What went wrong?

secretsqirrel

For me 'Just one of those years'.

l found it a bit dull but redeemed somewhat by Froome's audacious attack to take the yellow jersey. But I don't believe it was as spontaneous as suggested. He looked as if he new every inch of that descent.

No_Ta_Doctor

ddraver wrote:

Their 3rd place looks distinctly irrelevant.

Not helped by the fact that it also happened by default otlr at the expense of riders who at least had a crack at making a race...

Yes, which underlines the fact that if you attack for GC placing you may lose out in the long run to someone that can just hang with the Sky train. Finishing consistently is worth more than grabbing a few seconds here and there.

Garry H

TheBigBean wrote:

Some stats from the internet:

In the last 50 years, this race has the smallest time from 1st to 10th, the largest ratio of time 1st-2nd/1st-10th and the highest % of finishers.


Race Radio weighs in as well.

‏@TheRaceRadio
Prudhomme tells L'Equipe that Sky "overpowered the race in the mountain passes" and "More than ever, we need 1 less rider per team"

Would he be saying the same thing if AG2R had been overpowering it?

Sour grapes

rick_chasey

Yeah he would.

This forum was better when the parochialism was tongue-in-cheek.

jawooga

Regarding sponsorship, perhaps other than a sprint winner, there's no more exposure than an entire team in the same colours pulling at the front of the peloton. Just seen footage of Sky spread across the road going over yesterday's summit and it's an iconic image

jam1e

I don't think anything went wrong at all, it might have been more interesting than exciting as such but it was still well worth watching.

If the other teams take anything from this edition it should be to take any chance they get to attack as per the descent and breakaway stages rather than sitting on and hoping for the best. In fact, if anything they should be making those chances not just hoping to stumble onto them. Well, that and if they've got a proper GC contender don't mess around with anything that's going to reduce, even slightly, the chances of them doing as well as they can.

bobmcstuff

Rick Chasey wrote:

Yeah he would.

This forum was better when the parochialism was tongue-in-cheek.

I agree, he probably would...

It would be interesting if Brailsford went through with his idea/plan of taking on a French GT contender with an aim to win the Tour.

Is it just me or has the Sky doping speculation been less prominent this year? Presumably it's just because there's been no MTF victory for Froome, but still it's been nice not to hear all the same stuff for the millionth time.

Garry H

Rick Chasey wrote:

Yeah he would.

This forum was better when the parochialism was tongue-in-cheek.

"jumpers for goal posts"...

Pross

You missed out 'they made it too hard to dope to stupid levels and the riders are only human'.

kleinstroker

No tA Doctor wrote:

kleinstroker wrote:

Personally I think the problem is that not enough teams go full gas for GC, settling for a few minutes of fame by winning a sprint stage or two for their sponsors. So sponsors happy but teams cannot really go for both sprint wins and GC in this day and age.
Going for GC only must be seen as a bit of a risk, though clearly there are plenty of riders teams can build around but they choose not to.
If all teams went GC first then we would see a sea change in the way the race is fought.

I can't see all teams going all out for GC, there are only ever going to be three or four real contenders. I'm happy for some teams only to be there for sprints or stage hunting or a jersey.

Ironically, Movistar went all out for GC this year, all eggs in one basket, and failed to make any real impact. Their 3rd place looks distinctly irrelevant.

The same 3-4 teams go for GC while the rest are going for other reasons, with so few going for podium places of course it's going to be dull as dishwater more often than not.

ddraver

Part of what went wrong is the bounty of coverage we got. For all these 80s tours re reminisce so much about this, plus a few articles in the comic, would have been considered fantastic coverage.

This makes me think I ve missed one of the best races ever!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DGXVHRFxOg

hanshotfirst

DeadCalm wrote:

TheBigBean wrote:

Some stats from the internet:

In the last 50 years, this race has the smallest time from 1st to 10th, the largest ratio of time 1st-2nd/1st-10th and the highest % of finishers.

So, if Froome wasn't there, we'd have had a classic edition?

It would have been, because Bardet would have become the first French winner in over 30 years having taken the yellow jersey on the second to last day and and the whole of France would be going joe bananas right now.

dougzz

Rick Chasey wrote:

Yeah he would.
This forum was better when the parochialism was tongue-in-cheek.

Crap race, crap forum, you're really living the dream these days.

dougzz

No tA Doctor wrote:

...........BMC had the next best chance, but their best rider (once they worked it out) was apparently screwed over by lack of a teammates wheel, back when they weren't sure which basket to put their eggs in........

A bit like Sky in 2012, only their annointed one was good enough to hang on for the win anyway :twisted:

TheBigBean

ddraver wrote:

This makes me think I ve missed one of the best races ever!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DGXVHRFxOg

Good to see some proper rollers being used at the beginning.

TheBigBean

It looks like I'm the only person that thought two 146km mountain stages were not testing enough to create gaps.

above_the_cows

ddraver wrote:

Part of what went wrong is the bounty of coverage we got. For all these 80s tours re reminisce so much about this, plus a few articles in the comic, would have been considered fantastic coverage.

This makes me think I ve missed one of the best races ever!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DGXVHRFxOg

Exactly. There's a massive difference between watching an hour of highlights versus 5 hours of a stage.

rick_chasey

TheBigBean wrote:

It looks like I'm the only person that thought two 146km mountain stages were not testing enough to create gaps.

Rick Chasey wrote:

Front loading the KMs and back loading the mountains I don't think helped. You need some longer mountain stages to tire teams out & leave more a man v man fight. Not every time, but mix it up.

TheBigBean

But you didn't vote for it!

bobmcstuff

Interesting chart from the FT (of all places) showing Sky's mountain train in action on Stage 9:

hypster

What people often overlook is that Sky don't just turn up with the best GC rider and the best team of domestiques to support him, they focus their whole season on winning the Tour. All of Froome's preparation is geared to peaking in July which includes riding a series of competitive events to achieve that aim. I doubt whether winning the Dauphine is really that important to him/Sky other than an indication of where they are and what they might need to hone for the Tour.

Contrast that with all the other teams who haven't got the single-mindedness of Sky and you can really see what makes the difference when the chips are down. What actually happened this year was that none of the other teams had a distinct leader who was seriously going to challenge Froome to see how far he could be pushed so the chips for Froome were never down and it turned out to be a bit of a walkover.

Quintana for instance had a very low-key preparation and whether or not it was a factor in his distinct lack of power, it certainly couldn't have helped I think.

From that point of view nothing went wrong, it all went to plan and turned out (in hindsight) to be predictable - if such a thing makes sense!

mrb123

I've voted for the "there was nothing wrong" option. Overall a decent tour if not a classic.

Obviously the race lacked a real man-on-man GC battle, but there were so many great moments as always...
The resurgence of Cav
Froome's descent
The Froome/Sagan break
Ventoux
Cummings

Froome and Sky have been truly awesome and deserve all the praise they get. Plus I feel this may be the year when the French fans have finally begun to be won over.

As Brits we really do have an embarrassment of riches at the moment. I remember the days when the highlights show used to talk about how the English speaking riders were getting on, as there were so few. Now we have the best rider, best team and once again the best sprinter.

rick_chasey

hypster wrote:

What people often overlook is that Sky don't just turn up with the best GC rider and the best team of domestiques to support him, they focus their whole season on winning the Tour. All of Froome's preparation is geared to peaking in July which includes riding a series of competitive events to achieve that aim. I doubt whether winning the Dauphine is really that important to him/Sky other than an indication of where they are and what they might need to hone for the Tour.

Contrast that with all the other teams who haven't got the single-mindedness of Sky and you can really see what makes the difference when the chips are down. What actually happened this year was that none of the other teams had a distinct leader who was seriously going to challenge Froome to see how far he could be pushed so the chips for Froome were never down and it turned out to be a bit of a walkover.

Quintana for instance had a very low-key preparation and whether or not it was a factor in his distinct lack of power, it certainly couldn't have helped I think.

This entire post is BS, but the bolded bit particularly.


2016
1st verall Volta a Catalunya
1st Overall Tour de Romandie
1st Stage 2
1st Overall Route du Sud
1st Stage 2b (ITT)


3rd Overall Tour of the Basque Country
3rd Overall Tour de San Luis
4th National Road Race Championships

hypster

Rick Chasey wrote:

This entire post is BS, but the bolded bit particularly.

The entire post? I agree it's pure speculation on my part but that's what these forums are all about. All I can go on is how he performed in the Tour. I think he was extremely fortuitous to finish in third spot mainly down to a series of similarly poor GC challenges around him.

I'm going by what several other people have commented on in terms of the fact that Quintana apparently spent a lot of time at home in Columbia training on his own. Maybe that's where he picked up the "mystery" virus which affected his performance so badly.

Cannock Chase

Stage 20 Megève to Morzine last climb Col de Joux Plane.

If remember correctly from the TV coverage it appeared that Geraint Thomas led all the way up. No one attacked. Now I know it was wet, and Chris Froome had a 4 minute lead, but only 2 minutes separated 2nd to 10th place in the overall standings. Still a podium place to fight for.

No one did.

rick_chasey

Cannock Chase wrote:

Stage 20 Megève to Morzine last climb Col de Joux Plane.

If remember correctly from the TV coverage it appeared that Geraint Thomas led all the way up. No one attacked. Now I know it was wet, and Chris Froome had a 4 minute lead, but only 2 minutes separated 2nd to 10th place in the overall standings. Still a podium place to fight for.

No one did.

JRod did.

ugo.santalucia

TheBigBean wrote:

It looks like I'm the only person that thought two 146km mountain stages were not testing enough to create gaps.

NO, I said it in another thread, for people who average close to 40 Km/h in the mountains, 150 Km is nothing... they do these stages in 4 hours, which is nothing, they have another 20 hours to recover before the next 4 hours stage... it's nothing for their level of training and the way they ride in a peloton. Stages should be 200-300 Km, as they used to be

RichN95.

Rick Chasey wrote:

hypster wrote:

What people often overlook is that Sky don't just turn up with the best GC rider and the best team of domestiques to support him, they focus their whole season on winning the Tour. All of Froome's preparation is geared to peaking in July which includes riding a series of competitive events to achieve that aim. I doubt whether winning the Dauphine is really that important to him/Sky other than an indication of where they are and what they might need to hone for the Tour.

Contrast that with all the other teams who haven't got the single-mindedness of Sky and you can really see what makes the difference when the chips are down. What actually happened this year was that none of the other teams had a distinct leader who was seriously going to challenge Froome to see how far he could be pushed so the chips for Froome were never down and it turned out to be a bit of a walkover.

Quintana for instance had a very low-key preparation and whether or not it was a factor in his distinct lack of power, it certainly couldn't have helped I think.

This entire post is BS, but the bolded bit particularly.


2016
1st verall Volta a Catalunya
1st Overall Tour de Romandie
1st Stage 2
1st Overall Route du Sud
1st Stage 2b (ITT)


3rd Overall Tour of the Basque Country
3rd Overall Tour de San Luis
4th National Road Race Championships

Post-Puerto, every rider who stood at the top of the podium in Paris had ridden the Dauphine. Of those ten, seven were on the podium at the Dauphine, only Sastre (20th) was outside the top ten.

Quintana raced Hugh Carthy in Spain.

(Note: in 2010, the eventual winner, Andy Schleck, was 14th in Switzerland)

timoid.

Rick Chasey wrote:

Cannock Chase wrote:

Stage 20 Megève to Morzine last climb Col de Joux Plane.

If remember correctly from the TV coverage it appeared that Geraint Thomas led all the way up. No one attacked. Now I know it was wet, and Chris Froome had a 4 minute lead, but only 2 minutes separated 2nd to 10th place in the overall standings. Still a podium place to fight for.

No one did.

JRod did.

And Mollema (although he was just outside the top 10)

But fair point. Would have loved young Yates to put Quintana under pressure.

rick_chasey

Timoid. wrote:

Rick Chasey wrote:

Cannock Chase wrote:

Stage 20 Megève to Morzine last climb Col de Joux Plane.

If remember correctly from the TV coverage it appeared that Geraint Thomas led all the way up. No one attacked. Now I know it was wet, and Chris Froome had a 4 minute lead, but only 2 minutes separated 2nd to 10th place in the overall standings. Still a podium place to fight for.

No one did.

JRod did.

And Mollema (although he was just outside the top 10)

But fair point. Would have loved young Yates to put Quintana under pressure.

My point with JRod is more, if he could do it, so could the others, because JRod was not climbing faster than the majority in that group during the Tour.