Rate The Race: Tour de France 2020
No_Ta_Doctor
Posts: 12,973
in Pro race
So how did this year's edition score out of 10?
“Road racing was over and the UCI had banned my riding positions on the track, so it was like ‘Jings, crivvens, help ma Boab, what do I do now? I know, I’ll go away and be depressed for 10 years’.”
@DrHeadgear
The Vikings are coming!
@DrHeadgear
The Vikings are coming!
Rate The Race: Tour de France 2020 51 votes
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1%
1 vote
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1%
1 vote
5
5%
3 votes
6
3%
2 votes
7
31%
16 votes
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31%
16 votes
9
17%
9 votes
10
5%
3 votes
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Posts
The ending was just so spectacular that it vaulted a 8/10 Tour into 10/10 for me.
However the fact it happened at all in 2020 I added a 1 due to its boost to everyone's morale .. it successfully managed to get it through France without spreading covid through the bunch . Deserves recognition for that .. so I gave it a 8
BUT
the insane final tt drama that floored us all was a real emotional experience That few of us will forget so I add another 1 .
Total 9
- GC pressure cooker started simmering immediately, cooked them one by one, then blew the safety valve in spectacular fashion right at the end
- Luck fell the right way to give quite a few riders results they deserved, either for their efforts this tour (WVA, Hirschi) or before (Kwia, Yates in yellow at the third attempt, Porte)
- Sunweb created all sorts of havoc by racing in a different competition to everyone else. Felt like more solo/breakaway wins than usual this year
- Proper green jersey competition meant that even the flatter stages were raced hard by Bora trying to shift Bennett. Also Sagan being followed everywhere by the Green Shadow whilst looking grumpy was genuinely amusing, especially in the final week when Bennett suddenly became a breakaway rider. How did that happen?
- Bit of luck on duller stages - echelons happened, and they threatened at other times too
- The freakish mountain top finish turned out to be less freakish than feared but still caused all sorts of problems. Can't wait to go back again to that one
- Crashes had less impact than normal, fortunately
- Some genuinely heart-warming moments of sportsmanship - the Pog'n'Rog show, Carapaz and Kwiatkowski
- Some really interesting sprints that rewarded technical artistry - Ewan popping out at the last second, Bennett on the Champs after dropping back off his man
Ultimately it's an edition that people will still be using as a comparison in the years to come, and that's worth at least an extra point.I'd probably have gone for a more miserly 7, but the fact they managed to get to Paris at all, and did all this in the most f@cked up of seasons is worth the extra point.
There was much to like - genuine green jersey competition, Sunweb classics approach, Richie's podium etc. But though the denouement was spectacular there was little in the way of real GC man to man racing, bar the sprints for bonus seconds. Yes, seeing riders crack and fall off the back is interesting and part of racing, but it's never quite as exciting as a full-blooded attack to win. Pretty much everyone that thought Roglic had it in the bag thought they were watching pretty standard fare, tactically interesting but not all that much to get the blood pumping.
I think Pogacar's win surprised everyone - even on the morning of the TT there were few that thought he could take the yellow barring a crash or puncture for Roglic. So a point gained for the genuine surprise, but a point lost for not feeling there was much tension in the buildup.
@DrHeadgear
The Vikings are coming!
Sadly the GC battle never took off prior to the final TT, with most mountain top finishes seeing a decent sized pack scrabbling for bonus seconds. The comparisons with 1989 are frankly absurd. That year the yellow jersey changed hands 4 times between Fignon and LeMond before LeMond got it back for the 3rd time in Paris. Throw in the early drama from the reigning champion missing his start spot on the prologue and trying to play catch up throughout and it was an infinitely better race with real attacking throughout.
This was great in the sense that there was a real chance we wouldn't have had any racing at all this year, so it was lovely that we got an entire Tour in, but it wasn't a classic in any stretch of the word.
‘89 unlikely to be repeated with Power, radios and improved scientific understanding of performance.
Sunweb, green jersey battle, entire top 10 fluid until the very end.
A really exciting generation of young riders coming through and not scared to race.
Our old friend iainf gave it 7/10, up from 5/10 because if the last day. 5/10 from him being really rather good indeed...
- @ddraver
He has scored tour's as highly as 8.5 before though.
It drops marks as the GC was a bit negative with very few genuine attacks by any of the contenders and the two favourites seemingly content to fight it out in sprints for bonus seconds but then THAT stage really made it memorable.
- @ddraver
On the eve of stage 20, nobody suggested that Pogacar would be able to do that. Even during the stage when Roglic had lost 20 seconds, people were saying that Pogacar had gone out too hard, Roglic was pacing himself etc.
The comparison with Fignon and Indurain is daft as well because everyone knew Indurain would destroy Fignon in the TT (again, apparently, as I was 4 so I had other things on my mind)
Kingstongraham pretty much summed up the race for me.
Regardless of when it took place, it was still a full on Tour raced over great parcour in consistently glorious weather.
Stage 7 was the outstanding stage of the race for me, since it happened on the most innocuous of profiles.
Then there was that ITT after some well designed mountain stages.
However, I am just meaner and of course a boring train strangling much of the racing, even in a change of kit, is still a boring train.
I'd confidently informed a friend that's new to cycling that the stage starts could be really hectic and interesting, and the peloton promptly tricked Ladagnous into going solo from the flag. That was two minutes of my life that were only worth it for the comedy value
@DrHeadgear
The Vikings are coming!
Also, worth noting just how fast Lemond's time trial was.
Flag drops. Jens Voigt goes off the front. The riders all look at each other, shrug, and immediately start soft-pedalling to ensure there's a big gap and nobody being ordered to try and get across. Brilliant.