Rate the race: 2023 Vuelta

Lanterne_Rogue

Pross said:

I find the 6/10 ratings a bit odd, that would make this race above average. I'd love to know if those giving it over 5 genuinely feel it was an above average race.

I'm questioning their judgement, but there's nothing about a ten point scale that suggests the average should be around 5.5. At a guess I'd expect the average race probably gets somewhere around 6-7? I don't know what this says about humans other than we're not inherently mathematical creatures, and we really appreciate being able to discriminate between various levels of dross.

salsiccia1

Perhaps a defined scale might help

kingstongraham

As there's no zero, a race would have to plumb depths beyond what we've seen to get a 1/10 from me. You should only give a 1/10 if you can't think of ways this race could have been worse.

wallace_and_gromit

Pross said:

I find the 6/10 ratings a bit odd, that would make this race above average. I'd love to know if those giving it over 5 genuinely feel it was an above average race.

I gave it a 6. I like the intrigue side of things, and in this case, the very real prospect that the race leader might get thrown under the bus by his own team brought something unique to the race. If it had been essentially the same but with Vingo in the lead from the stage Kuss was, then it wouldn't have had that intrigue and would have scored 2 or 3 at most.

RichN95.

It's a 2. A glorified criterium. At times badly organised. One point for post and failure Evenepoel and one point for organisers managing not to kiss a podium girl.
The winner was seemingly picked by media demand and coming for a country that might supply a new sponsor.

me-109

I've only had the GCN/Eurosport YT highlights which are very limited, maybe 3 minutes of racing each time. And the commentary (is that Carlton Kirby?) is as dull as dishwater.
From that I thought Kuss did a good job holding his own without support that he would have otherwise been giving himself or have expected if he were a leader, so basically riding the whole lot solo as his third GT in a row.
Evenepoel's explosion allowed his subsequent attacking days that he probably wouldn't have otherwise had.
Surprised Thomas didn't find a reason to quit. Maybe he was trying to increase the crash damage each time to find that point of quitting without getting seriously hurt?
Nobody else seemed interested but not sure if that's the fault of the crap coverage I've seen or if that's the way it was.
Regarding the Jumbo internal thing, it doesn't have the intrigue of Lemond/Hinault or the Wiggins/Froome fracas. How long left on Kuss's contract?

mididoctors

3.27 average so far . Probably the lowest we ever had ?

drhaggis

I'm not sure why people act so surprised. All WT GC's this year, bar Tour Down Under, Romandie or Suisse, had been won by Evenepoel, Pogacar, Roglic or Vingegaard. Neither raced TDU or Romandie, and Suisse was Evenepoel's first race after Giro COVID.

In the Vuelta, there was no Pogacar. Someone (Quickstep? Evenepoel?) then decided Kuss (clearly considered a very strong rider) could gain 3 minutes in a breakaway, in a race with just 25 km of ITT. Then Evenepoel, with 5 minutes lost at the bottom of Tourmalet, lost a further 22, probably aiming for mountains + stages.

It's at this point that the race is dead. Without Evenepoel, the only real intrigue, on paper, is how Roglic & Vingegaard would have raced, and because of the Stage 7 breakaway, racing each other meant backstabbing the guy that had been pulling them up day in day out in all their previous GC wins.

Kuss is definitely a worthy winner because Vingegaard and Roglic did attack (probably not all out, admittedly) and, most importantly, he put time on all other non-JV riders. Soler and Landa, who got into the same breakaway? Gone. Ayuso? Gone. Mas? Gone.

If anything, my biggest disappointment is how little we saw of the Top10 GC riders in potentially interesting stages. Belagua? Stage 20? Fark it, too hard, just let Evenepoel go ahead and ride whatever pace he fancies.

TL; DR: It's all Remco's fault.

focuszing723

Cav wasn't in it consequently the GT didn't cause him to crash out, so that's a ten from me.

kingstongraham

I hadn't noticed that UAE have won the youth jersey in all three GTs with three different riders this year.

wakemalcolm

I used to suffer from back disc issues in the late 90s early naughties which, ahem, occasionally coincided with grand tour scheduling. Given the dust plane followed by industrial estate finishing circuit course styles, followed later by the Pro Purito hockey stick obsession, this was worth a 6 for the parcours alone.

phreak

rick_chasey said:

andyp said:

I can't recall a duller GT, the only interesting aspect was the JV leadership conundrum, but that got tired very quickly.

The good thing is that this is peak Jumbo-Visma. It can only go one way after this.

What a peak tbf.

Snatching the Giro, convincingly winning the Tour and utterly dominating the Vuelta.

The most successful GT campaign in a year by a long way.

Not to mention winning the Dauphine, Tirreno, Catalunya, Tour of Britain, and the Basque Country. Paris Nice and the two Swiss races were the only stage races of note they didn't win all year.

ddraver

Only reason it wasn't a one is because of a few early-stage comedy moments. In fairness however, Eurosport missed the most important moments of the race because they're not allowed to show the Jumbo Team meeting live...

andyp

phreak said:

rick_chasey said:

andyp said:

I can't recall a duller GT, the only interesting aspect was the JV leadership conundrum, but that got tired very quickly.

The good thing is that this is peak Jumbo-Visma. It can only go one way after this.

What a peak tbf.

Snatching the Giro, convincingly winning the Tour and utterly dominating the Vuelta.

The most successful GT campaign in a year by a long way.

Not to mention winning the Dauphine, Tirreno, Catalunya, Tour of Britain, and the Basque Country. Paris Nice and the two Swiss races were the only stage races of note they didn't win all year.

They didn't win a monument.

m.r.m.

andyp said:

phreak said:

rick_chasey said:

andyp said:

I can't recall a duller GT, the only interesting aspect was the JV leadership conundrum, but that got tired very quickly.

The good thing is that this is peak Jumbo-Visma. It can only go one way after this.

What a peak tbf.

Snatching the Giro, convincingly winning the Tour and utterly dominating the Vuelta.

The most successful GT campaign in a year by a long way.

Not to mention winning the Dauphine, Tirreno, Catalunya, Tour of Britain, and the Basque Country. Paris Nice and the two Swiss races were the only stage races of note they didn't win all year.

They didn't win a monument.

WVA is their weak link. He may have to swallow his pride and... 😉😂

mooro

Lanterne_Rogue said:

Pross said:

I find the 6/10 ratings a bit odd, that would make this race above average. I'd love to know if those giving it over 5 genuinely feel it was an above average race.

I'm questioning their judgement, but there's nothing about a ten point scale that suggests the average should be around 5.5. At a guess I'd expect the average race probably gets somewhere around 6-7? I don't know what this says about humans other than we're not inherently mathematical creatures, and we really appreciate being able to discriminate between various levels of dross.

the average results here statistically is 2 or maybe 2/3 and id class 5 as an average race.

I rated this higher because…

We will never (probably ;-) ) see the dominance that TJV had here. Curious why peak discovery didn’t do the same - nowt to do with doping just teams being that dominant. Like Man City in football. It’s pretty classy to see JV dominate in such a way. Kuss fought hard for it and on the Tourmalet sprung really quickly and hung on on the Angrilui (sp!). I thought Kuss could have gone further against Roglic / Jonas earlier in the race, but then they both rode into form.

The dynamics stuff with Jumbo was unique
I liked the story of the Ineos fall part / bad luck / counterpointing this with G’s podcasts.
Remco’s no show added a bit more intrigue.
The sprinters teams were pretty thin hence stage 21.
The scenery was pretty, apart from stage 19.
The last stage had tripe as local gastronomy.

What is wasn’t was
- two / three top form riders duking it out, or the tension the Giro had with G in pole position until his helmet change.
- Any non jumbo challenge
- Any real team tactics playing out for stages / jerseys etc…

It was also in stark contrast to the T.o.B. which was Aldi centre isle bad.

kingstongraham

I think that if what you liked was that there was no team competing for the GC and no sprinters competing for the sprints, that will put you in a minority.

But I like the positivity.

bobmcstuff

Pross said:

I find the 6/10 ratings a bit odd, that would make this race above average. I'd love to know if those giving it over 5 genuinely feel it was an above average race.

Depends if you think 5 has to be the median ranking or not, as has been discussed previously on these ranking threads.

I personally don't see why it needs to be - For me scores below 5 just mean I did not enjoy it.

Having said that I'll give this one a 4, because the race was generally boring, but gets a bonus point or so because I had fun on the Angliru.

TheBigBean

kingstongraham said:

I think that if what you liked was that there was no team competing for the GC and no sprinters competing for the sprints, that will put you in a minority.

But I like the positivity.

At one point, you suggested that a podium of UAE riders was possible, so there must have been some competition for some of it.

mooro

kingstongraham said:

I think that if what you liked was that there was no team competing for the GC and no sprinters competing for the sprints, that will put you in a minority.

But I like the positivity.

there was one team competing for the GC

kingstongraham

TheBigBean said:

kingstongraham said:

I think that if what you liked was that there was no team competing for the GC and no sprinters competing for the sprints, that will put you in a minority.

But I like the positivity.

At one point, you suggested that a podium of UAE riders was possible, so there must have been some competition for some of it.

That was not a serious suggestion, even before they got to the first real hill.

Soler can always be relied upon to find a way to disappoint, and he outdid himself this year on the Angliru stage.

I did think Ayuso had a faint hope before the race, but he isn't there yet.

DeVlaeminck

Ok why 6.

Lots of grand tours don't have much gc intrigue at all - this one did albeit unconventional.

I think the discussion as to what was happening with Jumbo was genuinely interesting. We didn't know who was going to win the race. Ok so my comment about it being the closest gc battle for years was a joke and maybe i added a mark to make the joke work but there's an element of truth there.

The fact Sepp Kuss won rather than one of the usual suspects.
Remco livening up multiple stages. They both bump it up a bit.

Then there were enough stages that worked as standalone races.

I dont care about the organisational failings - they dont impact my enjoyment much if at all. I dint care if a race doesn't fit the normal pattern or if things are a bit rough around the edges. For me it provided an average amount of enjoyment so gets an average mark.

DeVlaeminck

Also agree with Mooro the ToB was far far worse though at least the organisers were honest with their mid race comment "it's better than no race at all" - I guess it probably was..just.

mididoctors

It was there was just one team competing for the win it's there was next to no attempt by any other to get on the podium ..by design or accident

poweredbyidris

Wasn't even peak Jumbo-Visma-PR-disaster after their riding down and sandbagging Pog on the Champs Elysees in the Tour

bobmcstuff

DeVlaeminck said:

I dont care about the organisational failings - they dont impact my enjoyment much if at all. I dint care if a race doesn't fit the normal pattern or if things are a bit rough around the edges. For me it provided an average amount of enjoyment so gets an average mark.

Surely some of the organisational failures added interest... even if it's not always the interest that you might want... Some of those stages would have been entirely unremarkable otherwise.

Pross

bobmcstuff said:

DeVlaeminck said:

I dont care about the organisational failings - they dont impact my enjoyment much if at all. I dint care if a race doesn't fit the normal pattern or if things are a bit rough around the edges. For me it provided an average amount of enjoyment so gets an average mark.

Surely some of the organisational failures added interest... even if it's not always the interest that you might want... Some of those stages would have been entirely unremarkable otherwise.

Not when it results in stages getting neutralised.

TheBigBean

Pross said:

bobmcstuff said:

DeVlaeminck said:

I dont care about the organisational failings - they dont impact my enjoyment much if at all. I dint care if a race doesn't fit the normal pattern or if things are a bit rough around the edges. For me it provided an average amount of enjoyment so gets an average mark.

Surely some of the organisational failures added interest... even if it's not always the interest that you might want... Some of those stages would have been entirely unremarkable otherwise.

Not when it results in stages getting neutralised.

It only happened at the beginning though. If you compare to other GTs in the last decade, Bernal won a tour because they shortened the race mid stage gifting him a lead and Quintana won a Giro by ignoring the neutralisation.

mididoctors

TheBigBean said:

Pross said:

bobmcstuff said:

DeVlaeminck said:

I dont care about the organisational failings - they dont impact my enjoyment much if at all. I dint care if a race doesn't fit the normal pattern or if things are a bit rough around the edges. For me it provided an average amount of enjoyment so gets an average mark.

Surely some of the organisational failures added interest... even if it's not always the interest that you might want... Some of those stages would have been entirely unremarkable otherwise.

Not when it results in stages getting neutralised.

It only happened at the beginning though. If you compare to other GTs in the last decade, Bernal won a tour because they shortened the race mid stage gifting him a lead and Quintana won a Giro by ignoring the neutralisation.

bernal was going to win anyway after pinot bashed his own knee ...plus it was a good race upto that point I guess....

yeah nairos giro was nonsense

mididoctors

All the rest of the peloton couldn't find someone to get on the 3rd step!

I suppose looking at GTs they are getting increasingly populated by teams getting 2 riders on it.

Sky a few times and UAE