Can you tire of the Tour?

The Velominati’s Frank Strack considers whether the world’s biggest bike race is also the best

Dear Frank

For me, the Tour de France is the greatest of all bike races, but a friend derides it as a circus for tourists, not real cycling fans. What are your thoughts on the Tour? Josh, Bristol

Dear Josh

When I think back on the best bike races I’ve watched, every one of them has been closefought, be it a three-week Grand Tour, a weeklong stage race or a one-day Classic.

Take the Richmond World Championships held in my home of the Good Old US of A (I’m going to gloat about it for however many fleeting moments it stays as such). All the breakaways that went away were looking like they’d stay away but were suddenly shut down. Finally, Peter Sagan took a win that was only just roomy enough to allow him to celebrate in disbelief. It was one of the most spectacular races I’ve ever seen. As was the 1989 Tour de France – perhaps the best Grand Tour in history – where leadership of the race was tossed between Laurent Fignon and Greg Lemond like a hot potato neither could get a good grasp on.

When it comes to competition, as soon as a race starts to look or feel like a foregone conclusion, it starts to become less exciting for everyone – with the notable exception of the ones making it a foregone conclusion.

The problem with the Tour de France is that it tends to follow a pattern of a favourite taking a strong lead sometime early in the second week and holding it to Paris. Depending on how decisive the lead and how strong the leader’s team, there may be some degree of anticipation of an upset, but mostly the excitement is relegated to the daily battle for stage wins rather than the overall classification.

I blame France’s topography. Generally speaking, the first week or so is mostly made up of flat stages, and maybe a time-trial. The second week might have both flat and lumpy stages, but they won’t be mixed together. The first mountain stage is usually where the difference is made by the favourite, who takes hold of the yellow jersey and does his best not to let it go until Paris. The third week will usually be a marathon of mountain stages and a battle of attrition to see if the leader weakens enough to lose the lead.

France’s topography is quite homogenous. It’s bordered by mountains on the west and the south, and separating these ranges are vast regions of mostly flat and windy terrain. If you consider the race’s organisers plotting route options, it leaves little choice when it comes to how they might vary the parcours, and the various routes start to feel somewhat formulaic. That said, they do their best to throw in the odd surprise, such as cobblestones in the north, the brutal short climbs of Brittany in the west, or the minor climbs of the Massif Central.

I also blame the prestige of the event, which means the best riders focus on peaking in July, leaving the other two Grand Tours with a slightly less prestigious field. The irony is that when the biggest names are missing, the competition tends to become fiercer, making for better racing, which explains why both the Giro d’italia and the Vuelta a España tend to yield more closely fought events.

Spain has the same problem that France has, only worse, with its mountain regions even farther apart. Italy, on the other hand, won the lottery with a topography so diverse that the race organisers struggle more with finding flat stages than they do the lumpy ones.

With all this in mind, I always preach that the Giro is the favourite of the Velominati – the connoisseur’s choice, if you will. Nevertheless, I find myself anticipating and watching the Tour de France with more intensity than I do any other race of the year. Undeniably, it is the biggest event of the year, but I can’t say that it is the best.

I suppose we’ll have to wait and see what happens this year: it could be rubbish, or it could be a masterpiece. That’s the beauty of bike racing.