Still hard to top 2012 for snoozefest, when Wiggins sucked wheel while Froome marked the attacks.

And what do you mean "could become" Xs and Os? I'd say it's been that way since Postal, with just a few exceptional and chaotic years.

Maybe they should increase the time bonuses for winning stages, or at least some of them. Perhaps just non-TT stages. If there was a 60 second time bonus for winning a stage, that might shake things up a bit.

I did think this year's tour was more interesting than last year. Froome is a fantastic rider, but he is just not exciting.

I don't see an issue with winning the overall tour without winning a stage. Froome responded to pressure from Bardet's team and even Aru when he had enough legs left to contend against him. It's not Froome's fault that Porte was taken out of the race due to a crash and that other teams didn't ride aggressive enough to put pressure on Sky when he had issues like missing a turn.

You would have a better shot of removing power meters and race radios vs requiring a stage win to be in contention to take the title. It's about finishing the entire race first and that to me is more challenging than picking an early stage to ride aggressive to go for the win. 3 riders accounted for 9 stage wins (with Kittel taking 5 of them) and who knows if Sagan would've taken the stage that Aru won since that type of profile works for him as well if he wasn't disqualified. I enjoyed this tour, but it was clear that you can't prepare for the Giro and then try to win at TdF which lessened the competition further. Sky will probably lose Landa and maybe a few other riders so it may be interesting next year in that regard, but Froome earned this year's win.

You would watch this years and see the impact of time bonus. BMC put people on the front in the first week to try pull back the break so Porte could try to take 10 seconds on Froome at the finish. It didn't work and Froome out kicked him at the line to take 3rd and the last bonus slot.

In the mountains, everyone was so even that it felt like it became a race for the time bonus at the end. Without looking it up, I remember Froome taking seconds there on Uran/Bardet at least a couple of times.

I made the same comment on another forum: that the GC winner must also win a stage. Combine that with removing team radios and we could see some interesting racing.

Well, Froome didn't win a stage, but it's not like any of the other GC contenders dominated a stage either. Aru might have been the only one to actually attack and stay away. Uran won in a small field sprint, and Bardet won in what was basically an uphill sprint finish where he took the lead with what...75 meters to go?

This year could have easily been a year where nobody in the top 4 for the GC won a stage.

It is what it is...it's a stage race, and the ASO picked stages that were not highly selective in the mountains. If you want to see more of selective stages, where the break has less of a chance and the GC can't just suck wheels, watch the Vuelta in a few weeks. The mountains they picked out are fucking epic.

No. This year's tour was a snooze fest but it doesn't need new rules or even I think bigger time bonuses.

The tour is the biggest race if the year. This means a few things:
-Everyone comes in with this as their main goal. Teams send their A squad who have every incentive to control control control. All main contenders are at the top of their game and thus more evenly matched.
-Riders have less incentive to be aggressive, since conservstive 4th place is more prestigious vs an aggressive 6th.
-Teams usually only show up with established, proven riders. This leads to fewer surprises like we saw with Dumoulin at the Giro, or Aru a few years back.
-The race itself is more conservative with it's parcours because it had less incentive to be inventive.

By contrast the Giro/Vuelta don't have this dynamic. They usually send their B squads so control of the race is more difficult. You often have varying levels of form between contenders, and the races themselves can often be at greater liberty when picking the route (both because Italy and Spain are more varied than France, and because they're trying new things)

Want to know why this year's race was a snooze fest? Easy. The race picked a parcours designed to keep things close (as a response to Sky domination), which means fewer opportunities for set pieces such as mountain top finishes. Then some of the top names who could have opened up the race suffered mishaps (Valverde, Porte) or misjudged their capabilities (Quintana, Contador). The result was a race with few competitors and few opportunities to challenge. They could have put in more breakaway/lumpy type stages, but thats about it.

Every few years events like this conspire to get a snoozer. 2012 was no different in this regard, with Contador suspended, Schleck hurt, and Evans sick.

  

Still hard to top 2012 for snoozefest, when Wiggins sucked wheel while Froome marked the attacks.

And what do you mean "could become" Xs and Os? I'd say it's been that way since Postal, with just a few exceptional and chaotic years.[/quote]
i agree; my memory can be short, and other years have also been less than compelling.
i think that some of the others are maybe right about course selection.

i can't recall being so underwhelmed by the giro in recent years.

x's and o's: predictable to the point of not being worth playing.

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jjk
http://enduranceanimal.blogspot.com/

Offer time bonuses (like sprint points) along the course where only top 10 in the GC can claim.

No, and this is not the first time the winner hasn't won a stage

The whole point of the Tour de France since day 1 has been to cover the assigned distance in the least amount of time. Who wins on any given day is interesting and entertaining but it really has nothing to do with the actual race.

The one day classics are the races to watch if you want to see a winner take all show down.

So, you're proposing that the leader, who is already in yellow coming into Paris, make a break on the Champs Elysee or [failing to get away, clean] contest a sprint, just because he doesn't have the requisite stage win? The same for each rider in GC down to the highest placed stage winner?

That's asking for trouble

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"What's your claim?" - Ben Gravy
"Your best work is the work you're excited about" - Rick Rubin

 


maybe you are right.
if you think golf is boring just don't watch it...

(and maybe something else is really bothering me because why do i post about this particular issue now, when i have not posted on ST for years)? maybe if my training was going better i just wouldn't have time...?


by the way STP is my favorite band.

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jjk
http://enduranceanimal.blogspot.com/

Just make the bonus time go deeper. Much better. Creates aggressive riding

This would be interesting, but not for every stage.

Don't have any time bonuses for an ITT stage.

Only go 3 deep for the pan flat sprint stages.

For something like this year's stage 14 (Mathews winning in Rodez) go 5-10 deep.

For a mountain top finish stage, go 10-20 deep.

All sorts of possibilities depending on the stage profiles.

Actually winning at least one stage shouldn't matter, though. The GC contenders are never going to be a factor on the sprint stages, and you get someone like Barguil going for the mountain stages who isn't close to the GC leaders. There are only a few possibilities for a GC contender to win a stage. It's not a big deal if they don't win a stage.

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"Human existence is based upon two pillars: Compassion and knowledge. Compassion without knowledge is ineffective; Knowledge without compassion is inhuman." Victor Weisskopf.

I don't mind if the YJ doesn't win a stage. You can have more excitement if breaks are up the road, or a guy farther back attacks in the last few k. Since these guys are less doped than the previous 25 years their talent is really close. It can make for some more predictable/boring results. The attacks are less powerful and shorter in duration bc they are almost human. I think smaller teams is the best answer. I am in favor of banning radios, but I don't see that helping the GC guys win stages too much. Maybe it makes it harder for them to calculate time to catch a break.

I think time bonus is really the only way to change things at this point. There is a lot more depth in the field now.

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Brian

I would be up for mid stage time bonuses but make them open to anyone. Like on the Croix de Fer for example and make them just as large as stage finish.

We've had a long (almost) continuous run of strong leaders on strong teams in the TdF - and that is the recipe for predictability. What would the race be like if Froome was on a Continental team instead of Sky? Now, maybe that's a little extreme, but we really need terrific individuals on merely good teams and good GC riders on great teams - more balance and less predictable. Right now, Sky is just buying the TdF, providing Froome with 2-3 support riders that could be GC contenders themselves, but are riding for Froome.

So, what's the answer? I think that more time bonuses are of limited utility. There was a proposal in another thread here to limit teams to riders having no more than x UCI points. Sounds interesting, but Sky will just put all of their stars on the shelf to minimize UCI point collection - they can afford it! But there must be a way to even out the team capabilities. In the US, for example, many team sports use an inverse order to select new players from the collegiate pool (I'm thinking NFL, NBA...). So, over time, all things equal (I know, I know...all things are not equal) today's least successful teams get the first shot at the most capable new players. That does not happen in cycling, where development teams cost money and provide no guarantee that the best will matriculate into the main squad.

Sigh. So, a salary cap? Hard to enforce, plenty of deferred this and underhanded that to compensate outside the spreadsheet. I suggested that, for every x days a team holds the yellow jersey consecutively, they lose one rider. Sure, so the teams with GC contenders will give up defense of the jersey on stage x-1 to avoid losing riders, but that might be interesting - but very artificial. How about a handicap system? If you're in 78th place starting the stage and win, your bonus is 78-1=77 seconds. If you're in 1st place on the stage at the start and cross the line in 40th place, your 'bonus' is 1-40= -39 seconds (39 seconds *added* to your time). I dunno. Just hoping that Froome ages poorly or Sky runs out of money, I guess...

I think the highlight for the few stages I watched was when AG2R lit up the front of the race a few times. That was be best part. Everyone else just wanted to sit in & watch SKY do the same boring high tempo riding at the front.