Very measured and grown up comments from Landa.

Would love to see him leading Movistar at next year’s TdF with quintana and valverde in support.

Interesting comments from Landa.
Sure there were a couple of stages where he looked very strong, but then on other stages every time the pace went up, he went out the back and had to grind back on.
Certainly never looked to me like “In the second week, I had legs to drop everyone,”
Guess we’ll get the chance to see what he’s got next year.

Sure there were a couple of stages where he looked very strong, but then on other stages every time the pace went up, he went out the back and had to grind back on.

And Froome is a better TTer. It’s not clear that Landa would’ve won if only he’d been allowed to.

A few interesting suggestions in here as to how to shake things up a bit:

How can Tour de France organisers make the race more interesting?

Certainly never looked to me like “In the second week, I had legs to drop everyone,”

Also, it’s one thing being used up as the last but one man in a team knowing you can go pretty hard until you’re done every day, it’s another to be able to be that last man and be able to go with the attacks at the end of the stage. Certainly in some stages he looked like he had the legs, others he didn’t.

by having a stage end shortly after a descent you’ve made the reward too high so you’re essentially forcing riders to take too big a risk

You assume that riders crash because they are ‘taking risks’, rather than simply making a riding error.

Criticising Froome for the manner of the win is like criticising Alistair Cook for not hitting enough sixes.

It’s interesting now that people often still refer to the stage in 2012 when Froome was trying to go hard off the front and Wiggins pulled him back with reference to “Froome could obviously have beaten Wiggins in 2012” but that seems a bit hypocritical given that Froome’s / Sky’s tactics are still similar – on that (2012) stage Wiggins was going at the pace and with the power deployed that they’d worked out, in detail, was what was needed.

So, yes, Froome could have gone off harder, and maybe Wiggins could have gone with him (or maybe he couldn’t) – but the plan wasn’t to set that stage on fire, or give either of them a stage win, or to improve Froome’s GC – it was to get the yellow into Paris on Wiggins’ back.

An equivalent this year might be saying that either Thomas or Landa could have beaten Froome if they’d been let off the leash and allowed to go for it. (Landa in particular given that he survived the race – was it once or twice they pulled him back to support Froome at the potential expense of his own GC aspirations?)

I reckon that radios should be revised so that traffic goes out but not back…

Commisaires universal broadcast (cars, riders, tv)
riders talk to car (which would essentially be I have a mechanical, need food, clothing, chute!) not other riders
car to listen only

that way the car is able to attend for safety etc but not influence the tactic, that remains the job of the road captain and the riders

car to listen only

Riders say that it’s a safety issue that commisaires don’t always have the feedback from the riders fast enough to prevent a crash (say in the case of a crashed rider on a descent) where the teams can call out to their riders and tell them about the problem. Either you need a 100% ban or you let people do what they want with radios.

Radios and PMs are a red herring IMO, wanting to get rid of them is a bit of a luddite attitude.

Number of riders per team could be tweaked, but Sky still won with eight this year – the number it’s dropping to next year anyway.

I think ASO are taking the right approach by tinkering with the parcours to try to open up the racing – but there have long been dominant teams and people have to accept that Sky are the best for now.

However while they previously seemed unassailable, discouraging some of their best rivals from making the tour top priority, this year’s TdF might have shown a few chinks in their armour.

Perhaps it’ll prove to have been a transitional year. Next year’s could be the best for yonks (or more of the same).

Making the riders have to pedal rather than giving them all e-bikes is a bit of a luddite attitude. In reality the whole thing is contrived, and I can’t see why you can’t also contrive to improve the spectacle by having the tactics decided by the riders on the road rather than the managers in the team car.

Better remove the managers from the team cars too then, so they can’t tell the riders what to do out the window.

Good point, make the DS’s use finger puppets on the dashboard of the cars to initiate a particular tactical move.

I’d watch that.
😉

A good weekend for Sky with Kwiatkowski taking San Sebastian (wonder if he’ll ride the Vuelta as prep for the Worlds?) Good work by Nieve and Landa to set that up. Though looks like both, key Tour domestiques, are now set leave Sky at the end of the season. We all knew Landa was going but Nieve not so much.

Also a story from Froome about how he bluffed a bit on the finish at Peyragudes and reckons he could have lost the Tour that day (here edited… argh paywall, some here instead).

Neive to Orica innit.

I have yet to see why, unless its to support the Yates Bros..

I’m not sure I really see Nieve as a great loss (although many will), he massively under-performed in the 2016 TdF, and did an adequate, but not spectacular job in 2017.
Wout Poels will be back in the squad for 2018, and Elissonde and Rosa should both be capable of filling that role too – it may even have been exactly what they were bought for.

mrblobby – I said at the time that Froome and Sky had bluffed up that last climb and losing 20 odd seconds would have felt like a victory. That seems to confirm it.
Being a GC contender is about more than riding hard and being in the right place. Bluffing you’re weak when you’re not and vice versa

I wanted La Course on EuroSport because Jo Rowsell-Shand and Rob Hatch were better than the ITV4 offering of Rochelle Gilmore who not only has an annoying Auusie whine, her commentary seems to consist of useless cliches like “she’s SUCH a strong rider” and “she’s a Pew-er [pure] climber”

Gilmore just sounds she is a dull voice reading a dull script, no real insights, just there because she knows the right people. Goods news is that Sarah Connolley got the other seat and she has a genuine enthusiasm for women’s racing