2014 Tour de France: Post-race wrap up, nations edition

The 101st Tour de France finished Sunday on the Champs Élysées with Marcel Kittel (Germany/Giant-Shimano) bookending the race with stage wins. It might be instructive to analyze the 2014 Tour by looking at the fortunes of the racers based on their nationalities.

The Italians: Vincenzo Nibali is the first Italian to win the Tour in 15 years. He dominated the race, taking four stage wins evenly spread over England, the Vosges, the Alps and the Pyrenees to end with a 7:37 gap over the runner-up. Clearly having engineered his season to peak in July, he would have beaten Alberto Contador and Chris Froome had they stayed in contention. After Nibali there’s a long drop in GC until you find another Italian – Giovanni Visconti in 37th.

Matteo Trentin of Omega Pharma-QuickStep took his second Tour triumph in consecutive years. Alessandro De Marchi (Cannondale) was named most aggressive for the whole race due to his fruitless quest for the King of the Mountains after having garnered the honour at the Dauphiné.

The French: The French Renaissance, the French Revolution, call it what you wish, but the 101st edition was a godsend for long-suffering French fans. Not only did youngsters Thibault Pinot and Romain Bardet engage in a scintillating battle for the podium and white jersey, but converted mountain biker Jean-Christophe Peraud also outcycled them both in the last few stages to stand as top Frenchman on the runner-up step in Paris.

Last year, Bardet was the top Frenchman in 15th. This year, for the first time since 1997 there was a Frenchman on the podium and the first time since 1984 that two were on the podium. France placed three men in the top 10, and would have had three in the top five if it wasn’t for Bardet’s puncture near the end of his time trial. Pierre Rolland was 11th and there were altogether six Gallic cyclists in the top 20.

Add two stage wins from Blel Kadri and Tony Gallopin, Gallopin’s day in yellow and Ag2r becoming the first French squad to win the team competition in the 21st century, and you have a reason to belt out La Marseillaise while swigging wine.

The Germans: Don’t look at the GC; Tony Martin‘s 47th makes him top German at the 2014 Tour. Instead, look at the wins. Seven out of 21 stages were captured by Germans: four wins to Kittel, two to Martin and one to Andre Greipel. That’s a record for the Germans, beating last year’s high mark of six (the same three fellows with the wins). John Degenkolb must feel a little put out.

The Americans: Another good result for Tejay Van Garderen, who matched his fifth place of 2012, albeit because of Bardet’s misfortune. So much was expected of Andrew Talansky after his fantastic last-day Dauphiné win, but he crashed far too often, and after bravely plowing a lonely furrow to the finish of Stage 11, he didn’t start the next day. Chris Horner‘s comeback from injury to place 17th was remarkable – it will be interesting to see if he can defend his Vuelta a España crown.

The Spanish: There will be few outside of Spain lamenting Alejandro Valverde‘s fall off the podium, even though his poor showing in the time trial after winning his home chrono title was shocking. Haimar Zubeldia’s 8th place confirms him as one of the most consistent stage racers over the last decade. He has finished 20 Grand Tours and placed in the top ten in eight of them.

Joaquim Rodriguez’s mid-race endeavours for the King of the Mountains were laudable – he should be in better shape for the Vuelta.

The Spanish have now suffered a two-year drought of Tour stage wins.

The Dutch: Remarkably, Lars Boom‘s win on stage five was the first for a Dutchman since Pieter Weening in 2005. The Netherlands placed two men in the top 10 and three in the top 15 (all from team competition runner-up Belkin), with Laurens Ten Dam, or “Foamy”, the best placed of them. Bauke Mollema will be a little disappointed to come 10th after a mediocre time trial, though it is his third best Grand Tour result.

The Poles: Everyone expected a lot from Michal Kwiatkowski after a) his 11th in 2013 and b) his remarkable early 2014. To have such high expectations one had to ignore the middle of his season when he didn’t finish the Tour de Romandie and the Dauphiné. Kwiatkowski was a bit of a bust, coming in 28th. I think he’ll bounce back in the Tour of Poland, August 3 to 9.

Rafal Majka, on the other hand, was fantastic. He was a late addition to the Tinkoff-Saxo squad and complained about having to race both the Giro d’Italia – where he came 6th – and the Tour. But the Pole came out of nowhere to throw his casquette in the King of the Mountains ring after a runner-up finish on Stage 13 and a win on Stage 14. His Stage 17 triumph on Pla d’Adet and third place the next day on Hautacam made him the Winking King.

The Czechs: We wouldn’t have Majka in this Tour if it wasn’t for Czech Roman Kreuziger’s blood profile abnormalities. However, the Czechs have a new favourite in the form of Leopold Konig. Konig rode outside of himself in the time trial to jump from 9th to 7th. After a stage win and 9th place in last year’s Vuelta, 11th at the Dauphiné and 7th in this Grand Boucle, he won’t have to worry about finding a ProTour team when his contract is up with NetApp at the end of the season.

The Canadians: It was great to see Christian Meier and Svein Tuft on the attack on the Champs Élysées. Meier, the last man to be included in the 2014 Tour, was in the Stage 9 breakaway and both Orica-GreenEdge Canadians were often seeing driving the front of the peloton. What was fascinating was how close the two were on GC. For most of the race, they were never separated by more than 10 places. First Tuft would edge ahead and then Meier. In the Pyrenees, Meier pulled out a larger gap, but Tuft closed it via a 15th place showing in the time trial. In the final GC Meier placed 121st and Tuft 131st.