Was this the best Tour de France in 10 years?

Maybe GT just came in healthy and rested. As Phil LIggitt would say, you cant come in and except to rest or heal.

But you are right, He did make a huge jump this season.

Sky's budget is insane . Technology etc. Way beyond any one else!

Overall , I give it an 8.5 /10 and one of the best tours in years

I was wondering how deep bike racing could be if Roglic, a guy who took up the sport at age 21, can finish 4th in the TDF? Imagine trying to become Messi or LeBron by taking up soccer or basketball at age 21. Impossible. Are there really that many guys racing bikes who don't make it? Millions of them, like in soccer? I was looking at pictures of Taylor Phinney the other day and I was just thinking, this dude really doesn't look like anything special and I don't want to watch him do anything. In fact he kind of looks like a tool or a shut in and I don't really see how a guy like him could reach a level at anything that's so special that he deserves to come to the public's attention or is deserving of any kind of special recognition. He's just a loser putz, and if bike racing is so hard then how come guys like that are pro bike racers?

If you have the time, the interest and SOME genetics you can make it. Davis Phinney is his dad.

former_ski_jumper wrote:

I was wondering how deep bike racing could be if Roglic, a guy who took up the sport at age 21, can finish 4th in the TDF?

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.

Sky had Froome lose on purpose to avoid the negative publicity after his faux of a doping trial. He'll be back in full swing cheating and winning shortly. He had won the previous 3 grand tours, he's not done.

As far as the best tour if you give me 1 more year 2008 was the best of recent memory with Sastre's epic win over Evans on the most famous stage of the tour also the final mountain stage to win yellow. Plus the duel between Evans and Sastre's team the whole way through. Plus without the stormcloud of doping over those top competitors, although I'm not naive enough to believe those guys were actually clean there is room for hope. As a runner-up Cadel Evans victory year was also great. This was a solid tour but Thomas dominated front to end and no one ever challenged him. Sastre's year was definately tops.

Primo Numero Uno wrote:

Sky had Froome lose on purpose to avoid the negative publicity after his faux of a doping trial. He'll be back in full swing cheating and winning shortly.

Conspiracy theory.

In the real world Thomas won because he was the strongest and Doumoulin was the second strongest.

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.

When a rival makes a break on a climb Froome proceeds to spend 50% of his time whilst responding looking down at his meter, its quite striking watching his head go up and down. No-one else around him does it.

Armstrong probably had talent---he won the world championship in 93 and two TDF stages (last in 1995) prior to going on PEDs. This may be why Ferrari wanted to 'work' with him. I think he proves the general concept that for PEDs to create freakish performances such as Armstrong's, they should be acting upon world class talent (see Barry Bonds, Lance Armstrong, Marion Jones, etc).

Herecomesmills wrote:

Armstrong probably had talent---he won the world championship in 93 and two TDF stages (last in 1995) prior to going on PEDs. This may be why Ferrari wanted to 'work' with him. I think he proves the general concept that for PEDs to create freakish performances such as Armstrong's, they should be acting upon world class talent (see Barry Bonds, Lance Armstrong, Marion Jones, etc).

You really think Armstrong was clean in 93-95? I would say with an extreme level of confidence he wasn't. Cycling is a sport where the top GC guys are regularly separated by a few minutes over a course of a grand tour. Picking up a single minute in a mountain stage may make the difference between winning and finishing second. The difference between the best and next 5 best guys in regularly less than 1%. They are all world-class talents. If they were all clean it would be extremely unlikely Lance would have been the best guy. Doping effects everyone differently and some are higher responders to doping stimulus like Lance was.

Baseball is a somewhat different game for doping. In endurance sports, the effect of doping on the top of the sport is so profound that non-dopers can't even be competitive. Baseball relies on factors such as coordination and eyesight enough that a non-doper can still be a top performer. Although as can be seen with Bonds who was one of the greatest talents ever, he went from a 40 homer a year guy to a 70 plus who could honestly have hit a lot more if he didn't get intentionally walked constantly.

Hey, great to hear that you enjoyed it. It was probably the most unexpected win from the last 10 tour, although Geraint had won a big one-week race in the leadup. I follow the sport really closely, but was previously a runner.

Anyways, I just disagree a little. It was strange though, because you never knew if GT could hold on the whole time, he could crack or crash any given day, as he has every time he's been in a similar position. But look, all of the classifications were basically uncontested. Thomas never looked bad and could play defensively, Sagan is great to watch but the guy had 100 point lead after a couple of stages for Green Jersey, Latour wasn't really going for the white jersey, nor was he the best young rider really and Alaphilippe was the only guy really going after the Polka Dots.

The sprint days were very uneventful (minus the first day), the cobbled stage was fairly anticlimactic, and as always, the guy leading after the first mountain top finish won the GC eventually. Dumoulin won the final TT. It was strange in how unpredicted the whole thing was, but very routine nonetheless.

Anyways, like I said, I'm really happy to hear you and many others enjoyed it. Maybe stay around for the Vuelta or try to watch the Giro next year. They're much less predictable and very exciting day-in and day-out.

All the best!

I guess since Lance only won from 1999-2005, and those years fall out of your 10 year time window, then it might have been...I think we all miss Lance hammering for home. #Hero

joemama wrote:

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.!!!!

Even more impressive was the way he won the 2017 Vuelta while suffering from severe asthma and temporary kidney failure!

Herecomesmills wrote:

Armstrong probably had talent---he won the world championship in 93 and two TDF stages (last in 1995) prior to going on PEDs.

Completely false. Armstrong was doped by Carmichael as an under-23.

As for your other idea about being 'world class. '. Plenty of world class athletes did epo. For whatever reason, Armstrong was clearly favored by the federation and he found the right PEDs for him.

va va Froome wrote:

joemama wrote:

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.!!!!

Even more impressive was the way he won the 2017 Vuelta while suffering from severe asthma and temporary kidney failure!

Even more impressive was his first Vuelta podium from nowhere while recovering from another mysterious illness. This after years of riding in complete obscurity.

We need a good laugh.

"...You used to ride on a chrome horse with your diplomat

Who carried on his shoulder a Siamese cat..." B. Dylan

In the last ten years?

Well, I've been following up till Lance Armstrong's battles

with Marco Pantani, then threw in the towel. Enough.

They need to make it tougher. Perhaps integrating the Tour

Day France into the rest of Europe. Perhaps, the intermingling

with the Tour of Switzerland, and the Northern part of Italy.

It' seems some stages are like a distance track event,

with sprints in the last 300 yards, we cannot have that

can we?

Observations.

A. Ever heard of term vertical oscillation in running?

It's become a big problem in cycling but in terms of

"lateral oscillation" as a result of the carbon fiber bikes

are so light, they can ride a straight line. The average

stage rider has forgotten the term "the distance between

two points is a straight line."

The worst exemplification is rider and 2018 King of

the Mountains winner, Julian Alaphilippe. This guy

a great rider, can't control his bike. Keep it steady.

For shame.

I thought Stage 9 of the 2018 was the death knell for

Froome, crashing on the 9th beginning of the

cobblestones.

Need to get better crowd control on the Dutch corner

of the Alp D'Huez.

Tom Doulouin (sic) needs to stop using Botox on his lips.

Good TDF, Froome didn't get the Grand Slam and is probably

licking his wounds in prep for the Vuelta a España

Pops, Lance's power output has been greatly exaggerated. He was doing 5.55 - 6 watts per kilo on the steep climbs, normal numbers for an elite cyclist, not 7 watts per kilo as your cronies frequently report.

I know people like you have a vested interest in keeping the PED mythology going, but it's not good for sport to be disingenuous about power numbers.