Le Bore de France 2012

I never really liked the way Armstrong went about winning the Tour de France with little respect for the rest of cyclings monuments, it almost felt like a cynical clinching of the sports top proze without really appreciating the history and breadth & depth of the sport....but as already stated, innocent until proved guilty - we seem to have a two level system of sanctions in cycling, where Contador was allowed to continue until proved guilty (not necessarily of cheating, but certainly of allowing an illegal subsatnce into his body), and on the other hand we just association with a certain doctor and your're banned for 2 years - strangely 'Operacion Puerto' only seemed to affect the cyclists on that black list, whereas the footballers, basketball players, and tennis players (inc. Rapha Nadal) continued in their sports with impunity! Cycling is doiung more to cut out drugs than any other sport, but we should not lose sight of the levels of justice we would expect as the public in our lives - innocent until proved guilty!

Innocent until proven guilty mate.

Please don't mention Lance Armstrong in the same breath as legitimate Tour participants.

Tosh!

Long time race fan about to abandon all pro racing. Why? Boring. Here's how to fix it: 1. Get rid of race radios between riders and directors. The computer calculated chases have to stop. Allow one frequency to all riders for neutral safety communiques. 2. Bring back time bonuses in a big way. Including many (5-10) intermediate bonuses where only "X" number of riders will earn time. This begins with maybe 75% of the field early on progressing down to only the top 10 GC riders towards the end (like in the final mountain stages). Say in the first week it progresses based on the first "X" number of defined riders crossing the line and the "X" drops from 75% to 30% of the field. Thereafter, the "X" becomes the top 25 riders on GC and drops to the top 10. Since the top 10 usually comes from top 25 by this point anyway you aren't losing anything by eliminating the rest of the field for bonuses. At this point ALL these riders will earn bonuses AS WELL AS THEIR TRUE GAP DIFFERENTIALS REGARDLESS OF WHETHER OR NOT THEY ARE IN THE SAME GROUP OR NOT. GPS locators will be used for this. This means every guy eligible for a time bonus will not only race for supremacy over the line but also for gaps between his foes! Awesome! Eventually you will have all top 10 GC riders competing for their time multiple times a stage. And the progressive nature of it ensures the usual GC contenders have every opportunity to end up in the top 10. 3. Reduce stage distances drastically so that the riders don't have to conserve for 5 hours for that last 110% output to the finish. This will give them more energy for the multiple time bonus efforts. These changes will force exciting racing throughout the stages and throughout the tour.

Cycling IS boring just like long distance running, because it's only about stamina and no technical skill needed in comparison to Football and most other sports. They try to make it interesting with all these different jerseys, sprint bonuses, team tactics etc. but it fails. It's just a circus. All these riders do,is suffer for three weeks, and people enjoy watching them suffer, it's pathetic. It's even worse than watching porn. How can you enjoy to watch men just suffer 4 hours a day for 3 weeks??? I like sport when it is still a game, still enjoyable and exciting for the players. I don't like when sport becomes hard, suffering work. It's like prostitution really. They get paid to perform like robots.

Great reading all these comments, you guys are teaching me loads about Le Tour. It's never boring, of course, but wasn't there a sense of inevitability about the GC result once Wiggins got yellow? For sure, the battles for the other jerseys were nail biting (particularly Voeckler), but the Sky team never once really looked in trouble. It's at lot to do with Brailsford, don't you reckon?; I read an interview in which he said 'Some teams don't even know where their riders are between tours, let alone what they are doing. It's bonkers''

"Mate you’re kidding yourself if you think Wiggins is of a similar climbing ability to Contador" Oh dear, read it again. I was comparing his climbing ability to Evans not Contador.

Mate you're kidding yourself if you think Wiggins is of a similar climbing ability to Contador. That's like saying Jimmy Engoulvent is as good a time triallist as Cancellara. You're delusional.

"Wiggins was also fortunate he didnt have to face Alberto Contador, Andy Schleck in the moutains and Tony Martin in the time trials because of two flats." Perhaps Contador and Schleck were fortunate not to be in a Grand Tour against such a strong team as they too might have struggled? just putting it out there. Cadel Evans won the Tour last year against those two (although Contador had plenty of issues both on and off the bike) when he's probably not as strong a time-trialler than Wiggins and has similar ability on the mountains. As for Tony Martin, I don't see how he should feature in your argument. Even if Martin had won the TT's, Wiggins still would have taken the same amount of time from his GC rivals. People are almost painting the picture that Wiggins is a poor climber - he proved to be at the least the second best climber of the tour. I still can't see how Froome would have made the 3.21 gap tbh. I also query how people are assuming Froome's apparent dominance on the mountains. I have put my thoughts on another thread, but I may as well repeat them. "When Wiggins was left behind for 100 yards in the Alpes, only five minutes before that it looked like Froome had cracked, but found some reserves to come back. "Also, the plan had to be for Froome to attack, only for him to do it too early and Evans had already cracked so there was no need for him to go. "Then, when Nibali attacked on the penultimate mountain stage, although Froome closed down the first attack with Wiggins on his wheel, he asked Wiggins to close down the second attack as he didn’t have he legs. "Finally, the last mountain stage, you still can’t definitely say whether Froome was stronger because Wiggins admitted that he wasn’t properly concentrating on the last section and was lost in the moment."

Agreed. However, I don't think time bonuses are the answer. It'd be pretty crappy if you won the Tour off the back of time bonuses rather than good tactics, strong riding and good planning. This happened at the Vuelta last year. Cobo actually lost to Froome on overall time. But factor in time bonuses and he came out ahead by a few seconds. The argument for getting rid of race radios has also been thrown out there but again I don't think its the answer. Race radios, whilst they do serve a tactical purpose, are also a very important safety control for the bunch, particularly when guys crash, get flats or there are obstacles on the course up ahead that the riders may not be aware of. Overall, I don't think there was much wrong with this Tour. Yes it was boring, but mostly because Team Sky made it boring by being ridiculous controlling up the hills. Because the pace was so high, it was very difficult to get away. People often wonder why there wasn't much attacking. Go to your local crit and watch B grade. Most guys have the strength and fitness to be in A grade, so they motor around at 45-50km/h most of the race. And it always ends in a bunch sprint because nobody at that level can get away at 50km/h. The same applies here: when one team is driving the pace uphill, it makes it very difficult to get away. Congrats to Wiggins and Sky for the win. It was thoroughly deserved. Wiggins destroyed both time trials. But I think, due to the lack of contending personnel (i.e. Contador and Schleck), Cadel being a year older and being underdone and injury-prone for most of the season, and gratuitous crashes ruling out potential contenders like Ryder Hesjedal in the first week, the race just droned on at a constant tempo for the better part of two weeks. One other point I'd like to make is in relation to the time bonuses being the catalyst for GC contenders winning more stages. Don't think its that simple. Lance won just one stage in the 2000 and 2003 Tours, Jan Ullrich won two stages to win the Tour in 1997, as did Marco Pantani in 1998 and Bjarne Riis in 1996. So, guys of that ilk didn't NEED to win heaps of stages to win a Tour de France. Certainly Lance won stages numerous times, not because he needed to gain time, but because he was the best rider on the day.

Agree, it was boring from overall perspective, but I'm not sure the team aspect of it is a problem. How often does a team have two legit GC contenders. Even Froome seemed surprised at how well he did when he took the stage victory in the Alps. What happens if Froome drops off and Wiggins has to fight it out with Cadel, same with the day Froome left Wiggins and was told to sit up and wait for Wiggins. Wiggins was exposed and for the first time showed some stress trying to catch up in the low gear style he uses. If we take Froome out of the equation, it would have been far more competitive race, we'll never know. Sky was just too strong because of Froome and if he stays with Sky and a little luck we could be in for another boring tour. Wiggins was also fortunate he didnt have to face Alberto Contador, Andy Schleck in the moutains and Tony Martin in the time trials because of two flats, still cant believe that. Talk about a conspiracy.

I agree with Herbie above. A Grand Tour is like a Test cricket match. Usually incredibly boring to watch if you’re just interested in who wins, because the winner usually wins comfortably. But it’s the sub-plots that make a Test match interesting, and the same goes for the Tour. This year there were enough good sub-plots to make it enjoyable. In my view, time bonuses are too gimmicky. And they’ll make the early sprint stages even more dangerous as they give more reason for more riders to try to get to the front of the peloton in the final kilometres.

The author's opinions are strong and respected. But he missed a few key parts of the race: Thomas Voeckler's two stage wins; Tejay van Garderen emerging as a GC contender; Peter Sagan proving that not all sprints belong to Mark Cavendish; Alexander Vinokourov trying as an old man to give it one more shot for a stage win (twice); David Millar's first stage in nearly a decade; Bradley Wiggins' sportsmanship in several key stages. Those moments made the 2012 Tour de France anything but boring to me.

Is it possible that you are confusing the lack of attacks with team Sky attacking all the time, they were so aggressive with their train up the hills that others could not keep up. If none of team SKy were their then the others would have been able to attack each other. Sky were aggressive in my mind, the issue is that they were too goog. With regards to big time gains in break aways, I can remember that happening for years, even with the time bonuses. Guys like Virenque, Gonzales degaldiano, Voekler, Rasmussen etc all had stages where they rode off into the sunset and were never seen by the peloton. It was far from the best tour ever, but it was still great

Not boring compared to chess, but certainly less exciting due to the early long time trial and the lack of stage time bonifications. Time bonuses make the race more aggressive and reward attacks. Too much TT means too much ZZZZZZZZ.

Not a bad article considering the title - and of course it was only bring racing if you don't actually understand the interplay that happens within cycling on the various different types of stage. I love the play of tactics and the constant changing situation that break aways and chasers make, and then the thwarting of attempts to attack - they are just as exciting as attacks, they just don't succeed because of equally impressive to stop the attacks getting away. As well as the overall race, there are the races within a race that create their own drama - Morkov in the early lead of the Polka Dots, and the way Voeckler manage to overhaul him, the impressive debut of Peter Sagan, and the battle for the young riders jersey, all playing out as sub-plots to the main story. No, the Tour is never boring.

well said mate! As a pom I was glued to the T de F but often felt the same way as you as I watched (luckily not a 1am)