Tour De Internationale

Crankster said:

As mentioned in another post, the Tour has become a truly international affair over the past couple of years. In previous years it was largely dominated by italian, spanish and french riders. A brief look at the top 20 in GC which include:

5 Americans
3 Italians
3 Spaniards
2 Kazakhs
2 Germans
1 Ukrainian
1 Dutch
1 French
1 Austrian

Here's how the top 10 would look like 20 years ago:

1. Ivan Basso
2. Francisco Mancebo
3. Oscar Pereiro
4. Christoph Moreau
5. Eddy Mazzoleni
6. Haimar Zubeldia
7. Oscar Sevilla
8. Guiseppe Guerini
9. Carlos Sastre
10. Xabier Zandio

Top 10 in green jersey classification:

3 Australians
2 Spaniards
1 Kazakh
1 American
1 German
1 Dutch
1 Norwegian

White jersey's top 10 include 2 Kazakhs, a Ukrainian, a Russian, 2 spaniards, french, swede, a german and a belgian.

Truly amazing! Compare this to Vuelta or Giro

Phil Anderson finished 5th in 1985 so you could probably should have left Evans in your revised top ten.

mocka58 said:

Phil Anderson finished 5th in 1985 so you could probably should have left Evans in your revised top ten.

And in the top 20 on the current GC.

To clarify, did you take the nationalities of the top 10 in the Tour of 1985 and assign the leading finishers from those natnions this year to those slots?

Crankster said:

Here's how the top 10 would look like 20 years ago:

1. Ivan Basso
2. Francisco Mancebo
3. Oscar Pereiro
4. Christoph Moreau
5. Eddy Mazzoleni
6. Haimar Zubeldia
7. Oscar Sevilla
8. Guiseppe Guerini
9. Carlos Sastre
10. Xabier Zandio

Apology accepted. 😄

Crankster said:

...Here's how the top 10 would look like 20 years ago:

1. Ivan Basso
2. Francisco Mancebo
3. Oscar Pereiro
4. Christoph Moreau
5. Eddy Mazzoleni
6. Haimar Zubeldia
7. Oscar Sevilla
8. Guiseppe Guerini
9. Carlos Sastre
10. Xabier Zandio...

Hmmm...you better go back 30 years or so, Crankster, to make your point. Here are the actual top 20 standings from the 1985 Tour:

1. Bernard HINAULT (Fra) en 113h24'23"
2. Greg LeMond (Usa) à 1'42"
3. Stephen Roche (Irl) à 4'29"
4. Sean Kelly (Irl) à 6'26"
5. Phil Anderson (Aus) à 7'44"
6. Pedro Delgado (Esp) à 11'53"
7. Luis Herrera (Col) à 12'53"
8. Fabio Parra (Col) à 13'35"
9. Eduardo Chozas (Esp) à 13'56"
10. Steve Bauer (Can) à 14'57"
11. Robert Millar (Gbr) à 15'10"
12. Joop Zoetemelk (Hol) à 15'24"
13. Niki Ruttimann (Sui) à 16'02"
14. Eddy Schepers (Bel) à 16'13"
15. Peter Winnen (Hol) à 17'35"
16. Robert Forest (Fra) à 17'45"
17. Celestino Prieto (Esp) à 19'48"
18. Claude Criquielion (Bel) à 21'12"
19. Alvaro Pino (Esp) à 21'35"
20. Pascal Simon (Fra) à 23'30"

As you can see, 6 out of the top 11 were from the Anglophone countries of the USA, Ireland, Australia, Canada and Great Britain (in addition, note the two Colombian riders in 7th and 8th place). I think there was a book written about this era called something like "The Anglo Invasion." So the globalization of the sport and the Tour actually started a fairly long time ago.