Tour de France 2017 — Winners and Losers
A look at those who have gained and lost from this year’s grand boucle.

Winners
Chris Froome
Naturally. We start with the guy in yellow on the Champs. A tour that showed the various sides to Froome, the polite, well-spoken guy post stage (if not on rest day press conferences (see Brailsford), as well as the man behind the Sky train team who was fortunate to suffer mechanicals at the point where he had team mates to help. Strong and the strongest? Probably. Would he have won if he was on FDJ? Who knows, but one thing for sure if that whatever gifts he is buying his team mates then Michal‚ Kwiatkowski has certainly earned his and then some.
Fans of the minor jerseys
Both the green and polka dot jerseys have had a resurrection in this tour. Whilst Lance Armstrong might bemoan the maillot à pois on his Stages podcast, there is little doubt that in Warren Barguil the Tour has a worthy winner.
Likewise the interest in the Green competition was ignited by the Sagan/Cavendish incident and then the efforts of Sunweb in collecting green to go with their spotty jersey. Kittel showed stage winning is a way to win it, but finishing matters more.
Michal‚ Kwiatkowski
Is the highest compliment someone can have in modern cycling be accused of doping on twitter (either mechanical or biological)? Well..no, but those misplaced (we hope) comments do show how well he has performed. Some will point to his wages as justification, but money doesn’t naturally result in strength and commitment, of which Kwiato has in buckets.
Scenery fans
The tour isn’t just there for a bike race, it was after all a reason to sell news, and therefore advertising, by showing the best and toughest of France.
Every year we see the sunflowers, mountains, lakes, old towns, etc. Every year we gasp in wonder at the beauty of France. With coverage from flag drop to tape we had some (very dull) long flat stages, but we had plenty of time to take in the glorious chateau.
Fans of close racing
Was this tour exciting? I still don’t know. I wanted to watch every move, and pretty much did, but where does it sit on the list of great tours? Daniel Friebe gave it 3 wine glasses out of 5. Maybe a touch generous, but this was the closest GC battle in years, as we keep getting told. But did that tell the full story? The odds on Froome rarely changed throughout, the biggest confirmation coming after Porte crashed. Nobody really thought he was getting overhauled, but we kept kidding ourselves to keep in interesting. The main stories were outside of the yellow and the fight for the podium, for green and the renaissance in French contenders.
The lack of dominance from Froome sets up next year even more so, with a possible 5 names considering themselves in the hunt (Quintana, Dumoulin, Froome, Porte, Bardet?)
Lance Armstrong
People have moved on a bit now. His podcast gave him a voice, one which surprised a lot of people with some humility and humour, to go along with expert analysis (even with some historical gripes well visible). Expect this voice to keep getting louder and louder, especially if the court case goes his way.
Wildcards
Direct Energie winning a stage more than made up for the rest acting as breakaway fodder (hat tip to Fortuneo-Oscaro though), and justified keeping team moral over one individual. Cycling needs to clean up its act on transfers and the case of Coquard was unfortunate where a man looking to move on with his career at the end of a contract is essentially punished for honesty.
Losers
Richie Porte
Probably peaked too soon and didn’t look to quite have it in the finales, but this was meant to be his year. Maybe his time will come again, but a known weakness downhill came to be shown in the worst possible way. Thankfully unhurt as much as could be hoped for, but for a bad descent of the Mont du Chat we could have been talking about his chance in the TT in Marseille.
Attacking GC riders
Martin, Aru, even Contador to some extent tried and failed in the mountains. Going into the red only to be dragged back and spat out the back. As grand tours are decided less and less on the long alpine climbs the more we will see the rise of the TT rider winning. What price a Primoz Roglic win in the next 2 years at a tour, to follow in the pedal strokes of Tom Dumoulin?
Movistar
Did their tour end on the wet roads of Dusseldorf? Hindsight is 20/20 as they say, but with Nario cooked from the Giro (and on a route not to his suiting) and Valverde crashing awfully in the TT, things were as good as done at that stage.
Fans of a sprint royale
Sagan — kicked out.
Cavendish — Out injured. Who knows whether he would have had it anyway.
Greipel — a fading force (as the Cycling Podcast predicted too far soon, but they are finally right).
Demare — an early interest but sickness and hills saw the back of him.
Bouhanni / Groenewegen / McLay / (Coquard) — Looked as much like a cat 3 rolling around just contributing to the prize pool but not in with a chance of taking home the biscuits. Ou could say hasrh on Groenewegen after his win in Paris, but it felt a flat atmosphere finish given the absences.
Add in Coquard and this may be the story time and time again as the sprinters of next year become Ewan (assuming he moves from ORS) and Gaviria.
Kittel — just too strong for everyone else.
Dave Brailsford and the old media
Regardless of the story and whether it was correct to continue to question Sky and compare to USPS and the darker days there are ways and means to deal with the press on a rest day. At a time when the questions could have been about how strong his team were, Landa, Kwiato as the two best domestiques in the race, attention was turned to thoughts of old and managing the message by privilege.
Steve Cummings and the loyal British betting punters
The script should have been obvious. Ride around at the back of the bunch all tour and show yourself for one major stage win. Should have been. One or two efforts, but not enough for a team leader in the absence of Cavendish, and no reward for ‘Stevo’ British national champion. Even worse those punters who kept ploughing money on every stage that had his name written all over it.
Julian Alaphilippe
Whilst the rest of the French legion were out showing their class, he was forgotten about at home. This tour has been a huge success for the likes of Bardet, Barguil and Calmejane, and you can’t help but feel should ‘Alan Phillip’ have been fit he would have lit up the race.