Tour de France 2018: From Team Sky's dominance to Geraint Thomas' popularity, takeaways from this year's race

The 2018 Tour de France was like a breath of fresh air with many novel aspects, the highlight being the emergence of a new winner. Be it the very short mountain stage, reduction of team strength from 9 to 8 riders or the introduction of bonus sprint seconds, these changes (among others) contributed to make this a race to remember. As always, the implications of this Tour will impact future races as well.

We take a look at 10 takeaways from the race; some new, some reinforcing the old, but all that will have a bearing on the race (and cycling in general) come 2019.

Team Strength is Supreme

This may seem obvious, but it’s a fact that is often forgotten by many. Gone are the days of long solo attacks where one rider broke free early in the stage, gaining minutes over the rest by the finish. In today’s compact peloton, such freedom is seldom accorded to any top rider. So, Sky have evolved the tactic to ride in strength and their dominance is majorly attributed to high tempo riding in the mountains which deter rival attacks. The high tempo ensures attrition of weaker teams, leaving their captains to fight it out alone towards the end of a stage.

This tactic would not have been possible if Sky didn’t have at least 3-4 riders capable of putting long stints of pace setting. For example, consider the position of Froome this year, who cracked at crucial times during the race. If one takes out Bernal and Kwiatkowski from Sky, who then paces Froome back in a podium position? So any rider wishing to win the Tour and end Sky’s dominance will need to have an equally strong team around him.

Sky’s Dominance Set to Continue

Which brings us to our next takeaway. The strongest team this year — apart from Sky — was Movistar. In Quintana, Landa and Valverde, they had three proven riders, all capable of finishing on the podium. Yet, while Movistar won the teams classification, none of their riders reached the podium. Dumoulin and Roglic also tried their best to break Sky’s hegemony, but both failed in beating the Sky rider ahead of them. Sky now have two Tour winners in their ranks and in Egan Bernal a very promising prospect for future victories. This Tour certainly showed that Team Sky can be put under pressure, but it also proved that to make any challenge stick will be incredibly difficult.

Short Mountain Stages are Fun

Long mountain stages tend to get neutralised due to the high difficulty levels, which means fewer attacks among the top riders, as they are more afraid to lose minutes rather than gain seconds. To bring in a new twist, stage 17 this year was just 64 km long, making it one of the shortest (non-time trial) stages in Tour history. But 37 km of that distance was uphill, containing three categorised climbs. Hence, there was hardly any time for riders to rest or regroup, as they were either climbing or tackling descents the whole route. The stage surely lived up to the organisers’ expectations and was the “Queen Stage” this year, providing the best racing action. This novel idea turned out to be a stroke of genius which will surely to be repeated in future.

Decline of the Specialists Climbers

This year’s route had many high intensity climbs, however, specialist climbers like Quintana, Bardet and Landa did not even make it to the top five. This has been a trend in the last few years where the Tour is being dominated by strong riders with multiple skills, rather than lanky climbers. The mountain goats will continue to win specialist stages but are unlikely to challenge for overall victory. Hence, the future battles for yellow jersey will be between tall riders of the ilk of Dumoulin and Roglic, with the core climbers acting as their able lieutenants.

Bike Handling is Critical to Win the Tour

It is no coincidence that the Tour winner Geraint Thomas was the only rider not to crash in this year’s race. Other competitors like Porte, Nibali, Quintana might have challenged him, only if they had stayed upright. Even Froome’s race was marred by his initial crash, from which he never recovered. In the same race, we also saw Primoz Roglic’s fearless descent on the slopes of the Aubsique to win stage 19. Roglic’s win was purely attributable to adept bike handling which helped him gain vital seconds over a tricky descent. In short, while talent gives you the opportunity to win the Tour, bike handling enables you to grab that opportunity.

Sagan has Taken Over the Mantle from Cav

Mark Cavendish has been the undisputed king of sprint since 2008. By 2016, the “Manx Missile” had won 30 stages, fast closing on the record of 34 held by Eddy Merckx. Despite this impressive record, the green jersey has often eluded Cav, and has belonged to Peter Sagan in recent years. Their much-anticipated battle in 2017 sadly petered out in a crash which ended the race for both riders. This year, the competition between them resulted in a comprehensive victory in favour of Sagan. The Slovak rider went on to win a record-equalling sixth jersey (despite a major crash) and it looks difficult as to who can stop him from moving clear in the record table next year. There are new stars like Gaviria and Groenewegen, but until they achieve consistency in their performance, Sagan will rule the roost.

The Holy Trinity in a Calendar Year Remains Elusive

Froome was chasing multiple records in this Tour. Firstly, he aimed to match Eddy Merckx’s run of four consecutive Tour victories. Froome’s win would have also put him in the elite club of five-time Tour winners (Merckx, Hinault & Anquetil). Further, it would also have been his fourth consecutive Grand Tour win (after winning the Tour & Vuelta in 2017 and the Giro in 2018), again putting him level with Merckx. Sadly all these were not to be (though he can still try to join the five-time winners club in the coming years). Above these statistics, one record stands out, which has eluded every rider till date, including Eddy “The Cannibal” Merckx.

The gold standard of “Winning all three Grand Tours in a season” has been a mountain too high for riders past and present. Even Merckx’s four consecutive victories were split over the 1972-73 seasons and no one has ever come close. This clearly shows the excruciating physical demands of a Grand Tour on even the best among the elite riders. And for that very challenge, this is one record that will keep enticing multiple Tour winners, remaining tantalisingly out of reach.

Demand for Salary Caps

This also is a fall out from the dominance of Sky. In recent years, Tour organisers have tweaked the route, trying to throw new challenges at the British team, however, till date, nothing but a major crash (in 2014) has been able to derail the Sky juggernaut. Their stifling dominance is backed by their impressive financial muscle, the annual budget is more than twice the next richest team. Sure they have the best riders, but it’s their massive budget which lets them afford such a star-studded team.

Hence, many in the sport and especially the French media have asked for salary caps to be enforced to bring the competition on an even plane. Their argument is that if Sky cannot pay exorbitant salaries, then the best riders would be evenly distributed across teams. However, this is a utopian demand, which might sound logical, but is nearly impossible to implement by the UCI, as their footballing counterparts at UEFA have realised.

Fans Make the Tour Special, But They Need to Behave

In most aspects, we had a fantastic sporting event, but one fly in the soup was the behaviour of some of the fans. The low point was the crash of Vincenzo Nibali due to an errant spectator, which forced the Italian to withdraw from the race. This deprived everyone of the opportunity of an interesting duel between Nibali and Thomas, but more pertinently, a rider was seriously injured due to the lack of discipline among the fans.

Another disappointing aspect was the attitude of many fans towards Sky in general and Froome in particular. Whatever your nationality or team allegiance, the decorum of sportsmanship cannot be violated, and that applies to the competitors and fans equally. Taunts, boos and jeers are part of the sport, but any attempt of physical abuse must be rooted out by the UCI and ASO.

A Universally Loved Winner

As we have written above, there is a significant dislike for Sky among many fans, especially the French. Sky’s popularity certainly isn’t helped, when their team principal makes insensitive remarks about the local people and one of their riders gets thrown out of the Tour for punching a colleague. But despite this uncomfortable relationship, there was very little animosity directed toward Geraint Thomas. It could even be said that he was the most “tolerable” Sky rider to win the Tour after Wiggins.

Geraint’s popularity primarily owes to his humble nature, a quality sometimes in short supply among the Sky team. Despite his laidback manner, Geraint races with aggression and passion. This year, he attacked while being in the lead and won two stages en route to overall victory. Compare that to Froome who won the last Tour without winning a single stage. While it doesn’t take anything away from Froome’s achievement, fans do want to see an attacking rider win rather than one who defends his way to Paris. Finally, in a team seemingly consisting of well-drilled robots, Geraint with his sense of humour, comes out as human and that has surely made him a people’s winner.