Rate the race: 2023 Vuelta

bobmcstuff

mididoctors said:

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

What's the split there between "2 leaders" and "super domestique sticks it out"?

TheBigBean

mididoctors said:

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

Ineos may have won anyway through Thomas. Not sure Bernal was guaranteed to win. It was complete nonsense.

kingstongraham

TheBigBean said:

mididoctors said:

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

Ineos may have won anyway through Thomas. Not sure Bernal was guaranteed to win. It was complete nonsense.

Yes, the big difference in this race was that the new line where time would be taken was communicated to the riders plenty before they got there on both stages where it happened, not after they'd already gone past it.

bobmcstuff

In Bernals case they didn't have a great deal of choices though, and all of them were unsatisfactory to some degree.

kingstongraham

bobmcstuff said:

In Bernals case they didn't have a great deal of choices though, and all of them were unsatisfactory to some degree.

And they chose the least satisfactory.

stage_hunter

kingstongraham said:

bobmcstuff said:

In Bernals case they didn't have a great deal of choices though, and all of them were unsatisfactory to some degree.

And they chose the least satisfactory.

What other choices were there beyond scratching the whole day?

kingstongraham

stage_hunter said:

kingstongraham said:

bobmcstuff said:

In Bernals case they didn't have a great deal of choices though, and all of them were unsatisfactory to some degree.

And they chose the least satisfactory.

What other choices were there beyond scratching the whole day?

None.

bobmcstuff

kingstongraham said:

bobmcstuff said:

In Bernals case they didn't have a great deal of choices though, and all of them were unsatisfactory to some degree.

And they chose the least satisfactory.

That's just like, your opinion, man.

Scratching the whole day would have been pretty unfair to the riders who'd attacked and were up the road. Although this was discussed ad infinitum at the time so probably not worth digging up again...

RichN95.

I'm sorry, but the media are treating Kuss like he's a dog. Aren't you a good dog Sepp. Here's a biscuit. Such a good dog.

My greatest wish is that Kuss now tweets that Biden stole the election, #Trump24.
Just to see the u-turns.

jimmythecuckoo

Considering how close the GC was I completely lost interest on the final few stages.

prawny

Normally the Vuelta is a bit dull because it's all second(third?) tier GC contenders but at least the racing is interesting. This year it was dull because one team sent top tier GC contenders and ruined it.

It was even more boring than the 2014 tour when Froome crashed and Nibs was the only other rider to turn up.