The 2015 Tour De Stinkin' France Contest WITH RESULTS

[creekster]

The Tour de France 2015 is in the books. It was a great race. Froome, with his barrel chested flailing, looked so ugly on the bike but his results were so nice. Quintana, who has all the talent needed to win and who was on a course this year that seemed tailor made for him, seemed to disappear until it was too late to win. Sure he had a couple of spectacular rides on the last two stages, but where was that fearless effort earlier in the race? And, to me, his tweets on Sunday were sort of gauche. Yes, he lost the tour in the first week, I suppose, but as Froome said, you just never know. You have to race every day.

Tejay is sort of like the SF Giants; he does really well every other year. He is either top ten or completely out of it. His abandon this year was strange to me. He said it was due to lack of strength in his legs from the virus he caught, but as I re-watched that stage a couple of times (yea, I am THAT guy) it looked like the lack of strength might have been between his ears. I really like Tejay, and he works hard and seems like a great guy, but he has a certain frail quality that, I my mind, makes it hard to believe he will ever podium, let alone win, the Tour.

El Pistolero showed just how hard it is to win two consecutive tours. Merckx once won all three but as much as I love Eddy, I have to wonder if he could achieve what he did under today’s regime. Contador looks so nice on the bike; he really does dance on his pedals. But he danced to a non-podium spot. Maybe he can show something more in Spain.

Nibali did OK. But I think he showed that he is a podium guy but not a likely winner again, unless Froome abandons and Contador breaks his leg and Quintana is hiding, like last year.

Now for the truly important information: Contest results. As I have done before, I was derelict in keeping everyone up to date. I apologize. But the results were very close. So, without further ado, and using the formula announced in the opening post, this is the CS podium:

1st BLUEGOOSE
2nd MTNBIKER
3rd MOLIERE

CONGRATS TO THE WINNERS.

The complete classification is as follows:

BlueGoose 40
MtnBiker 37
Moliere 36
PAC 28
RCViking 27
BBB 20

Thanks to everyone for entering. BG keeps the trophy, I guess, but he needs to post a picture. A la Prochain!

[Dwight Schr-ute]

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2z...nce-2015_sport

[mtnbiker]

1st BLUEGOOSE
2nd MTNBIKER
3rd MOLIERE

CONGRATS TO THE WINNERS.

The complete classification is as follows:

BlueGoose 40
MtnBiker 37
Moliere 36
PAC 28
RCViking 27
BBB 20

Thanks to everyone for entering. BG keeps the trophy, I guess, but he needs to post a picture. A la Prochain!

Wow, Goose has won the trophy for about 4 years straight now, right? Pretty good picking, I'd say. Well done.

[bluegoose]

I think someone else won last year, but I believe that I had the previous two. I will get working on my trophy improvements and post a picture soon.

I wasn't able to watch a ton of the tour for the first week and a half or so, but caught most of the last week. What a great finish to the tour! Granted, Froome essentially had the thing won 8 or 9 days before the finish and was racing pretty defensively, but Quintana did his best to make things interesting. I love his attacking style. He got stronger as the tour went. Unfortunately, I think this may have been his best chance to win a tour, as it was set up almost perfectly for his style as a pure climber. Any long time trial would have effectively ended his tour in the first week.

Contador rode fairly well, but just looked like he was cooked. Nibali looked strong, especially as the tour wore on, but that effort he put in on stage 19 or 20 had the appearance of having pharmaceutical support. That, plus the name on the front of his jersey. I got a good kick out of reading the criticism of Vinokourov early on in the tour about Nibali's lack of heart. I assumed that to mean lack of EPO, but I may have heard him wrong.

I loved seeing Teejay do so well for as long as did. He's America's best shot at a podium right now, but as creekster mentioned, even that is not a very good shot. He, Talansky, and I'll throw in Ryder H. as our Canadian comrade would all make good domestiques for a strong team, but I just don't see any of them as being strong enough to carry a team and challenge the top guys through an entire tour. Just my opinion.

Another good tour. Now back to our regularly scheduled summer sports doldrums.