Tour de France 2018: The best and the worst moments of 3 incredible weeks

On the first day of rest of the 2018 Tour de France, I could not believe how long the race had already been held and how much remained to be done. This is a tour that all travel plays, in the midst of which you forget the truth that hindsight always reveals – that eventually you would wish there to be more.

This year's Tour was my favorite as long as I covered this race. Which, of course, is not very long. I have traveled and covered the last nine stages of the 2014 Tour, writing about it for this website, and the memories of this trip are special and eternal. But no Tour at this time was as convincing as a race as this one.

With that, there is one thing to say above all: It's perhaps the most perfect victory I've ever seen, in any sport. Geraint Thomas is an imperfect runner, yet he was impeccable for three weeks. There was no movement that he could not cover, no sprinting for which he was not playing, and most importantly, he was straight and ready even when chaos unfolded around him.

Thomas is one of the greatest shlimazls of cycling. on the biggest stages. This he was the one who won as this is the greatest miracle of all. The greatest achievement of his yellow jersey was to refute the idea that the gods of cycling exist, and that there are riders that they do not lie.

Or if they exist, then at least they change their minds on the occasion. Whatever the case may be, Chin Richie Porte

Here are the best and worst things of three weeks in France:

The best: Friendship

Chris Froome courageously tried to become the first man to to win the Giro d'Italia and the Tour de France the same year since Marco Pantani in 1998. Then he proved why no one has done it since. Even a quadruple winner of the yellow jersey did not have legs, crunching for the 17th stage and the brutal climb to Saint-Lary-Soulan.

And yet, he never really gave up, even though his teammate stole what appeared to be his right to the yellow jersey. As it became clearer that Thomas, and not him, was the best chance for Team Sky to win the Tour, Froome even said that he would ride for Thomas, and that he was happy as long as he could. 39, a Sky pilot was on the podium in Paris

Thomas has joined Froome for six tours. It should not be surprising that Froome would be so graceful. And yet, this sport has prepared us to wait for dramas and intense fights. We have seen relationships that seem disparate before our eyes before. We watched Froome vs Thomas hoping for some delicious palace intrigues to foment

That never happened because, well, Froome and Thomas seem to be good guys.

The Worst: Everything else on Team Sky

Chris Fontecchio already presented the beauty of Sky's team work. Watching the team work together and break the will of its competition is breathtaking, even if sometimes frustrating.

This Tour could have even been a goodwill for the cycling empire, if not for all the rest of the team. The doping charges have driven the team since the time of Sir Bradley Wiggins, and the 2018 Tour began with the fact that Froome was rid of his salbutamol bust a few days before the start of the Tour. The decision has stoked the influence of money. And if Froome was really taking a normal dose of asthma medication at the end of the Vuelta a España 2017, no one could be willing to give the team the benefit of the doubt after the way the general manager from the team, Dave Brailsford, was acting. Sky's longtime director accused UCI President David Lappartient of having a "French mayor" mentality and fanned French spectators already on the road. Nobody in the case of salbutamol looks good – not Sky, not Froome, not UCI, nobody – but the whistle of Brailsford was particularly bad.

He created an even more dangerous atmosphere for his pilots and further isolated his team in public perception, despite all the efforts of his pilots.

The best: the indestructibility of birds

Not only did Philip Gilbert get up and continued to climb after went on the kettle in a ravine in a steep descent, he l & # 39; 39, made with a

Peter Sagan, meanwhile, had to grind his teeth to get to the end of the Tour, experiencing a heavy fall at the 17th stage. The best and hardest driver in the world called Stage 19's monster scene "The worst day of my life on a bike."

The winner of the official unofficial Tour competition must be Lawson Craddock, however. The 26-year-old Houstonian suffered a shoulder fracture on Stage 1 and finished the Tour. This includes bouncing off the pavements of step 9.

The last place rider of the Tour was also by far the bravest.

The Worst: The Physical Fragility of Birds

This is really only a lamentation Richie Porte. The Australian rider is the most notoriously unlucky rider of the Tour, as confirmed when he crashed out of the Tour on the paved stage even before the pavers began . Porte, for the umpteenth time, was a favorite to win the yellow jersey. And for the umpteenth time, he did not even go to Paris

How someone like Sagan can be to the chaos of the Tour, and Door so fragile, is a mystery for me. Cyclists come in all shapes and sizes, but let 's say none of them will ever linebacker.

Surviving accidents are a big part of cycling, however, and the ability to bounce back from them will forever be a significant, yet inexplicable, physical benefit.

The best: TRACTORS

The art of the tractor is indeed a

The worst: the fans

Yes, the adrenaline rush you get when watching riders climb steep mountains as spectators shout inches. their faces is something. It's one of the countless things that separate cycling from any other sport on Earth.

But this rush of adrenaline is not worth the safety of runners. Vincenzo Nibali broke his collarbone while crossing the smoke of Alpe d'Huez and grabbing his handlebars on a camera strap that he could not see:

But at least, it was an accident. There is no excuse – no, nothing, absolutely zero, to try to push a cyclist out of his bike as a spectator did for Froome:

The Riders of the Round have something to worry about on the road without attacking them. I would like this aspect of cycling to change more than anything. How, however, I have no idea. I'm sure there are many more things that tour organizers, ASO, can do, but no one can properly control 2,100 miles of road

The Best: Racers racing

The Grand Tour has been criticized recently for becoming too robotic. With the advent of headphones and instant power data, there has been a lament for the death of instinctive attacks and Bernard Hinault's trademark stupidity.

This lament has always been a little too strong. The poster boy for the power meter era is Froome, and yet he has always been a more courageous runner than people want to give him credit.

Still, in 2018, it was nice to revisit these long reckless attacks. Dan Martin was a deserving winner of the Most Combative Award, honoring his promise to run the Tour as 21 day races.

My favorite attack was an unfortunate attack. At the 12th stage, Steven Kruijswijk proved himself by coming out of a breakaway group up to the Iron Cross Pass and confronted Alpe d'Huez by his hopes of 39, a stage victory. It would have been well deserved after the Dutchman was deprived of a victory of the Giro d'Italia due to an accident in 2016.

He was caught 3.5 kilometers from the Arrival by a group of contenders in the overall standings, but I hope the legend of this effort never dies.

The Worst: The Plateaus

L 'step 7 was perhaps the most drab tour stage I've ever seen. The sprints are going well, but the flat stages are nil. Let's move on.

Best: Cobblestones

The paved race is exquisite. The Ardennes are mysterious and beautiful, and the challenge of standing on tufts of jagged rocks is unique and yet an essential part of the sport. If paving stones were part of the Tour de France every year, I would be ecstatic

The Worst: Cobblestones

And yet … I understand the argument against them. Bernard Hinault once described Paris-Roubaix as "bull bullshit" despite his excellent performance on pavé . And this year, at least for the yellow jersey, it seemed like it was wasting time for lack of luck. Rigoberto Uran, the second runner-up last year, was the biggest loser, giving up nearly two minutes because of a late fall that ultimately forced him to abandon the race

are becoming smaller, climbing types poorly adapted to the course . Chaos in the Tour can be fun, but if the pebbles during the tour simply create chaos for the sake of chaos, and if that's a good thing, it's something I'm not sure yet. .

The Best: Peter Feng Sagan and Julian Ala-f ing-philippe

Cycling can be a dull sport, especially for the uninitiated. No one has done more to make the race fun than the winners of the green jersey and polka dot.

Sagan is simply the best talent in the world. And he was involved at the front of every non-pure mountain stage, disputing all finishes and starting with two stage wins and 10 top 10 stages. Too bad the young Colombian Fernando Gaviria was dismissed from the race because of a loss of time – the young sprinter should make the points competition exciting for years to come – but Sagan was still magnificent.

Alaphilippus, meanwhile, has injected more importance and style to the competition King of the Mountains than any rider of recent memory. He made a perfect climber campaign, entering every mountain break and repelling all comers, usually with a smile on his face:

One of the best moments of the Tour was when he was comforted Adam Yates on stage 17. The Yates Yesterday slipped on a steep descent to lose the stage ahead of Alaphilippus, who won his second stage of the Tour.

I can not wait to see Alaphilippe grow even more as a pilot and perhaps put those climbing skills to a yellow jersey campaign.

The Worst: Cops

A chaotic stage 16 began with a farmers demonstration that was dispersed by the police, but not before they accidentally sprayed the bunch.

But even that pales in comparison to the cop who confused Chris Froome – That's Chris Froome, four-time winner of the yellow jersey – for a crazy fan and pushed him out of his bike.

The best: advertisers of the Tour de France

I was listening to Robbie McEwen and Matthew Keenan chatting for six hours a day NBC Sports Gold for 21 stages, and in one way or one other not only 1) never miss anything to say, but 2) somehow never lose their enthusiasm.

I can not speak for five minutes in a 30-minute meeting with a feeling of physical and emotional exhaustion. I can not say that a lot of what they said contained a lot of substance, but I liked that. Hat to their effort. I can not wait to do it next year.