A different Tour but the same old magic

There's no such thing as a bad Tour. Every Tour is a good Tour, maybe even a great Tour...at least that's what I think. So this years was no different despite the winner coming home almost eight minutes ahead of the next man. There's way too much goes on over the three week Tour de France...so many stages, too much drama, all kids of terrain, and plenty of competitions beyond the yellow jersey for the whole thing to ever be written off as not good.

We had everything once again: Rolling stages in front of mammoth crowds in England, sprint stages in sunshine and rain, tribute stages going through old battle fields 100 years on from the start of that horrific war, a mini-Paris-Roubaix stage on the cobbles, four mountain ranges of stages in the Jura, Vogues, Alps and Pyrenees all with their own unique style and all bringing a different context to the outcome of the race, a crucial time-trial stage for French cycling, and the traditional crit in Paris stage.

We had crashes that eliminated contenders, crashes that made hero's out of those that continued, good weather, bad weather, sprint victories, individual stage glory, individual stage heart-break, long exploits and suffering in the mountains.

We had a points competition dominated by a consistently brilliant yet stage starved Peter Sagan; a mountains prize that went back and forth and came down to the final big climb; a young riders prize fought out between two young men who became the toast of their nation; a yellow jersey contest that may have been all but won halfway through, but by a champion that continued to attack and prove himself as worthy a champion as you'll ever seen; and a podium consisting of a Frenchman for the first time since '97 and Frenchmen for the first time since '84.

And it was again a Tour that looked normal...something we're forced to analyse in this post-EPO-crazy era. The champion was simply better than the remaining contenders but far from unworldly while the return of the French to the podium for the first time post-Festina affair '98 was a welcome sight. If you still cannot give the benefit of the doubt to the bulk of what you seen in this Tour, especially after what has been a handful of promising years now, then I'm not sure what it will take, outside of your own participation.

It's OK for some people to defy our own limited potential with their own superb performances and cycling brings this out in athletes like no other sport. The Tour de France, on a global stage, simply magnifies it.

But this was no normal tour from the perspective of the script. The typical script of the tour would suggest that the first week belonged to the sprinters and that the favorites would keep their powder dry until the high mountains and time trials. The first of the high mountains, either the Alps or Pyrenees would sort the men from the boys and the second of the two ranges would find us our winner.

This year was very different.

We'd the rolling dales of Yorkshire for a start and had one of the big contenders, Vincenzo Nibali, with a stage win and yellow on his back by the second day, but it was stage five on the cobbles of the Paris-Roubaix that truly changed the normal order, and it was Nibali who shone brightest.

An epic ride on an epic day of mud, blood and big time-gaps put Nibali further into yellow and all his rivals (with the exception of Chris Froome who crashed out) minutes in arrears. It was a stage in which many felt you couldn't win the tour but you could lose it. Nibali however may have proved that wrong. He never looked back.

On stage 10, Contador crashed out and Nibali attacked the rest to win his second stage and cement his lead. It was another crucial stage -- one that seen the top six overall come Paris all finish in the top six on this day (albeit with Péraud behind Pinot and Valverde) -- and we still hadn't reached the Alps or the Pyrenees. By the time we did hit the high mountains it was less about Nibali trying to defend or indeed those around him trying to pull back time and more about Nibali attacking. A victory in each of those high mountain stages weren't the decisive ones that won him the tour as the script dictated they ought to have been, but merely further acts of dominance.

The Tour was won on the cobbles and sealed in the Vogues. The rest was a race for the final spots on the podium and the minor jersey prizes. And yet it was still fantastic to watch.

This Tour probably won't go down in the top five of all time (though I have to think that fifth stage across the Pave of Northern France will go down as one of the great stages in Tour history), but as I said at the top...there's no such thing as bad tours, only good, and this one was very good with a superb champion.