So, that’s that then, the Tour is over, the peleton has a hangover and I have to find something else to do at 8am every morning.

I thought I’d post a thread to look back, comment on your hero’s and villains, who was better and worse than expected and generally what your thoughts were.

And in exchange, I’ll post a couple of pics of yesterday. Deal? Lovely.

Nice bike mate.

The jerseys and prize winners.

Feels like they’re borrowed each others jerseys.

Textbook.

And the finish.

G.

And a couple of thoughts from me.

First up, big shout to CyclingTips for some wonderful photography and to Inrng for very good insight. Whilst STW is clearly the place for MTB work, those are both well worth a glance for a more road focused site.

G finally getting it together was the obvious big highlight, that no-one has a bad word to say about him says a lot. The sprint game was perhaps the lowlight, too many top tier riders gone early mean that even Paris felt a bit low key.

In terms of riders, once again Kwiatkowski was absolutely incredible, the perfect domestqiue and a seemingly lovely guy too, just a shame G forgot about him on the podium! At the other end, Porte once again got unlucky, whilst Movistar came in amoungst much hype and ended up doing very little.

Overall a good, but not vintage tour. But I am so chuffed for G and don’t mind saying my eyes were a little moist during his speech.

Cheers for these threads Lunge. I said in the first one that I didn’t think G would be able to win a grand tour. Happy to be proven wrong though with this one!

I have enjoyed the tour. Will be strange tonight sitting down once the little guy has gone to bed with no tour highlights to watch. Vuelta starts the 25th August!

Movistar are using the same line up for the Vuelta. I cant help but think they need to designate someone to improve their chances.

Thank you lunge, great threads every day.

Enjoyed the stage yesterday and delighted for Kristoff, who effectively sealed his career with the biggest sprinters win. A bit like G sealing his career with the biggest win of all. Froome looked absolutely delighted for G all day. I though Martin was a good pick for combative rider, but much of that was down to his crash allowing him the freedom to attack. Allaphillippe was the rider for me, and of course Chavanelle who got the jersey out there in the first week.

Craddock the first man to hold the lantern rouge from the first to last stage. What a ride.

Sagan beating only himself to secure green. Untouchable again, so pleased he finished. He us just so exciting to watch.

Bernal was the rider of the tour, what a talent. Magnificent first tour. When Team Sky have improved his TT performance, he’ll be ready for GC.

Vuelta in four weeks…

Fantastic race again.. I was disappointed most in Movistar, but there’s nothign new there. They just seem so tactically inept. We 3 really solid climbers in Landa, Quintana and Valverde, they should be world beaters and giving the GC a run for it’s money… Instead, they make a mess of team tactics time and time again.

Porte was a loss… to the race and to the event… He could have been the one to push Sky IMO.

Sagan, truly brilliant…. what a rider he is.

Saddened by Cav… Just wasn’t there, even when he was…. Tried but you saw him sit up every time about 150m out and hearts sank… along with his hopes of a win. Damn.

Thanks for these Lunge, they’ve been required reading every morning (not least to decide whether to watch live or save myself for thehighlights). Agree with what you say about CyclingTips – very high quality content from good writers and photographers.

Heroes – Kwiatkowski as always. Alaphilippe for a couple of gutsy wins. And Quick Step for four stages and being a threat on many more. Brailsford and Portal for another perfectly calibrated victory. No wonder the French are getting cheesed off.

Villains – some of the French public. Hinault for inciting them.

Will be interesting to see what next for Froome and Thomas. If I was Froome I’d want to focus on getting that fifth TDF title next year.

Like when the clocks go back I always feel sad when the tour is over. It seems like summer is over too

Firstly many thanks for all those posts Lunge, you have given me focus to early morning Tour de Jour.

👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍

I was going to write a précis but this early in the morning you’ll just get some snippets of my (lack of) wisdom…

1) Wanty, pointless inclusion. Prudi needs to hand back the brown envelope and Offredo needs a new team. Bring in Androtti or Cippo or another Pro-Cont French squad…anyone but pointless Wanty. Sorry lads, you aren’t up to it.

2) Stages, the first weeks Sprints were dull and frankly tailored to enable the big lads to walk home after the first week, which most of them did… so I’m not thanking Prudi for this becuse the Tour needs balance and thier inclusion tilted the Tour at 40deg.. Too many mountains, too hard mountain stages, too long stages in the mountains. Cut down both length and gradient and that will encourage the big lads to ride along too, remember them? Oh no, they unclipped didn’t they. The mountains need to be spaced out more, less intensity and fewer to climb over in one stage… keep the big famous lumps, throw in a few unknowns too because there are plenty to choose from. I like the long transition stages, I think these could be upped in length to 300k maybe a bit more and have them riding for 5hrs or so.. this would enable a break and punts off the front. ITT and TT’s I dislike, I understand why they are there so put them in the first week one after the other and get them over and done with.

3) Rider performance, I really expected more from Dillier, Küng, Schär, Chavanel, Oss, Valgren. Burghart the big rouleurs the big puncheurs… the lads that punt off the front and ride like cowboys into the distance. Sadly the Tour stages were too complex and geared towards SKY and BMC and Astana for the lads to go for it. QS did amazing, brought a well rounded squad and had more than thier fair share of glamour and Ala proved being small climber doesn’t mean you can’t roll with the big boys and smile, so too Gaviria.. GvA did an awesome job, fought the Yellow every day he held it and he’s become a favourite of mine over the last couple of years, the Tour needs riders like him who challenge the parcor and the jersey. Porte, yeah.. erm nope. Can’t see why he keeps getting included in the Squad, be good when he moves on IMO.. TJvG is another pointless addition, famed for being Lances clip in buddy but nothing more.. stay in the US please, you don’t like Europe. Vanmarke and Mollema, hurumph… c’mon lads get yer mojo back pleeeeeese you have the talent, get your minds in the right place. Cofidis need a big kick up the arse for not even trying, I think Navarro was the only red jersey up front for one stage and I’m glad to see you’ve binned the bully Buhahahahani. Calmejane, what a talent, so too Groanwaggon .. honest plain clean and fast. Astana, apart from one stage looked lacklustre.. Vino was missing, what’s wrong with the team? Lost whatever they had a few years ago, I’d go so far as saying they should be dropped from next years event. Scott did really well, some excellent and exciting performance from Yates. Dan Martin played out Dan martin without support yet again.. UAE ought to find someone who supports Dan and find them quickly. John Degenkolb, Awesome 💪🚀

Sky, well yeah kinda. After Fromages AAF that turned the whole Tour into a Greek tragedy before it even got underway, they proved that turning up planned and prepared makes for good outcomes. The derision from some supporters was inevitable IMO, and Fromage played a blinder in keeping his manner and coolness under very extreme pressure on and off the bike… but he looked cooked, pale and lacking the bite he normally has. The rest of the squad performed flawlessly and Moscon gained a place in the WWF I hear. Geraint, what can you say? Too little time (and I’ve got meetings to attend) but purely simple and effective with his own humble stamp writ large over a Tour that always courts controversy.

Sagan, he’s the winner IMO. The sport of cycling needs Geraint and Sags But needs Sags more. Talent, humour and honour in bucketfuls and a wet dream for marketers. Long may Geraint and Sags ride out in the same Tours.

Too many mountains, too hard mountain stages, too long stages in the mountains. Cut down both length and gradient and that will encourage the big lads to ride along too, remember them?

But it was the short mountain stages that did for them. I like the inclusion of short snappy stages, though the cut off time clearly needs some looking at.

Some impressive sportsmanship on display – Alaphillipe/Yates and Sagan crashing just to give himself some sort of competition.

A big thank you to you Lunge.  Another year over.

Enjoyed this tour, better than previous years (I say this every year).

G a hero and well deserved winner.  Froome a gentleman in his patience and tolerance of the idiots.

I could go through all the others but think Bikebuoy has it covered.

See you all for the Vuelta.

Great Daily threads.. thanks for the effort.

Wonder why G didnt ride over the finish line with the whole team?

Good Tour but probably not a classic. My biggest disappointment was the fantasy website thing getting closed down, I had G and Sagan in my team 🙁

Thanks lunge. Much appreciated

G a hero and well deserved winner. Froome a gentleman in his patience and tolerance of the idiots.

Well said.

Thanks for the threads Lunge, I’ve enjoyed this years tour and admire both G and Froome for the way they’ve ridden. Pity about Cav, but he’s had a good run.

Biggest fools award goes to the Gendarmes for: not keeping the crowd the right side of the barriers which led to Porte’s crash; pepper spraying the peleton; dragging Froome off his bike causing him to crash and trashing his bike; and finally for walking across the finish line and triggering the timing sensors………………….

Big love here for Dan Martin and Julian Alaphilippe for their endless appetite for attack. Huge respect for G, who was faultless and real. And great to see Froomey’s obvious delight for his mate, he actually seemed more pleased about G’s win than he ever has for his own. Oddly not winning seemed to humanise him, so in a way he also won.

Felt so sorry for Adam Yates when he crashed on that descent into Luchon, though he’d arguably have had trouble holding off Alaphilippe regardless. I also felt perversely sorry for Gianni Moscon, who seems like a cycling version of Paul Gascoigne. Huge talent undermined by the fact that he appears to be a massive idiot with serious anger management issues. It just seems like a huge waste of potential and almost an insult to those riders who can only dream of having as much natural ability as him.

I can’t imagine he has a future at Sky now. Not just due to him being a PR disaster, but because he’s a liability in performance terms. How can you ever pick him for a major stage race team and know that he won’t be kicked off the race for some mad moment.

In contrast, Egan Bernal was just phenomenal. To perform like that in the mountains and finish 15th in GC into the bargain – don’t forget he crashed twice early in the race – in his first Tour at the age of 21 all the while looking like he’s been bossing the peloton on the climbs for years was just immense.

Wonder why G didnt ride over the finish line with the whole team?

I suspect it’s just not in his character. And more pragmatically, it denied the boo-boys an opportunity to have a go at the team. There’s a hilarious video on, I think, Luke Rowe’s twitter feed where they’re sat on the bus before the final stage and Froome says something along the lines of ‘best crowds ever…’ Bit like the pre-race presentation when they interviewed G on the stage and he said, absolutely straight faced, ‘We love the French’. Anyway…

The one thing i can’t work out is how the team competition works, how does Movistar win team contest with one stage win and GC riders way back in standings, yet Sky have more stage wins and finished first and third and with more riders higher up in the stages?

(should maybe actually read ASO website on this is calculated!).

@scud – the team competition is the lowest aggregate time of the three best riders from each team on each stage. This is then accumulated through the race. It’s not the aggregate of the overall times of a team’s top three riders. Hopefully that explains it (but I’m not sure!).

Enjoyed this tour, fantastic that Thomas won, but if it hadn’t been for partisan interest in him winning it wasn’t a phenomenally exciting GC competition IMO. Not that that takes anything away from his win. Shame Porte and Uran crashed out as it would have been good to have more contenders to keep things spicy. Bardet clearly wasn’t quite there which is a real shame. As people have said Movistar need to sort it out as they are a massive waste of talent at the moment.

Otherwise some great displays of riding and sportsmanship.

Movistar met their objective – they won their precious team competition – cumulative time of top three riders less time bonuses. The prestigious yellow number, but not the jersey, Sky had G and Froome, followed by Bernal. Movistar squeaked it by about five minutes. If Bernal had been five minutes faster, he’d have taken the white jersey.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Team_classification_in_the_Tour_de_France

Lots of pretty pictures for your lunchtime enjoyment,

http://www.cyclingnews.com/features/2018-tour-de-france-in-pictures-gallery/

Shame also the race lost Nibali, not sure if he’d have done much but it would have been good to find out.

Taking a non-British non-Sky view I think this Tour under-delivered:

– so much potential in the GC lost due to silly crashes (Porte, Nibali, Uran)

– so much potential in the GC just didn’t surface (Bardet, Quintana, Landa)

– so much potential lost in the sprints due to short stages (Gaviria, Kittel, Cav, Griepel, Groanywagon)

– no adverse weather impacts – rain and echelons

But I thought it was spectacular! All the podiums were well deserved.

oh and it seems Movistar are trying to clone champions:

Thomas or Soler?

Shame about Porte and Nibili. Would have been nice to see them fight!

I reckon Nibz has had it for GT’s now. Could do the Giro and if Bahrain threw a team together for him I reckon he could do it.

But he’s built a week long/classics team around him for some reason, so like Tom all the “contenders” do is stay in the same pack as Sky…

And that’s a bit 45k rolling Dull.

Nah, Nibs for the Lombardy/Spring/Asian-Middle Eastern Tours now.

I purposely didn’t comment on Bardet, for the main reason I think he needs a rest and recoup. He looks way underweight and knackered and it would be unfair to criticise him becuse the lads been like this for about a year now… and I reckon he knows it.

Baguettes, pastries, coffee and a holiday.

AG2r did perform rather well all things considered, FDJ on the other hand always lack zing and panache… Démare is the talent, but Vichot is a cool kid.. quite why he didn’t shine through is baffling.

Really don’t know why Movistar are bothered about the team prize, unless they think it’s the only thing they have a plan to win to give the sponsors something to shout about. It’s also valverde still hanging about expecting special treatment, someone should tell him to sod off. they need to focus on Landa and Soler, I’m not sure what to make of Nairo.

So happy that G won it, I very rarely have favourite riders but he is one and I’ve been hoping for years he’ll have a decent performance in a GT but didn’t think it would be TdF.

Shame to see Cav off the pace, it really is brutal the way you win one year then don’t the next for a sprinter and there’s seemingly no way back. However finishing the stage outside the time cut was properly classy.

Interesting question is what do Sky do now for the Vuelta?? they could go stage hunting or would they give G the option? he’s had a long season so maybe not, what about Bernal ???

Top class write-up from Inrng below, well worth a read.

http://inrng.com/2018/07/the-moment-the-2018-tour-de-france-was-won/

I really want to see a French contender, I thought Bardet would have been ready but maybe he does need to rest or change his approach. there do seem to be too many teams in France with no team selecting the best of the best

Really don’t know why Movistar are bothered about the team prize

Well if you want to win something pick something no one else is even remotely interested in.

I’d hope they’d give G the option of the Vuelta as Froome has ruled it out.

Unless Wout fancies a go?

Won’t be Bernal for the Vuelta as he’s already done 2 GT’s this year, Wout maybe or a Henao? Or they could really throw it out there and give Geoghegan-Hart a free rein.

Would love to see Movistar start thinking like acting like a GC team, i think Landa has to be the best all-rounder in the team now, imagine if they actually built a team around him and used Valverde and Quintana as domestiques with Soler (bringing him on to take over), i think Quintana is too much of a pure climber and Valverde whilst still strong is on the downslope of his career.

Again i’d love to see Dan Martin ride a Grand Tour just once with a great team around him and see just what he is capable of

Really don’t know why Movistar are bothered about the team prize

Being a one trick pony is better than being a no trick pony

Given the ages of both Froome and G, how many grand tours do you think they have left in them, and where is the next generation for Sky?

Personnally I think they will go for Froome for next years tour to equal the record. After that, G may get one more shot. But who takes over then? Bernal will only be 23? by then and probably to young to lead despite his obvious ability.

Well if you want to win something pick something no one else is even remotely interested in.

Teams take this prize seriously. It gets all your guys on the podium in front of the Arc. If you can’t get a rider in one of the jersey’s it’s still very good for publicity and the sponsor should be happy

Same reasoning behind getting a rider in the breakaway doomed to fail, you still get millions of viewers seeing the sponsors logo for 4 hours

This year’s race was actually a bit of a surprise, and had an unexpected degree of competition with Dumoulin actually making it seem close. And Thomas winning is something new, and well-deserved.

But watching, it didn’t feel like there were genuine contenders, and in a way G winning reinforced how little competition there really is. Every year before the start, there’s talk of of one of the Yates challenging, Quintana being a thread, Valverde perhaps going close, Nibali, Porte and so on. And every year, the race shows that there really isn’t any competition to Sky.

– Porte, perenially unlucky and destined to crash out.

– Nibali: genuinely unfortunate; he wasn’t really challenging, but may have had a shot at the podium

– Quintana: just isn’t the threat he’s hyped up to be.

– Movistar in general: the ‘trident’ approach always seemed wrong-headed, like they didn’t have the balls to tell two of them that they’re supporting the third. And there were moments – like when Landa needed pacing back up to the peloton in the Alps, leaving Quintana and Valverde with no support – that it was clear how misguided it was.

– Bardet: just no. He’s not a genuine contender, and his team isn’t strong enough anyway.

– Yates, Dumoulin, Dan Martin, some others: excellent riders, and may have TdF wins ahead of them. But right now their teams just can’t match Sky, and nor are they strong enough to sieze the opportunity when Sky slip up.

It was noticeable how virtually every attack and challenge (with the occasional exception of Roglic, and Movistar) was dependent on a single rider. Dumoulin was virtually unsupported at the pointy end of the race, and so his achievements are even more impressive.

It’s why people hate Sky – not because of the clumsy, somewhat incendiary comments, or even the brown bag affair, but because they stifle the race. They are the equivalent of Man United under Mourinho; what we all enjoy watching is Liverpool under Klopp, who could win 6-0, draw 3-3, or lose 6-4 and play an exciting game while doing so. Really, I guess it shows the disparity between what teams want (to win) and what fans want (excitement).

Still, I’ll be watching next year!

But watching, it didn’t feel like there were genuine contenders, and in a way G winning reinforced how little competition there really is. Every year before the start, there’s talk of of one of the Yates challenging, Quintana being a thread, Valverde perhaps going close, Nibali, Porte and so on. And every year, the race shows that there really isn’t any competition to Sky.

Get used to it. I have been watching the tour for 30 years and the most exciting tours have always been the ones fuelled by peds (with the exception of the Indurain years which were dull as ditch water)

In this era of cleaner competition this sort of racing will be the norm I`m afraid. All the more reason to split the tour in two. One tour for the clean athletes, and one tour were you are allowed to take as many drugs/transfusions as you like, I know which edition would be more exciting to watch.

Taking a non-British non-Sky view I think this Tour under-delivered…

Tend to agree. Maybe expectations are high coming off the back of the Giro, but there could have been so much more. It was good, but not great. Some big names sadly missing, and others just not firing.

I think G’s win is great though, and well deserved. Even from a non-British view, I think people the world over will appreciate that, just like with Degenkolb’s emotional win on the cobbled stage. That stuff is great for cycling, and is a welcome change from the months of negativity which preceded it.

Bernal will only be 23? by then and probably to young to lead despite his obvious ability.

Jan Ulrich won the Tdf when he was 23. Eddy Merckx also won his first Tdf when he was 23