THE TOUR IS DULL*

4

It has to be said, some of the dullest racing of the year was found in the Tour de France in 2018. On the two flat stages at the end of week one, even the wildcard teams couldn’t be bothered to waste energy by getting into a breakaway that would inevitably be caught before the finish. In the general classification contest, the strongest rider (Geraint Thomas) had the strongest team (Sky), and they rode conservatively to win the race, aside from Thomas’s back-to-back Alpine stage wins, where he attacked in the closing stages. (*Let’s also not forget, however, that the battle for the stage win in Roubaix on stage 9 was one of the moments of the year, nor that Astana gave a masterclass in tactical team racing on the Carcassonne stage, nor that LottoNLJumbo boldly lit up the race in the Alpe d’Huez stage, so it wasn’t all bad.) The Tour is tight and controlled because it’s the biggest, most important race of the year. Tight tactics are inevitable in a long stage race where the level of the bunch is higher than at other races all season, and as Sky have often proven in the Tour, ice usually beats fire in the end. Yes, the Giro and Vuelta offer more of a sugar hit than the Tour de France might do. But if either race was as important as the Tour, the best riders in the best form would go to them instead and make those races equally less exciting.