The Winner’s and Loser’s From the Men’s Tour de France
The Men’s Tour de France completed on Sunday (I am enjoying the women’s version being raced this week and you should be watching too, but I don’t know nearly enough about the women to write about it yet because of a lack of tv coverage in the US). After 3.5 weeks of crazy racing that ended up being the fastest Tour ever raced. It was aggressive and had teams throwing wild tactics at each other on any given day. The Skybots decade of ruin where they choked the life out of the Tour one mountain stage at a time appears to be long gone now.
Winner #1 — Jonas Vingegaard
Well this one is obvious. The man who won the Tour de France, one year after a second place finish as a GC pinch hitter after leader Primoz Roglic went down in a crash bettered himself to the top step this year as he was the strongest climber in the race and had the best team overall. And the celebration for him in Copenhagen is just insane.
Winner #2 — Wout van Aert
Before the Tour started, there were questions as the whether Jumbo-Visma could handle going for the yellow jersey and the green jersey in the same Tour. Not a problem. Mostly because van Aert is so good that nobody could have possibly stopped him from winning green and he has such a lead that he could simply be on team duty from the point where Vingegaard took the yellow jersey (van Aert basically sealed the win in the Green Jersey that day when he took the full 20 points from teh intermediate sprint).
Winner #3 — The rest of Jumbo-Visma
I’ve written at length already about Stage 11, a spectacular tactical masterclass that flipped the race on its head. Notably, they were easily able to defend Vingegaard even without Primoz Roglic and Steven Kruijswijk, arguably the most important cogs in the machine on Stage 11. Van Aert and also Sepp Kuss did the work for Vingegaard in the Pyrenees. And then just when it couldn’t get any better for the team, Christophe LaPorte poached a win on stage 19 giving the team 6 stage wins from 3 different riders.
Winner #4 — Tadej Pogacar
Didn’t he lost the Tour for the first time in his career? Yes. But more importantly, he gained both a real rival in Vingegaard and a giant helping of fans for his display of attacking racing. Pogacar may not have won the race overall, but he won three stages and even threw in a Champs-Elysses attack (nobody is strong enough to get away on the final lap there anymore). And he’s still younger than Vingegaard. There will be plenty more chances to win the Tour.
Winner #5 — Alpecin-Deceunick
Turns out this team is a lot more than the Mathieu van der Poel show. For the second straight year, this team won two Tour stages. And this time both came from Jasper Philippsen, who came out of the mountains in the best shape of any sprinter and duly converted on the Champs-Elysses. As the team moves up to World Tour status next season, they will be in the hunt for stage victories and classics wins all season.
Winner #6 — Tour de France stage designers
This course was a winner in ways that it hasn’t been in recent years. Sure, the Tour hasn’t been super exciting in recent years. Why? Sometimes a dominant team. Sometimes the course didn’t allow it. 2021 was just Pogacar was way better than anyone else except the crashed out Roglic (who recovered, help Pogacar win a bronze medal at the Olympics in the Road Race and then won a Gold Medal of his own in the time trial). Many of the Skybot years were just going to be controlled by Team Sky no matter the course. But there were also some awful course. 2012 was terrible. 2016 was a disaster of bad course design. Anytime the Tour has to go to Northwest France potential boredom looms (only 2011’s trip up there has worked well in recent memory despite large crowds). 2019 was well designed and terminated by weather. Needless to say it’s been awhile since the course was good, the race was open and the weather didn’t get in the way. Last time was probably 2011 (2014 was well designed except for an underdog murdering everyone on the cobblestones and all of his rivals crashing out).
Loser #1 — The other Grand Tours
Pogacar had initially been committed to the Vuelta. No longer after his defeat. Now with Pogacar and Vingegaard being legitimate rivals, neither are going to the Giro anytime soon. Sure Roglic can win yet another Vuelta (he’s won the last three years after all and maybe finally take a Giro win (losing in 2019 to Richard Carapaz and an aging Vincenzo Nibali was a tactical disaster). So who’s going to race the Giro to win next year? Roglic I would think. 2020 winner Tao Geoghehan Hart (though that looks very flash in the pan like) is probable I would think. But the depth chart there gets thin quickly. Heck even this year’s Vuelta has a problem if Roglic isn’t recovered enough from his injuries to go. If he’s not there, who’s the favorite? Hindley coming off a Giro win? Carapaz in his last race for Ineos before going to EF? Simon Yates matches his 2018 feat of flaming out as the Giro favorite and winning the Vuelta? One of the also rans from the Tour shows up in better condition (Enric Mas???). If you follow cycling closely, you’ll know nobody is excited about that list of names other than maybe Roglic at the Giro.
Loser #2 — Lotto-Soudal
They are in a relegation fight to try and stay in the World Tour. They built their Tour team around a sprinter (Caleb Ewan). Let’s just say nothing is going well right now. At all. Ewan is out of form and seems to be lacking confidence after crashing out of last year’s Tour and this year’s Giro. Nobody else was able to make an impact beyond carrying Ewan’s carcass through the mountains to give him a chance on the Champs-Elysses, where he was out of position again and ended up 8th for no points. It was just a disaster Tour for a team that is at risk of not being around for any Grand Tours next season after being in the peloton for all of them for as long as I can remember. The scenario: the team gets relegated (almost certain at this point). The team also finishes 3rd in points this season among the teams not in the World Tour next season (they are currently second but only barely ahead of Team Direct Energies). The Giro, being forced to invite Israel and Direct Energies uses their two wildcards on Italian teams. The Tour as usual invote nobody who isn’t French with their wild cards. The Vuelta looks at a team with no climber/GC types and built around a sprinter and laughs at them. No Grand Tours next year. No riders left after that. Enjoy the second tier if the team even survives at that point.
Loser #3 — Movistar
This team is also in the relegation fight. Their biggest star rider (Alejandro Valverde) is 41 and is retiring after the season. The second biggest star (Enric Mas) was on track to haul in some points for the Tour and then got Covid before stage 19. No points for Mas. They have no sprinters. Their best riders in recent years other than Valverde and Mas are riding for UAE (Marc Soler), Ineos (Carapaz) and Arkia-Samsic (Nairo Quintana). This is the longest running team in the peloton. Get your act together guys. And don’t get relegated. You’ve won 7 Tours, 4 Giros and 3 Vueltas since coming into existence in 1980. You can’t go away like this.
Loser #4 — French riders
LaPorte’s win on stage 19 was the only French stage win. David Gaudu in 4th was the only other French performer of note. The rest of the French peloton? Bupkis. FDJ gets a pass for leaving it’s French sprinter at home considering they got 4th overall with Gaudu and additional top 20 out of Valentin Maduous and said French sprinter Arnaud Demare won three Giro stages and the points jersey. The rest of France though? They mostly had to turn to foreigners. Arkia-Samsic got a top 10 out of Colombian Nairo Quintana. Ag2R La Mondiale got a stage win from Bob Jungels of Luxembourg. But French riders weren’t even able to animate this race as they had in recent years (Julian Alaphilippe still not being back to 100% after his horror crash at Liege-Bastonge-Liege certainly played a part in this as well). And Cofidis despite racing every Tour is this time still hasn’t won a stage since 2008.
Loser #5 — The small wildcard team
The Tour has changed. No longer is it enough for a tiny wildcard team to go in the morning breakawy, get caught with 15km to go and we give them a nice pat on the back. For on things, it’s a lot harder to get in those breakaways than it was even five years ago. The racing has gotten harder and more aggressive since we started full stage tv coverage instead of joining with 3 hours to go in the stage. And the one small French team that brought nobody of note did nothing in this race. If you watched and you aren’t just a friend of mine reading this, how many times did you see this jersey on tv?
Be honest now. Five? Six? Especially outside of the two time trials. They might as well have not existed. Which is probably good for the quality of racing if not teams of their stature.