Cycling 2024

The problem I have with "casual" fans is that they pop up every year around summer during the Tour, but show absolute ignorance on the riders and judge their riders entirely on that 3 week period of performance.

The Tour is, more often than not, an absolutely shit race.

In the past 15 years, the only fun races were 2019 and 2022. The others were just awful and predictable or just downright boring. Things are slightly better since 2021 with someone to challenge Pogacar (Vingegaard).

Tactics are the same, either ride a train until you reach the end where your rider doesn't lose any time in a protection for GC (most of Sky era, Roglic, etc), or you ride a train until everyone is isolated and then you bomb an attack (Pogacar).

There are no 'all or nothing' far out raids, like Fuente Di, Formigal, Colle Delle Finestre at the Tour, and any you see will be at the Giro or Vuelta in terms of grand tours. Everyone races so conservatively. You don't see the Voecklers trying to hang on (Juju in 2019), you don't see 6 man mano-a-mano up top, you don't see long raid team attacks like Fuente Di or Formigal, you don't see perfect teamwork with riders up the road providing support, satelitte domestiques, you don't see riders who are amazing in the mountains but are weaker in TT's compared to the other contenders so they try crazy attacks (Contador, Quintana, Bardet) etc. It's just a shit race 95% of the time.

And the fans that come during these three weeks make judgements based on this.

Comparing Remco and Vingegaard is bizarre comparison. Vingegaard is shit at one day races and doesn't even bother - His positioning is bad, his bike handling is bad and his tactical timings are bad. He is basically an uber-Froome.

Vingegaard is a pure old school GC/stage race rider who doesn't really do anything else. Remco is an all rounder who competes in the Ardennes, the autumn classics and other one day races.

They are two completely different profiles of riders.

I don't even like Remco, he's a cocky little shit who rides for Lefevere, an absolute twat of the highest order, but for someone to come and disrespect Remco because of their perceived ability at the Tour de France is pretty antagonizing.

Tour doesn't even make my top 5 races of the year. De Ronde/Paris Roubaix are interchangably #1 and #'2, The giro always provides fireworks and honestly Amstel Gold is a far more fun race to watch than the Tour. LBL used to be incredible but now everyone just attacks up La Redoute and it's pretty predictable.

The only WT races more boring than the tour are the flat sprinters classics like Frankfurt and Hamburg, MSR pre Poggio/Cipressa and the ultimate shit stage race Itzulia Basque.
 
Where are the Danish fans today?

/s

In all fairness, great stage. UAE finally played a blinder tactically with Yates going up and forcing Matteo Jorgenson to blow out leaving Jonas with no more help. Then Pogi bridged to Yates, got a little help and TT the last 2-3 kilometers for a nice 39 seconds gap.

Tour is by no means over, but I feel a lot better today than 3-4 days ago.
 
Mike Smalling said:
Huge win for Pogacar. Massive momentum swing and confidence booster. Vingegaard could sort of maintain the gap on the steeper section, but once it flattened out a bit, Pogacar could still go all out and really expand the gap. He's really been able to use that insane explosivity at the exact right moments this year to create the gap right before ideal terrain, where Jonas hasn't been able to close it.

It seems silly to declare the Tour over after every stage, as lots can still happen, but that was big. It might take one of Pogacar's patented cracks for Vingegaard to take the lead.
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It will still be interesting to see whether Vingegaard can outlast Pogacar on long, steep, monotonous climbs. There are signs that could point towards this. But yeah, Pertus now looks more like a fluke than a shift in the balance of power and Pogi is the overwhelming favourite. He and UAE rode a perfect race, and Visma did nothing to make life difficult for them, surprisingly reactive tactics from a team that is behind.
 
Jumbo Visma have spent far too long with the strongest domestiques so they have no idea how to tactically race. Even in the one day races, they've fallen off.

Laporte, Van Baarle, Tratnik, Van Aert, Benoot go BRRR doesn't work when half of them are injured.
 
AfonsoAlves said:
Jumbo Visma have spent far too long with the strongest domestiques so they have no idea how to tactically race. Even in the one day races, they've fallen off.

Laporte, Van Baarle, Tratnik, Van Aert, Benoot go BRRR doesn't work when half of them are injured.
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To be fair, any team will struggle if they lose such quality.

Pogi is such a joy to watch. That cnut of a spectator, absolutely ridiciolous.
 
Eendracht maakt macht said:
To be fair, any team will struggle if they lose such quality.

Pogi is such a joy to watch. That cnut of a spectator, absolutely ridiciolous.
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Peak Deceunick-Quickstep had some remarkable results from just tactics.

They would put 5 very good (but not elite) classics guys with 2 domestiques into every 1 day race and won about 85% of all the spring classics this way.

The likes of Senechal, Lampaerts, Asgreen, Jungels, Stybar, Terpstra won races through sheer teamwork.

It's why when these riders left they were nowhere near as good and it was also why even when a few are out injured or don't perform they still won with lesser riders.

Stybar's win in E3 Harelbeke 2019 was a classic example of this. Jungels went off the front early, Stybar sat in on the chase group and when everyone worked he did nothing, resulting in him winning the sprint.
 
AfonsoAlves said:
Jumbo Visma have spent far too long with the strongest domestiques so they have no idea how to tactically race.
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They've made great use of tactics the last two Tour de Frances, even if they did it with the strongest domestiques. What should they have done differently today tactically? Seemed clear that they wanted to rest WVA and Laporte for tomorrow and other than that just stay with Vingegaard for as long as possible with Kelderman and Jorgensson.
 
Mike Smalling said:
They've made great use of tactics the last two Tour de Frances, even if they did it with the strongest domestiques. What should they have done differently today tactically? Seemed clear that they wanted to rest WVA and Laporte for tomorrow and other than that just stay with Vingegaard for as long as possible with Kelderman and Jorgensson.
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Jorgensen got burnt chasing down Adam Yates.
 
AfonsoAlves said:
The problem I have with "casual" fans is that they pop up every year around summer during the Tour, but show absolute ignorance on the riders and judge their riders entirely on that 3 week period of performance.

The Tour is, more often than not, an absolutely shit race.

In the past 15 years, the only fun races were 2019 and 2022. The others were just awful and predictable or just downright boring. Things are slightly better since 2021 with someone to challenge Pogacar (Vingegaard).

Tactics are the same, either ride a train until you reach the end where your rider doesn't lose any time in a protection for GC (most of Sky era, Roglic, etc), or you ride a train until everyone is isolated and then you bomb an attack (Pogacar).

There are no 'all or nothing' far out raids, like Fuente Di, Formigal, Colle Delle Finestre at the Tour, and any you see will be at the Giro or Vuelta in terms of grand tours. Everyone races so conservatively. You don't see the Voecklers trying to hang on (Juju in 2019), you don't see 6 man mano-a-mano up top, you don't see long raid team attacks like Fuente Di or Formigal, you don't see perfect teamwork with riders up the road providing support, satelitte domestiques, you don't see riders who are amazing in the mountains but are weaker in TT's compared to the other contenders so they try crazy attacks (Contador, Quintana, Bardet) etc. It's just a shit race 95% of the time.

And the fans that come during these three weeks make judgements based on this.

Comparing Remco and Vingegaard is bizarre comparison. Vingegaard is shit at one day races and doesn't even bother - His positioning is bad, his bike handling is bad and his tactical timings are bad. He is basically an uber-Froome.

Vingegaard is a pure old school GC/stage race rider who doesn't really do anything else. Remco is an all rounder who competes in the Ardennes, the autumn classics and other one day races.

They are two completely different profiles of riders.

I don't even like Remco, he's a cocky little shit who rides for Lefevere, an absolute twat of the highest order, but for someone to come and disrespect Remco because of their perceived ability at the Tour de France is pretty antagonizing.

Tour doesn't even make my top 5 races of the year. De Ronde/Paris Roubaix are interchangably #1 and #'2, The giro always provides fireworks and honestly Amstel Gold is a far more fun race to watch than the Tour. LBL used to be incredible but now everyone just attacks up La Redoute and it's pretty predictable.

The only WT races more boring than the tour are the flat sprinters classics like Frankfurt and Hamburg, MSR pre Poggio/Cipressa and the ultimate shit stage race Itzulia Basque.
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I get what you’re saying about the TdF, but it’s far & away the race with the highest level. It’s the race where the best athletes in cycling all compete in and it has a great deal of history. Races like a one day classic Tour de Flanders, or a 3 week Giro even, might be more fun for the hard core cycling fans, but in terms of importance and the level of cycling nothing beats le Tour. Winning the yellow jersey is the highest achievement you can reach in cycling (or arguably any endurance sport), no other race or gold medal will ever beat that.
My personal favorites in terms of races are the WC & Olympic road races, but there’s also something special about the TdF. Even in boring years the mountain stages, particularly the first 2 or 3, are for me sports porn.
 
Eendracht maakt macht said:
Pogi is such a joy to watch. That cnut of a spectator, absolutely ridiciolous.
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Yeah, what happened there? Did he try to force food on Pogacar of something? It didn't look malicious to me (on quick glance), but it's obviously unacceptable behaviour.
 
Rams said:
I get what you’re saying about the TdF, but it’s far & away the race with the highest level. It’s the race where the best athletes in cycling all compete in and it has a great deal of history. Races like a one day classic Tour de Flanders, or a 3 week Giro even, might be more fun for the hard core cycling fans, but in terms of importance and the level of cycling nothing beats le Tour. Winning the yellow jersey is the highest achievement you can reach in cycling (or arguably any endurance sport), no other race or gold medal will ever beat that.
My personal favorites in terms of races are the WC & Olympic road races, but there’s also something special about the TdF. Even in boring years the mountain stages, particularly the first 2 or 3, are for me sports porn.
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You're technically correct, it's the races where the best riders go to. And you're also right in that it's the most important race for all sponsors and teams in the calender.

But here's where the problem lies. The majority of the best riders go there and are reduced to Super-domestique roles. This has been the problem for so so long and has been the case since the Lance era.

Riders like Jorgensen, Kuss in other years, Adam Yates, etc are forced to do dog work because Tour GC is so important. It takes the most talented riders and turns them into boring machines.

My biggest example of this in the past 10 years is Michal Kwiatkowski. Kwiato could have had one of the greatest palmares ever, close to Peter Sagan levels, but Ineos/Sky turned him into a domestique machine pulling a train for km's in the mountains for Froome, Thomas and later Bernal/Carapaz. Kwiato could have challenged Sagan for the Green jersey, could have won multiple KOM jerseys, and won far more one days classics/monuments were he allowed to prioritize them over peaking for Skytrain. Think about how many Giro/Vuelta stages the man could have won.

Kwiatkowski always peaks for tour. It's also true that he's in the shape of his life there.

But if you want to see him at his actual best performances where he's riding to his maximum capacity and not just domestique work, you'd have to watch Milan-San Remo, or E3 Harelbeke, or Strade Bianche or Amstel Gold, etc. You do not get to see what Michal Kwiatkowski is capable of at the tour. Everyone watching the tour who only watches the tour thinks "Wow this guy is really good at riding on the front pulling his leader over the mountains," and not, "This guy is one of the best true all rounders in the 2010's of cycling with an excellent punch, decent sprint, amazing time trialist, and fantastic on the cobbles."
 
Rams said:
I get what you’re saying about the TdF, but it’s far & away the race with the highest level. It’s the race where the best athletes in cycling all compete in and it has a great deal of history. Races like a one day classic Tour de Flanders, or a 3 week Giro even, might be more fun for the hard core cycling fans, but in terms of importance and the level of cycling nothing beats le Tour. Winning the yellow jersey is the highest achievement you can reach in cycling (or arguably any endurance sport), no other race or gold medal will ever beat that.
My personal favorites in terms of races are the WC & Olympic road races, but there’s also something special about the TdF. Even in boring years the mountain stages, particularly the first 2 or 3, are for me sports porn.
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This I have to disagree with, if we go back the past 10 tours:

2014 -> No competition, Nibali was already 2 and a half minutes ahead by the first mountain stage and his closest competitors Contador and Froome had crashed out before a single mountain had been climbed.

2015 -> No competition. After the first mountain stage, the Froome + Porte combination put 2 minutes into almost everyone that wasn't Quintana. The only thing that made this even remotely interesting was froome got ill towards the end so *maybe* Quintana could have closed the 5 minute gap.

2016 -> First mountain stage, the peloton soft pedalled it. 2nd mountain stage was fun because froome did the supertuck. Every other mountain stage was boring skytrain that Froome didn't care about because he just battered everyone on TT's. The best bit of fun all tour was the infamous Froome running up Ventoux.

2017 -> Awful Tour. Mikel Landa dragging Froome around the mountains and Froome winning with the TT's.

2018 -> Sky Train pulling everyone up, Thomas outsprints/attacks with 1km to go, all tour. Dumo and Froome were cooked from the Giro.

2019 -> Amazing Tour.

2020 -> The most awful. Jumbo train with 300m to go, Roglic sprint. Lose on La Planche des belles files.

2021 -> Awful. Pogacar crushes everyone on first mountain stage.

2022 -> Jumbo vs Pogacar, decent tour.

2023 -> Jumbo vs Pogacar until Pogacar collapses. Boring tour.

2024 -> meh
 
Cheimoon said:
Yeah, what happened there? Did he try to force food on Pogacar of something? It didn't look malicious to me (on quick glance), but it's obviously unacceptable behaviour.
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He did the same on Vingegaard. A neutral cycling hooligan. Thats a new one.
 
AfonsoAlves said:
Comparing Remco and Vingegaard is bizarre comparison. Vingegaard is shit at one day races and doesn't even bother - His positioning is bad, his bike handling is bad and his tactical timings are bad. He is basically an uber-Froome.
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His bike handling is perfectly fine. Technically he is as good a descender as Pogacar, for example, he just can't put out the same watts on the less steep parts. His TT'ing is also really good, and that certainly requires some bike handling as well. And what do you even mean about his positioning? He's almost always where he has to be in the peloton to stay out of trouble.

AfonsoAlves said:
There are no 'all or nothing' far out raids, like Fuente Di, Formigal, Colle Delle Finestre at the Tour, and any you see will be at the Giro or Vuelta in terms of grand tours. Everyone races so conservatively. You don't see the Voecklers trying to hang on (Juju in 2019), you don't see 6 man mano-a-mano up top, you don't see long raid team attacks like Fuente Di or Formigal, you don't see perfect teamwork with riders up the road providing support, satelitte domestiques
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Jumbo has often used this tactic in the mountain stages over the last years, and it was a critical part of their strategy in some of the stages where Vingegaard has gained time over Pogacar in the last few years (like WVA up the road on Hautacam in 2022, or Benoot and Kelderman on the Col de la Loze stage).

I also can't believe you thought last years Tour was boring. The main GC battle was incredibly tight going into week three, and there were plenty of exciting breakaway stage wins. This era is certainly preferable to Armstrong winning with 6 minutes or more for seven consecutive years.
 
Mike Smalling said:
His bike handling is perfectly fine. Technically he is as good a descender as Pogacar, for example, he just can't put out the same watts on the less steep parts. His TT'ing is also really good, and that certainly requires some bike handling as well. And what do you even mean about his positioning? He's almost always where he has to be in the peloton to stay out of trouble.



Jumbo has often used this tactic in the mountain stages over the last years, and it was a critical part of their strategy in some of the stages where Vingegaard has gained time over Pogacar in the last few years (like WVA up the road on Hautacam in 2022, or Benoot and Kelderman on the Col de la Loze stage).

I also can't believe you thought last years Tour was boring. The main GC battle was incredibly tight going into week three, and there were plenty of exciting breakaway stage wins. This era is certainly preferable to Armstrong winning with 6 minutes or more for seven consecutive years.
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Pogacar's descending is incredibly overrated and is problematic, he is decent on descents due to power, not technique. Vingegaard also is the same.

His positioning in Grand tours is fine, i'm not saying the guy is Ethan Hayter by any stretch of the imagination. But so was Froome's. Froome's positioning in one day races was horrible, and so has Vingegaard's in the short span he's actually done them.

When I talk about Bike handling I don't talk about TT's. Hayter and Roglic are both very proficient TT'ers but both absolutely suck at Bike handling. Vingegaard is better than these two, but it still lacks. Look at the way he corners on descents, and on apex's and you can see there are serious deficiencies.

Compare Vingegaard to MVDP/Pidcock/WVA/Sagan/Juju/Politt and you can see the difference is clear as day.

When I say the race is boring I don't mean teams like Jumbo/UAE doing it. I mean I miss the days when you have all the teams sending riders into the break for all or nothing attacks. Only person who used to do this was Nairo and Contador.
 
AfonsoAlves said:
Pogacar's descending is incredibly overrated and is problematic, he is decent on descents due to power, not technique. Vingegaard also is the same.

His positioning in Grand tours is fine, i'm not saying the guy is Ethan Hayter by any stretch of the imagination. But so was Froome's. Froome's positioning in one day races was horrible, and so has Vingegaard's in the short span he's actually done them.

When I talk about Bike handling I don't talk about TT's. Hayter and Roglic are both very proficient TT'ers but both absolutely suck at Bike handling. Vingegaard is better than these two, but it still lacks. Look at the way he corners on descents, and on apex's and you can see there are serious deficiencies.

Compare Vingegaard to MVDP/Pidcock/WVA/Sagan/Juju/Politt and you can see the difference is clear as day.

When I say the race is boring I don't mean teams like Jumbo/UAE doing it. I mean I miss the days when you have all the teams sending riders into the break for all or nothing attacks. Only person who used to do this was Nairo and Contador.
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Of course he can't compare to the likes of Pidcock, MVDP, WVA and so on. The riders that have a background in cyclocross or mountain biking tend to have far superior bike handling skills. I just don't think it's a weakness that's really going to cost him in stage races. It's not really bad compared to the people he is up against.

You are probably right that the race has become a lot more formulaic than previous years. This year we've also seen examples of UAE simply not being willing to let the break go, and they have the strength to pull it back at will, so that naturally limits other teams appetite to attack - that's definitely a shame. I'd love to see some of the stronger riders split more between the teams, like you mentioned with Kwiatkowski. Someone like Adam Yates is just way too good to be a domestique, but I guess he is satisfied with one or two chances to win a smaller stage race every year.
 
Mikel Landa is so odd.

Always does so well when he isn't in the spotlight and is a domestique/2nd option. The moment he is given freedom to be Leader he crashes and burns/is meh.
 
Pretty impressive from a bigger guy like Jorgensson to pull for this long and drop Rodriguez. Vingegaard launches.
 
Pogi doesn't look good :nervous: shoulders sagging and weaving.

but he could be bluffing.
 
Pogacar is just streets ahead it seems. Which is crazy considering Vingegaard also seems way ahead of the rest.
 
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