On Friday we promised you our overview of the Tour of Britain, and, ever true to our word, we watched the (highlights of) the London stage and now feel fully qualified to comment.
The event just seems to be getting bigger and bigger, now attracting serious teams from some of the biggest squads out there, however in some ways this was also the problem with this year’s race. With Sky and HTC-Columbia able to control the peloton and also watched and marked carefully in every break and move it left little scope for exciting racing. The later stages followed a largely predictable pattern as breakaways were chased down in the last 10KM of every stage and riders were positioned for sprints by their teams. Some of the tougher stages produced the most interesting racing,, and, in fact, in the end much of the race was decided by one move on the stage to Swansea. With a decent lead over the top of Constitution Hill it only really remained for Abasini to hold onto the lead, something that Columbia adequately did, even with a depleted team.
Overall it wasn’t as exiting a race as we hoped for, but it’s still great to see big names racing hard in this country and to see the profile of the Tour rising even more. It was also a great platform for fans of the sport to see the possibilities of Vacansoleil, who look to have high ambitions, and the interesting prospect of Griepel racing against Cavendish next season as the two biggest sprinters in the world will be on different teams. We look forward to an even bigger race next year.
Perhaps two riders we can expect in the peloton on the not too distant future are the boys who cycled away from prison during cycling proficiency test. Clearly they both have the sprinting power and endurance to make them contenders and all they’ll need is a following car with blue lights on the roof with the bikes to keep them motivated.
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