone was saying this last year until Contador cracked and Andy Schreck went for a day out on his own.

Bearing in mind I think there have been some decent stages this year so far. Not a classic but it's not the worst I have seen and for a brit the british interest is good, just wish cav had a bit o support to make the flat stage interesting too.

Le Commentateur

I was just going to say the same. The day Schleck lost a minute to Cadel was the first hint of the drama to come of the last few stages and possibly forced them to do something on the Izoard/Galibier stage. And of course there was Contador's charge towards Alpe d'Huez, with added entertainment of Voeckler's 4th cat/sportive riding strategy the following day.

So if things spark up a bit on Wednesday people will mostly cease complaining.

I reckon it's the rainy weather back here, getting people in a gloomy mood.

LesDiablesRouges

I'll simplify it for you. The parcours is atrocious.

Prudhomme was trying to be inventive and it has backfired.

Putting two cat. 1s at the beginning of a stage with flats remaining doesn't work in the radio computer era of the TDF.

Sure you might get breakway winners but they're also 1hr + down in the standings. Great for those guys but otherwise who cares...

The most difficult climbs don't end with MTF instead we see 40km of downhill and flats at the end of the stages.

If you are going to have two long relatively flat ITTs you'd better have some serious selective climbs and mountain top finishes.

davidof

Less drugs. You can't get the madness of a Pantani, Virenque or Landis anymore.

Still the Indurain, Armstrong and Hinault reigns were pretty boring too.

Lichtblick

Since I haven't been FFS'd off yet, here's another thought.

I only came in at the end of it, but this is reminding me of the Armstrong era. Another Tour ground out towards an inevitable finish. FWIW. IMO.

I agree with LesDiablesRouges.

blazing_saddles

LesDiablesRouges wrote:

I'll simplify it for you. The parcours is atrocious.

Prudhomme was trying to be inventive and it has backfired.
Putting two cat. 1s at the beginning of a stage with flats remaining doesn't work in the radio computer era of the TDF.
Sure you might get breakway winners but they're also 1hr + down in the standings. Great for those guys but otherwise who cares...
The most difficult climbs don't end with MTF instead we see 40km of downhill and flats at the end of the stages.
If you are going to have two long relatively flat ITTs you'd better have some serious selective climbs and mountain top finishes.

I'll have you know, they are the best that money can buy.

TBH, I don't think it's any worse than last year.
Stage 7 was good, stages 8 and 11 were excellent.
One or two other decent finishes.
About par for the parcour.

I'd reserve judgement until Sunday.

rick_chasey

The GC rider(s) who is (are) head and shoulders above the rest with the team who are head and shoulders above the rest.

The lack of drugs has a point - the epic parcours that you maybe always had in the '90s would just scare riders into pootling now -so it's tougher to find that balance between epic parcours inviting riders into attacking. One way are those shorter stages, but they reward different qualities.

Gazzetta67

LesDiablesRouges wrote:

I'll simplify it for you. The parcours is atrocious.

Prudhomme was trying to be inventive and it has backfired.

Putting two cat. 1s at the beginning of a stage with flats remaining doesn't work in the radio computer era of the TDF.

Sure you might get breakway winners but they're also 1hr + down in the standings. Great for those guys but otherwise who cares...

The most difficult climbs don't end with MTF instead we see 40km of downhill and flats at the end of the stages.

If you are going to have two long relatively flat ITTs you'd better have some serious selective climbs and mountain top finishes.

+1 Take the 2 pyrenees stages Two HC climbs in the 1st half of the stage followed by the easier aspin & Peyresourde climbs with yet another F***ing downhill finish . and then next day they finish on a FIRST cat.... Prudhomme has wasted this years tour. He seems to be Sh*t scared of having 2 consecutive days of HC finishes....roll on the vuelta & giro the tour has turned into a circus "sportive"

mercsport

All time trials are tedious at best and far removed from the spirit of real road-racing. The best road racer does not necessarily get to win the TdF. I think that will be well illustrated by this years result.

A ban on race-radios can not arrive soon enough to my way of thinking. Rider/sporting initiative was killed stone dead when they arrived. The 'safety' aspect of radios has been overplayed to an exaggerated degree by vested team interests, who have effectively become skilled and dexterous puppeteers.

The scenery is great but the 'racing' is verging on 'virtual reality' game play these days.

That's my tuppence worth. Glad you asked.

LesDiablesRouges

Blazing Saddles wrote:

LesDiablesRouges wrote:

I'll simplify it for you. The parcours is atrocious.

Prudhomme was trying to be inventive and it has backfired.
Putting two cat. 1s at the beginning of a stage with flats remaining doesn't work in the radio computer era of the TDF.
Sure you might get breakway winners but they're also 1hr + down in the standings. Great for those guys but otherwise who cares...
The most difficult climbs don't end with MTF instead we see 40km of downhill and flats at the end of the stages.
If you are going to have two long relatively flat ITTs you'd better have some serious selective climbs and mountain top finishes.

I'll have you know, they are the best that money can buy.

TBH, I don't think it's any worse than last year.
Stage 7 was good, stages 8 and 11 were excellent.
One or two other decent finishes.
About par for the parcour.

I'd reserve judgement until Sunday.

That's the problem really. Every year I do the same thing as most I look at the race and look for the mountain stages and see how they are aligned and how crazy they are and frankly I'm baffled in that in looking at this tour I saw stage 7 and 16 as the definitive climbing stages with 17 being not far behind and then a compelte waste on the remaining "climbing stages"

The final TT need to be a mountain TT and we needed an additional HC MTF to make it a race for the ages.

The remaining stages are filler really. Altough I would like to see a stage next year with significant cobbled sections and I've always wondered why the TDF doesn't incorporate it more as Roubaix in my mind is the definitive one day classic of the sport.

Le Commentateur

There's a recession on. Perhaps it's affected by which towns can afford to pitch for the stage finish rights.

Paulie W

The Tour is always exciting even when it's dull! I don't think there have been more dull stages than in recent years - there have been fewer sprint finishes and some entertaining breakaways. What makes this Tour feel a little more low key is the GC contest. The parcours favours the Wiggins/Evans type rider but there are opportunities for climbers - there just aren't any true GC climbers in the race! The fact that Nibali is being presented as the danger - a rider who himself is more of a diesel climber - emphasises this.

ddraver

Becasue It's cool to say Everything Sucks on the Bikeradar Pro Race Forum...

rick_chasey

Le Commentateur wrote:

There's a recession on. Perhaps it's affected by which towns can afford to pitch for the stage finish rights.

Hadn't though of this.


Interesting.

mudshark

So the assumption is that Nibs and Cuddles can't do anything over the next two days? Wiggo did do hold on fine in the Alpine stage - I thought he might lose a little time there. TTs aren't very interesting in themselves but the plan seemed to be to play the TTers off against the climbers, not going to plan so far.

The Green Jersey has been more exciting in recent years perhaps because we had a sprinter's team that were willing and able to pull back breakaways so that there were a few sprinters at the end to fight it out - even if Cav usually ended up winning but that was fine for us Brits .

But we've had some great moments, Sagan on stage 14 just wasn't supposed to be like that...(I'm just bitter as I swapped him out of my RCUK fantasy team that morning!).

mea00csf

LesDiablesRouges wrote:

I'll simplify it for you. The parcours is atrocious.

Prudhomme was trying to be inventive and it has backfired.

Putting two cat. 1s at the beginning of a stage with flats remaining doesn't work in the radio computer era of the TDF.

Sure you might get breakway winners but they're also 1hr + down in the standings. Great for those guys but otherwise who cares...

The most difficult climbs don't end with MTF instead we see 40km of downhill and flats at the end of the stages.

If you are going to have two long relatively flat ITTs you'd better have some serious selective climbs and mountain top finishes.

The amount of TT'ing is only relatively long when you compare them to 2008-2011 courses. before then, there were plenty of years having in excess of 140km of TT'ing. Of course, i can't be bothered to break out how much was team time trials, but the fact is, the past 4 years have been the anomoly with extremely low amounts of time trials.

As an example looking on wikipedia, (which for my purposes i'm assuming is always right....)
2002 - 176km
2003 - 171km
2004 - 141km
2005 - 142km

Dunno if they were flat or not though....

rick_chasey

mea00csf wrote:

LesDiablesRouges wrote:

I'll simplify it for you. The parcours is atrocious.

Prudhomme was trying to be inventive and it has backfired.

Putting two cat. 1s at the beginning of a stage with flats remaining doesn't work in the radio computer era of the TDF.

Sure you might get breakway winners but they're also 1hr + down in the standings. Great for those guys but otherwise who cares...

The most difficult climbs don't end with MTF instead we see 40km of downhill and flats at the end of the stages.

If you are going to have two long relatively flat ITTs you'd better have some serious selective climbs and mountain top finishes.

The amount of TT'ing is only relatively long when you compare them to 2008-2011 courses. before then, there were plenty of years having in excess of 140km of TT'ing. Of course, i can't be bothered to break out how much was team time trials, but the fact is, the past 4 years have been the anomoly with extremely low amounts of time trials.

As an example looking on wikipedia, (which for my purposes i'm assuming is always right....)
2002 - 176km
2003 - 171km
2004 - 141km
2005 - 142km

Dunno if they were flat or not though....

They key indicator is TT kms versus MTFs.

You'd think the organisers would have found the sweet spot ratio.

The problem with this years' course aren't the TTs. It's the lack of chances for people to take time outside of the TT.

Pross

The time gaps aren't huge compared to the days of LA and Indurain. As for the lack of attacking racing I think people are going to have to get used to it in the days of an (apparently) cleaner sport and with all the science telling riders just how hard they can ride. What used to help make things exciting was a rider who felt they had 'good legs' attacking and either blowing up losing time, gaining time or gaining time only to lose it again the following day because they pushed too hard. Now we have teams like Sky who know exactly how hard they can ride and for how long, they won't ride harder than that as they know it is sometimes better to let the other guy ride away for a bit and either get caught or gain a small gap which they'll pay for the next day. Possibly the best way to liven things up is to keep stages shorter. The short, sharp mountain stages work well. Why bother with stages over 200km when the riders aren't bothering racing for most of that distance?

rick_chasey

If that's the case, they should ban power-metres in race.

Pross

Rick Chasey wrote:

If that's the case, they should ban power-metres in race.

Yep. Is there any link from a rider's power metre to the DS? If not I'm sure it's only a matter of time and the DS will be effectively running the riders by remore control!!

disgruntledgoat

Pross wrote:

Rick Chasey wrote:

If that's the case, they should ban power-metres in race.

Yep. Is there any link from a rider's power metre to the DS? If not I'm sure it's only a matter of time and the DS will be effectively running the riders by remore control!!

But if they don't know what power their rivals are capable of/putting out then it doesn't matter does it? If you can't follow/get away it doesn't matter what numbers you're putting down.

Pross

disgruntledgoat wrote:

Pross wrote:

Rick Chasey wrote:

If that's the case, they should ban power-metres in race.

Yep. Is there any link from a rider's power metre to the DS? If not I'm sure it's only a matter of time and the DS will be effectively running the riders by remore control!!

But if they don't know what power their rivals are capable of/putting out then it doesn't matter does it? If you can't follow/get away it doesn't matter what numbers you're putting down.

The point is that the riders won't put themselves into the red to chase. If the other rider is putting out more watts or watts/kg then they will just lose the race. The beauty of racing is when someone goes over what they are / thought they were capable of. If they aren't riding by their power meters then there's no point in them having them. Maybe allow a power meter with a recording device to allow them to analyse the ride but no display for real time information. It's worth a try to see how it goes (ditch HRMs as well).

disgruntledgoat

Pross wrote:

disgruntledgoat wrote:

Pross wrote:

Rick Chasey wrote:

If that's the case, they should ban power-metres in race.

Yep. Is there any link from a rider's power metre to the DS? If not I'm sure it's only a matter of time and the DS will be effectively running the riders by remore control!!

But if they don't know what power their rivals are capable of/putting out then it doesn't matter does it? If you can't follow/get away it doesn't matter what numbers you're putting down.

The point is that the riders won't put themselves into the red to chase. If the other rider is putting out more watts or watts/kg then they will just lose the race. The beauty of racing is when someone goes over what they are / thought they were capable of. If they aren't riding by their power meters then there's no point in them having them. Maybe allow a power meter with a recording device to allow them to analyse the ride but no display for real time information. It's worth a try to see how it goes (ditch HRMs as well).

I disagree... Who is going to watch a Tour win ride away from them because it would put them above their sustainable power output?

KieranHardman

In my mind, the Parcours will be of greater importance to the standard of the racing in the future due to the following.

The number of individuals taking part in competitive sports has increased dramatically over the last 100 years. Training programmes and nutritional programmes are better than they were just 10 years ago. In short, we are better at maximising human performance and driving our potential to the very limit. This should limit the effect that natural genetic variation has in what is already a very very small subset of highly elite athletes, thus generating an ever decreasing difference between the best and the worst athletes in any event.

The doping factor was a variable that was completely understood by very few people and as it wasnt allowed it wasnt studied in depth. This added a sense of randomness and threw out crazy results that provided immense entertainment at the time. If everyone knew exactly how they would respond to doping and individual plans were rolled out across the peloton, we would probably see something similar to what we are seeing now. Predictable results from known variables.

The biggest possible impact on variation is in the parcours as it defines who takes part. Make it too hilly and you get a whole race full of specialist climbers. This reduces the differences seen in the climbing ability in the peloton and as such would make it (potentially) boring to watch. You need to have something to entice all the non-specialists in order to create the differences in ability needed to have an exciting race. This is something all physical sports have to deal with.

Maybe its time to stop limiting the technology per se. Maybe allow a more aero TT bike at the expense of having a heavier climbing bike than those that choose the other way round. Give teams the option to maximise their GC riders strengths but hinder their weaknesses. Not an idea I would go with but just thinking out loud. F1 is already trying things to spice up the racing as we approach possible engineering limitations.