Dear Rouleurs,

Seriously how good was this year’s Tour De France??  It had all kinds of thrills and spills.  I never thought I would see Mark Cavenish win another spirit stage, let alone four or Michael Matthews win his first or see Chris Froome running up Mont Ventoux because some motorcycle camera man collided with him and broke his bike.  I’ll have to write a proper blog about this stuff.  However,  MMT will start with the less fashionable analysis first.

As a perennial back marker in any peloton on Beach Road, I feel it is necessary to celebrate the bottom ten finishers of the Tour De France.  Lets face it.  Finishing the TDF is an incredible athletic achievement in its own right.  So this report will be provided in two blogs.  The first will present analysis about those riders who didn’t finish the race.  The second will assess the last ten that did.

So of the original 198 riders that left the Grande Departee, 22 didn’t make it all the way through to Paris.   Some left due to injury eg Alberto Contador and Simon Gerrans.  Others left to complete their preparation for the Olympic Games in Rio, in about 2 weeks time.  This is who they were, in order of abandonment:

Now MMT has been espousing the merits of infographics to communicate to the attention challenged Gen-Y. So MMT has tried his hand at a few pretty graphs to tell the story of these 22 riders. So on to the first infographic, which captures when riders decided enough was enough.

Rider abandonment by Stage TDF 2016

There some big name casualties none more than Alberto Contador and the seemingly cursed Simon Gerrans. Mark Cavendish managed to win with out Mark Renshaw. Tony Martin must have qualified for some kind of award for failing to finish the last stage on the Champs Elysses. What was remarkable, that no abandoned in the first week. This is the first time in the history of the TDF that has occurred.  Onto the second infographic, abandonments by nationality.

Rider abandonment by Nationality TDF 2016

This is actually quite intriguing and shows how that the more strongly represented nations suffered from more abandonment, mainly from riders leaving early to complete their Olympic preparations either for track or road events. No riders from the ‘long tail’ of the graph abandoned. I note that 33% of Australians abandoned the race.  On the final infographic abandonment by Team.

Rider abandonment by Team TDF 2016

Ignoring injuries, it becomes pretty clear that stronger teams tend to finish with all their riders. Weaker teams lose riders regularly, usually through the mountains. It’s remarkable that 6 of the 22 teams didn’t lose a single rider.  It also highlights why Team Sky has become so dominant over the last 5 years.

I’ll continue on in this theme in the next blog  race for the lantern rouge.

Until then, ride safe

Marv