Also once it is over it's harder to talk about the last week, because all is settled no new predictions only conclusions. So I have to go back to the 2 other articles to see my thoughts and considerations and sum it all up.
It didn't go as I thought although I got it right in what comes to Quintana winning back some time from Froome. And he did attack on both Stage 19 and Stage 20. What surprises me is that it was indeed due to the Sky team that Froome kept the yellow jersey, on the climb to Alpe d'Huez. I thought he could defend alone but he couldn't. He really needed help from his team-mates and 3 of them actually. If Sky would have been exhausted as suggested in earlier stages and Froome isolated, I think he would have lost several minutes and the Tour.
But Movistar was also great (they won the team classification) and sent several riders up the road on multiple occasions. Quintana and Valverde attacked in turns. Cycling is both a team and individual effort. To win you need a strong individual but he himself needs a good team that defends him and supports him when required. And is very tactical too. During the last week of the Tour we saw all of this in all its glory. It was cycling at its best and it was great.
Froome won by just 1m12s and Quintana claimed he lost the Tour on the first week, during the classics-like stages. To some extent he is right, since the overall contenders are not supposed to loose time before the time-trials or the mountains. But considering the type of stages, and what we had last year with a equivalent route, it was normal for some favourite to loose time. And Quintana is not experienced in this sort of stages so he was one of the bets to loose time during week 1.
But for me, in reality Quintana lost the Tour on Stage 10, the first mountain stage and on the final climb to La Pierre Saint-Martin. This was a HC climb finish, Quintana was supposed to win time to Froome on this kind of stages. And he lost 1m04s. On top of that he was beaten to 2nd by Richie Porte, thus loosing out on the bonus seconds.
And for me this is what made this year Tour even more exciting. It was actually defined by a direct confrontation between the top 2 riders!
Moving down the order, during week 2 people were talking about the "Big 5" and we finished the Tour with big 5, but Valverde took the place of Van Garderen that quit the race on Stage 17, after the second rest day.
Again the rest day made an bad impact on the race. I have heard people saying that rest days during big races can cause problems to a lot of riders and this was confirmed yet again.
But in the end it was better that Valverde replaced Van Garderen in the so called "Big 5" group. With this the "Big 5" actually finished on the top 5 and for the first time in the Tour de France history the Top 5 were all Grand Tour winners.
One of these winners, was the defending champion Nibali. I had written him off but he came back strong. And won a stage too! He started the last week on 8th place and gained back 4. And kept almost the exact same time gap to Froome. I am convinced that he hit his peak form during the Alps. If not for the technical problem just before the climb to Alpe d'Huez I believe he would have attacked early on and go with Quintana and would be very close to dump Valverde off the podium
As for Contador he was not really in the mix. Lost time in almost all stages and although was a constant feature in the group of favourites, just had a couple of irrelevant attacks. Still he made the Top 5, a very illustrious Top 5 but for me it confirmed that winning more than one Grand Tour in the same year should be impossible, specially in current times were the anti-doping seems to be more effective.
The third week also brought another 2 French wins on home soil, by two of the promising young riders, Bardet and Pinot. And they were a constant presence in the mountains, finishing on the Top 10 on several occasions. Bardet even went for the polka-dot jersey but it was a failed attempt. With the fight for the yellow jersey raging on and double points on the climbs' finishes, it was almost certain he would loose it. And he lost it to Froome that add it to the overall victory, another rare occurrence.
Of course the 3rd week is usually all about the mountains with some flatter stages in between, but that didn't stop Sagan to be part of the breakaway group on 4 consecutive days. It was all about wining the intermediate sprints thus ensuring victory on the points classification. But still he finished second on a medium mountain stage in the middle of the Alps, surrounded by climbers.
I said it before and will say it again, this guy will evolve into a different rider. He can sprint with the best of the best, can win classics and can win time trials. He handles the mountains pretty well for his physique. There will be a day that he will win a multiple stages race (a tour). Oh wait, he did it already, he won this year's Tour of California...
And so there is, my final thoughts on the 2015 Tour de France. Of course it was the bigger article because the race ended so more subjects to discuss.
In the next days I will distribute the Tour 2015 BaKano Awards, like I did 3 years ago when an British also won the Tour de France. But for now I end on 2 important notes.
The Best: The route. It was great with a classics-like first week, no big individual time trial, and 2 huge mountain stages just before Paris (the celebration stage). It really made the show.
The Worst: I have to say this because it really annoyed me: the stupid spectators on the big climbs. First we have the usual habit of being too close to the riders and then we had the ones insulting and throwing piss at Chris Froome. But it was clear to me when watching the re-run of Stage 20 that one third of the spectators there just want to appear on TV and actually use the top riders for attention; another third are only concerned on taking pictures and videos to share on social media, just for the sake of proving "I was there" and since they only see the action through the lenses, they stick the cameras in front of everybody (I predict that in the near future it will be drones getting in the way); it seems that only the final third are there to see road cycling.
-----
<== Second part article
No comments:
Post a Comment