Vuelta 2018 A bit shite?

Been a decent enough race.

I am quite enjoying it and generally prefer it to the TDF these days

Good thing about Vuelta - All (most of) the trolls are bored by September

Bad thing about Vuelta - a lot of genuine fans are too...

I've really enjoyed this one. A few surprise stage winners, plenty uncertainty on the GC, some brutal climbs.... What's not to like?

I'm liking it. Two days to go and the GC is still up for grabs and the main contenders are a perfect pantomime villain vs. a plucky British lad - proper racers both. Whats not to like?

If coverage were available free to air I'm sure I'd be a little more involved, but I've struggled to get into it. There's no strong sense of narrative in this particular edition - other than Porte and Quintana disappointing we're still where we were before it started, and it's always felt like people are waiting for the next big stage to do something and then haven't.

It's all seemed just a bit mechanical compared to the Giro, and even the Tour - although as I've not seen it live perhaps that's an unfair reflection on the racing.

I always find it difficult to get in to a race when I know the top guys aren't there.

KingstonGraham wrote:

gsk82 wrote:

I always find it difficult to get in to a race when I know the top guys aren't there.

Does that apply to the Giro most years?

I would have thought if you are going to set that high a bar you would be limited pretty much to the Tour and maybe the monuments (and potentially not even all of those).

Especially when you get out of WT level, there's plenty of good or great racing but obviously the top guys will never all be there.

And Simon Yates is about to be one of the very top guys.

CarbonClem wrote:

Nibali, Quintana, Valverde, Aru, Porte, Kruijswijk, Kwia, Sagan, Yates x 2, Lopez, Uran, Pinot .... thats a pretty good selection of top guys Id have thought?

I accept they may not have all brought their 'A' game, but still.

Yeah I feel like that phrase has been adapted somewhat to mean "not Froome" (and Contador, to a lesser extent).

Pross wrote:

alanparsons wrote:

Vino'sGhost wrote:

Pretty much what the title says is this years vuelta a snore fest?

I think it is a far more interesting race than the TdF, far less predictable on a daily basis, there is no way yesterdays breakaway would have succeeded in France.
The GC is still very close and the real shake up stage is still to come tomorrow (sat), 6 categorized climbs in under 100km.
The absence of some of the big hitters (Froome,Dumoulin,Bardet) along with Quintana's lack of form/ability has made it far more interesting to me.
I have been watching the stages live most days, the only downside being Kirby's inane drivel.

Was the Tour predictable this year? How many people predicted that Froome's domestique would win? Even in the final week no-one was sure if Thomas would have the physical and mental ability to hold on and I doubt anyone expected him to win back to back mountain stages. It seems like a bit of stereotyping / confirmation bias to call it predictable.

It was still a Team Sky procession as soon as we hit the mountains which nearly everyone predicted. Just so happens that a different Sky rider won.

Pross wrote:

Not really, no-one knew what the team dynamic was and who they were riding for. Whilst the Tour is often the least exciting of the GTs this year's was a very good race both in terms of GC and many of the mountain stages. The only thing dull and predictable was the green jersey 'contest'.

I wouldn't bother, Pross.
All some folks can see is the hated Sky train, so the racing, however varied or unpredictable, becomes irrelevant.
They even ignore the fact that take Sky out of the equation and you would immediately have another team replacing it, as it always has been, these past 40 years or more.

A week or so ago there was a discussion on here about whether Quintana already had this race in the bag - now we are discussing whether he should work for Valverde - so there have been GC changes it's just nobody has ran away with it.

What we need now is for someone with a minute or two to make up on GC to go all in today or tomorrow so we get some fireworks and it'll have been a pretty good edition. It's got to be better than watching Sky/USPostal or whoever having an iron grip of every mountain stage.

underlayunderlay wrote:

It's all very well saying that the GC competition is still really close with the real shake-up to come, but that does rather beg the question as to why bother with all the previous stages when they could have just had a one-dayer. Small time gaps are usually a sign that riders have been riding defensively with nobody really making any telling moves, rather than a sign that everyone is evenly matched.

One of the reasons it is so close between Valverde and Yates at the top of GC is that, when one has gained time on the other (which has happened on multiple occasions) the other has fought back and regained the time lost.

Plus, it's only close between Valverde and Yates. How come all the other GC contenders have ceded large gaps to these two while they've supposedly been riding defensively?