Was this the best Tour de France in 10 years?

I Chose D2 wrote:

Bloodtransfusingdoper wrote:

This was the worst tdf in a long time because it is the sketchiest winner ever. A guy with no history of bwing competitive in grand toura suddenly wins one at 32? That doesnt happen in cycling. Landisesque but worse.

Those are the kind of winners you get when the top 2 current GC riders have Giro legs, 2 of the top challengers crash out, and the strongest rival team brings a 3-pronged attack instead of backing the guy who looked like best climber in the world last year. If you've watched cycling over the last 5 years, you shouldn't have been surprised that G was in contention. Of course nobody expected him to be the strongest over 21 days, but he didn't come out of nowhere.

I've followed cycling for 30+ years and Thomas is the most ridiculous "champion" I've seen. In his debut tour he was penultimate! (That's second to last for the illiterates.) The typical progression of a guy with the talent to win big tours is someone like Contador - 30th in his first try, 9th in his last, and in the top 5 in all other big tours. Fignon, Hinault, Lemond, Ulrich - all similar profiles - one or two tours out of the top ten - the rest in the top five. Hinault basically only finished 1st or 2nd.

Thomas, on the other hand, never finished in the top 30 in any big tour until 2015. Then he jumped to 15th twice. And then suddenly he won. A guy like Hinault or Ullrich never did as badly as 15th in his whole career.

Yea it was pretty dope

Moby Dick wrote:

Not even close. There was no crazy exciting stage where a GC guy rides away: Think Froome when he launched that crazy descent, or a old school Lance mountain climb .

Alaphillipe on that long breakaway was awesome. Roglic on that last mountain stage descent was awesome. There were great finishes but you're expecting too much. The field is too even now to get one of those crazy solo rides. Froome tried to pull away with just 3 miles left and couldn't shake them. Roglic needed the draft of the moto just to get some distance. The winner is a little sketchy and we lost too many GC guys and sprinters but this year was waaay than the last few years.

Hmm. What about Big Mig, Riis, Armstrong, Pereiro/Landis, Wiggo, or Froomey?

The winners of 20 of the 28 tours since the start of the "epo era" don't fit your narrative.

This was a very good TDF. However, it is still cycling and with that comes the assumption that they ALL are on something. There might be a few that are clean but when you hang out with people that do they just assume you do too.

The next question would be how well do they inspect the bikes & frames? Would it be possible to develop a small motor that fits concealed inside the frame that would increase the bikes performance by 2-3mph? Would be a huge asset on the climbs.

mypredictor wrote:we have a new clear #1 rider in the world.

This is a bit of a stretch! Froome won the Giro however many weeks ago - its not easy to win 4 grand tours in a row. that doesn't knock froome off from #1

Le Tour wrote:

This was a very good TDF. However, it is still cycling and with that comes the assumption that they ALL are on something. There might be a few that are clean but when you hang out with people that do they just assume you do too.

The next question would be how well do they inspect the bikes & frames? Would it be possible to develop a small motor that fits concealed inside the frame that would increase the bikes performance by 2-3mph? Would be a huge asset on the climbs.

Not sure how that's different from any other sport.

This should answer your question about motors. Although I think DL has it wrong; the objective should be to eliminate cheating, not suspicion.

bazap wrote:

mypredictor wrote:we have a new clear #1 rider in the world.

This is a bit of a stretch! Froome won the Giro however many weeks ago - its not easy to win 4 grand tours in a row. that doesn't knock froome off from #1

Tom D 2nd in both races, total of 13 seconds behind Froome with no ream support in the mountains and no marginal gains.

mypredictor wrote:

Froome loses without crashing and nearly drops off the podium, we have a new clear #1 rider in the world, the race was tight and yellow could have been moved to one of 4 guys all the way to stage 19, good sprint finishes with Gavaria replacing cav kittle and griepel as the fastest man on wheels, emergence of new top riders in bernal and roglic, brutal cobblestone and mountain stages, interesting dynamic between the 2 sky GC guys, Sagan being Sagan and more. The only things I didn't like was sky winning again and how so many sprinters had to drop out due to the brutal cobble stage followed by 2 brutal alps stages. So happy this was better than the last few years.

This was Froome's 4th grand tour in a row; even he was feeling it. Geraint is good but he's got a ways to go to supplant Froome.

That was indeed an epic stage, one of the best since I've followed the sport. But he was mostly distancing Cadel Evans who ended up winning, Contandor was trying the Giro-Tour double or something and was dropped on that last climb.

Comparing that stage to this year's Giro where Froome went long, you have to admire the way Evans took responsibility and did the lion's share of the work to save his tour. Whereas Domoulin was waiting for Reichenbach at the Giro and trying to get the group to work together. And never pulled back the time on Froome. My memories a bit hazy about that 2011 (?) tour, but I think that's how things went down. Epic rides by both Schleck and Froome, love both those stages.

Yes, it was one of the best Tours; Roglic had 3rd over Froome, but he blew it on the ITT. What I thought was impressive is that Froome won 3 grand tours in a row i.e., 2017 Tour de France, and La Veulta de Espana, 2018 Giro de Italia. Pretty damn impressive.!!!!

Some people will say it was the most boring. Sky reel in every dangerous challenge by riding to power numbers and it's so predictable. They have a point.

What would happen if race radios and power meters were banned?

opinions differ wrote:

Some people will say it was the most boring. Sky reel in every dangerous challenge by riding to power numbers and it's so predictable. They have a point.

What would happen if race radios and power meters were banned?

From my (lowly Cat 3) racing experience, a power meter really doesn't help that much in a race even on a long climb. It's more that Sky has enough money (and better training?) to have 5 of the top 15 climbers in the race.

Race radios - idk, never used one but I'm guessing the tour is very well organized and time gaps would always be pretty clear so Sky could set the right pace.

bhbhb wrote:

2018 TdF marks the end of classic division climbers/sprinters.

The stuff sky/tom d. are on makes big and relatively heavy guys best climbers. These robots killed old school light and small climbers (Quintana) for good.

Just not true. If you stipulate that the level of doping across the peloton is relatively even from year to year (but hopefully different between years), then it's been decades since the truly tiny guys (sub 130lbs) were demonstrably better than the GC riders at climbing across a three week tour - if they ever were.

Froome races at the same weight as Richard Virenque, 5lbs lighter than Bjarne Riss and Andy Schleck (which was very surprising to me) and 30lbs lighter than Jan Ulrich or Michael Indurain. All of whom were dominant climbers in their day.

My observation is that if a top rider is willing to get lean enough, power and weight tend to balance each other out and mountains are something of an even playing field for riders of all different sizes. The only guys who are truly out of their element are sprinters and classics riders who don't want to lose upper body weight and sprinting leg bulk.

This 2018 tour has definitely been better than the last few. I love watching Sagan ride, he's a brilliant sprinter, but unlike the other sprinters, a few hills on the course isn't going to kill him. The guts he displayed getting through the last mountain stage while being badly banged up from the crash was amazing. I'm a fan of Tom D so it was nice to see a great showing by him. Roglic was a pleasant surprise as well, I'll be rooting for him in the future as well.

The bad/boring were the doping scumbags from team sky. They had a scare when Froome crashed in stage 1, but other than that, them getting the top GC rider was never in doubt. The other contenders just don't have the horsepower to get away from the sky train. Sure, Quintana did, but he wasn't a threat at that point. I hope that team burns down like US Postal.

asdgasg wrote:

opinions differ wrote:

Some people will say it was the most boring. Sky reel in every dangerous challenge by riding to power numbers and it's so predictable. They have a point.

What would happen if race radios and power meters were banned?

From my (lowly Cat 3) racing experience, a power meter really doesn't help that much in a race even on a long climb. It's more that Sky has enough money (and better training?) to have 5 of the top 15 climbers in the race.

Race radios - idk, never used one but I'm guessing the tour is very well organized and time gaps would always be pretty clear so Sky could set the right pace.

Power meters should not be eliminated. I think their effect on racing is way overblown. Froomey would get on fine without his pm; Dumoulin apparently doesn't even use one for TTs. Nobody in the final kms of a mountain top finish is judging their effort based on what their pm says (not even Froome Dog). Depating power meters is useless though, since now that larger companies like Specialized and Shimano are in the game there will be too much industry pressure to remove them.

As far as radios go, I think they are important for the sport (but not for safety - only liars or idiots use that argument). I fear that complete removal of radios could make racing even more controlled as teams would be hesitant to give a break too much of a leash. Who knows when you'll next see the chalkboard time guy on the side of the road. I also think it's important for teammates to be able to easily communicate with each other to execute their strategy, and with their cars in case they have a problem or need bottles etc. Something I think they could try is limiting communication from the DS to the riders, especially on the final summit of the day.

Nonetheless, the current lack of excitement in the TDF compared to the other GTs is 99% due to Sky's budget, how much is at stake, and poor route selection, and maybe 1% due to radios, power meters, and team size.

Since when has athletic ability been based upon looks?

They fit it perfectly. With maybe the exception of Indurain and Froome, those guys didn't have the natural talent to win big tours. Indurain finished midpack in his first grand tours but we has riding as Delgado's domestique (Delgado's worst big tour ever was his first, still top 30; he was top 10 in 19 of 22 grand tours he finished). Also, his dominance after 1990 coincides with the beginning of the EPO era. Froome clearly has a lot of talent. After his first two big tours, he's never been worse than 4th, so he fits fine, his profile looks like Contador's, more or less.

Wiggins is as ridiculous a champ as Thomas. Landis is just a joke.

With Armstrong it's not clear how much talent he really had. We never got to see him ride clean.

Pereiro actually fits pretty well. Top 10 in 5 of 9 grand tours, top 30 in all but one. He won in the Landis year, with a depleted field.

pop_pop!_v2.2.1 wrote:

George213 wrote:But the sport has become a lot cleaner now. You can't expect big attacks from 10 years ago.

LOL. But, the podium is still full of no-hope grand tour riders turned grand tour winners.

Prior to PEDs like EPO it was not possible to go from no-hope GC rider to the podium in a grand tour. Now, this is normal.

Just like the UCI permitted doping at USPS, the current UCI is doing the same again.

Looking at it from an administrative POV, this Tour should go down infamy. As mentioned by pop_pop, the UCI's capitulation in the Froome affair is just reprehensible. And this cowardice affects all sports' anti-PEDs effort.

Thanks UCI! :(