Tour de France 2016 route. Discuss.

[Elefantino]

I like it. Mont Ventoux on Bastille Day is going to be nucking futs. Alpine climbs are great too.

[guido]

Certainly a route for climbing fireworks...

[572cv]

So, aside from the overviews of the stages (start, finish, length) what's the best way to find the actual map of each stage, what towns it passes through, what roads?

It looks like an interesting set up for the tour.

[MattTuck]

I dislike this thinking. Grand Tours should produce the best overall rider. Not the best climber.

典he Tour is always for the climbers, insisted Prudhomme, with 28 high-categorized climbs on the 2016 Tour痴 menu, three more than the last two years.

There are two individual time trials: one at 37km, long which could provoke significant gaps among the contenders, and another at just 17km, but which comprises 15km of climbing, including the 2.5km long Cote de Domancy with its 9.4 percent average gradient.

Read more at http://velonews.competitor.com/2015/10/news/road/climb-heavy-2016-tour-de-france-route-unveiled_387973#H3sqsmV1KWIUBbls.99

[bart998]

Engineered for providing the best possible chance of obtaining a French winner. The last few Tours have been dominated by time-trialists.... ergo, remove time-trials.

[jghall]

I dislike this thinking. Grand Tours should produce the best overall rider. Not the best climber.

Do not necessarily disagree, but this grand tour is as much about the strongest/best rider, on the strongest/best team.

[guido]

I dislike this thinking. Grand Tours should produce the best overall rider. Not the best climber.

Who was the last "all-rounder" that won a grand tour? The grand tours have become the domain of the climbers while the classics have become the domain of the rouleur...

And when a classics guy does well in the mountains we all scream about doping...

[Saint Vitus]

So when will Dave Sims start riding it on his Raleigh?

[jlwdm]

I dislike this thinking. Grand Tours should produce the best overall rider. Not the best climber.

So how do you define the best overall rider?

Grand tours provide multiple long climbs and normally multiple time trials. I think it is the best formula.

The number of climbs is not that important. The number of finishing climbs is important.

Jeff

[CunegoFan]

I dislike this thinking. Grand Tours should produce the best overall rider. Not the best climber.

The days when a rider like Phil Anderson could place fourth in the Tour--twice!--are long gone. There is too much specialization. Riders don't have to do the classics anymore. Before the TdF they can do a few short stage races as prep, do the Tour, and that's it, that's their season.

You want more all-rounders? Then have a qualification system where riders have to accumulate a number of points from various races to be eligible to ride the Tour. You would get a more durable rider instead of a fragile freak like Froome who can barely handle his own bike.

[jlwdm]

The days when a rider like Phil Anderson could place fourth in the Tour--twice!--are long gone. There is too much specialization. Riders don't have to do the classics anymore. Before the TdF they can do a few short stage races as prep, do the Tour, and that's it, that's their season.

You want more all-rounders? Then have a qualification system where riders have to accumulate a number of points from various races to be eligible to ride the Tour. You would get a more durable rider instead of a fragile freak like Froome who can barely handle his own bike.

Who cares who comes in 4th. Bobby Julich was on the podium and he had no chance to win.

I would not even turn on the tv to watch a tour of all-arounders. The tour is about the climbs.

I am not a Froome fan but the negative comments about a tour winner by recreational riders are baffling and a sad part of the Internet era.

Jeff

[dpk501]

This is Nairo's to lose.

[MattTuck]

I would not even turn on the tv to watch a tour of all-arounders. The tour is about the climbs.


Then why have individual or team time trials at all? Slash those days and put in more mountains instead.

When I say "all arounder", I don't mean a classics specialist. I just mean a rider who excels across a range of cycling disciplines.

[93legendti]

Anyone who can handle climbs, TT's, TTT's, flat windy stages, cobbles, etc is more of a well rounded rider than a pure climber like Robert Millar or Chiapucci, who never won the TdF, a pure TT specialist like Boardman, who never won the TdF, etc.

Too many climbs in the Tour is like too many cobbles in P-R. Or to many murs in The Tour of Flanders.

No one (in numbers that would satisfy sponsors and advertisers) would watch a 3 week Grand Tour set up only for rouleurs or sprinters.

The Giro and Vuelta usually have more/harder climbs than the TdF. There is a reason the organizers decided to out in The Circle of Death in 1910(?).

I am not a fan of some of the flatter classics. If you don't like the Grand Tour format, there are plenty of other races.

[MattTuck]

So how do you define the best overall rider?

Grand tours provide multiple long climbs and normally multiple time trials. I think it is the best formula.

The number of climbs is not that important. The number of finishing climbs is important.

Jeff


In the 1969 edition (Eddy Merckx won) there were 5 ITT stages, totaling 91km (2.2% of over all distance).

In 2016, there will be 2 ITT stages, totaling 54km, but 17 of it is an uphill time trial (therefor, emphasizing the same power/weight ratio that the normal mountain climbs emphasize). That is 1.5% of the overall distance, or 1% if you don't include the uphill time trial.

As other points of comparison, I picked the 81 tour. The year my sister was born, and 1949, the year my mom was born.

1981 tour (won by Hinault): 6 Time trials (2 team, totaling 117 km; 4 individual, totaling 117). Total TT distance: 234km, 6.2% of over all distance.

1949 tour (won by Coppi, 2nd by Bartali): 2 time trials (one is a time trial with mountains) totaling 229km. 4.7% of over all distance.

I'm not a historian of the race, so I have no idea if these are representative years. I just picked them based on birth years of my family and the 1969 tour because of Eddy.

Ultimately, the rider who finishes the course in the shortest time is the best over all rider. But if the course is not a complete course, or if it is unbalanced or otherwise tilted toward one measure of performance, then it must be concluded that the rider that wins it may not be a complete rider. Lots of hills necessarily means the organizers are selecting the winner based on power/weight ratio.

More time trials indicates a tilt toward overall power (or atleast power/front surface area.... or some more complicated formula factoring in wind resistance).

I don't know what the 'optimal' mix is for TT miles vs. hilly finishes vs. time spent ascending. You just hope that the organizers find that appropriate balance. And if, for whatever reason, they tilt the balance one year, that they come back the following year with a tilt in the other direction.

[Hermes_Alex]

I had hoped to see more shorter stages - I've really loved the 100km mountain stages that they've done in the past. Never a dull moment on those. Four mountaintop finishes is adequate, but more never really hurts the spectacle.

[Vamoots58]

as the next fan, but I do agree that there is a difference between an all-around rider and a Classics specialist. Sir Bradley has been know to ride a fair-to-middling ITT and while his personal Sherpa C. Froome could have obviously outdistanced him on the steeper climbs, he did have to stay with him and ahead of his GC foes. Cadel never struck me as a 'pure' climber, and clearly as a WC, showed his all around palmares.

[jlwdm]

It is rare that a pure climber wins the tour. Climbing and time trailing skills are both important and the exact ratios are not that important. Great time trialists do relatively better in climbing time trials. There is more to a climbing time trial than just climbing. You have to ride the correct pace and be able to suffer.

The Armstrong teams did a great job of hurting the pure climbers on the flats in the early stages. Splitting the peloton with hard riding and with echelons in the wind. The climbers were worn out.

In some earlier tours strong teams hurt the Columbian riders early on - like Herrera.

Jeff

[jlwdm]

Then why have individual or team time trials at all? Slash those days and put in more mountains instead.

When I say "all arounder", I don't mean a classics specialist. I just mean a rider who excels across a range of cycling disciplines.

Don't get crazy. The time trials are important too. It is a three week tour with a variety of stages.

A winner of the tour does excell across a variety of cycling disciplines.

Jeff

[MattTuck]

Don't get crazy. The time trials are important too. It is a three week tour with a variety of stages.

A winner of the tour does excell across a variety of cycling disciplines.

Jeff

Admitedly, I was being a little hyperbolic. So let me tone down the rhetoric.

I just think the time trials are important enough that they play a non-trivial part in deciding the winner of the tour. To me, that requires more than "xyz climber has to 'survive' a 37 km time trial."

I enjoyed the Vuelta this year, where a legitimate Time Trial specialist was a serious contender for the overall title. In that race, there was a 7.4km team time trial and a 38.7km ITT. If they had another ITT stage, say 20km, would the outcome of the race been different?

It is possible. Not a certainty, but if you take 1 mountain stage away and replace it with another TT, does that give Dumoulin enough to hold on for a win? I say it is not beyond the realm of possibility.

That's why I find it hard to swallow the idea that these races are producing complete riders. That shifting a single stage from a mountain to a time trial would change the winner.

Look back at my post on the previous page. The races that the great champions won (Coppi, Merckx, Hinault) had lots more time trialing than the races of late.

People say that stage racers have become more specialized, and that is why 'all arounders' do not win. But that is circular logic. It just looks like the riders have specialized because the organizers keep designing routes that favor those types of riders. If they went back to the routes of the past, with that much time trialing, you'd see a different type or rider excel.