The overall winner may have been determined very early in the race but apart from the lack of thrill in the battle for the yellow jersey, the 100th edition of the Tour de France had it all: a close fight for the remaining podium spots, exciting bunch sprints, unexpected dramas, crosswinds, beautiful victories and spectacular defeats. All teams played their part in the show but it is far from everyone that leave France with a sense of satisfaction. CyclingQuotes.com take on the role as judges as we rate the performances of the 22 teams that lined up in Corsica three weeks ago.

 

In these moments the teams are busy performing positive spin which justifies their efforts on the French roads, and even though some of them admit some kind of disappointment, most teams are apparently very satisfied with their results. However, CyclingQuotes.com is not venal for cheap marketing, and instead we make our own judgment of the performances.

 

Below we give a short assessment of the first 11 teams and hand out ratings on a scale from 1 to 10. The number should reflect whether the teams have lived up to their own and the general expectations. Hence, the marks are not a direct evaluation of the results and thus not comparable. Instead, they reflect a weighing out of the performance against the expectations. For instance, Team Sky will have to deliver much better results than Sojasun to get a positive evaluation.

 

The assessment of the final 11 teams will follow in a later article.

 

Sky Procycling

Number of stage wins: 3 (Chris Froome on stages 8, 15 and 17)

Best rider on GC: Chris Froome (1st)

Best stage result: 1st (Chris Froome on stages 8, 15 and 17)

Number of top 10 stage results: 14 (Boasson Hagen 3, team time trial, Froome 6, Porte 4)

Victories in other competitions: None

Rating: 9

 

Sky had one major objective in this year's Tour de France: to put Chris Froome into yellow on the Champs-Elysees. Yesterday the Brit raced down the famous avenue in the coveted jersey and so it was mission accomplished for the British team. The collective performance may not fully live up to the dominant 2012 showing as the team took 6 stage wins one year ago. Without Mark Cavendish in the ranks, that was always the likely outcome and instead Froome himself took the most dominant win since Alberto Contador's 2009 masterpiece, bagging 3 stage wins in some of the most prestigious stages in the process and even getting close to a fourth in the first time trial.

 

In addition to Froome's impressive result, Edvald Boasson Hagen was allowed to test himself in the sprints. While it was always unlikely to land the team a stage win, the Norwegian got close when he finished 2nd in Marseille. Richie Porte showed that he is a grand tour star in the making, proving his versatility by finishing in the top 10 on three different mountain stages and 4th in the first time trial.

 

When we don't reach the top mark, it is due to the less impressive showing of the team. While Froome was fabulous himself, it may be a concern for the usually infallible coaching staff that reliable climbers David Lopez and Kanstantsin Siutsou were far from their best in the Pyrenees before bouncing slightly back in the Alps. With a weakened team, it was maybe not the wisest decision to let Boasson Hagen mix it up in the sprints as he was left with a broken shoulder from a high-speed crash in Saint-Malo and that was costly one day later when the team was unable to support its captain sufficiently in the crosswinds. Finally, Porte had done nothing to hide that he had hoped for a repeat of last year's 1-2 but the Australian had a bad day in the Pyrenees and fell out of GC contention early on.

 

Cannondale

Number of stage wins: 1 (Peter Sagan on stage 7)

Best rider on GC: Alessandro De Marchi (71st)

Best stage result: 1st (Peter Sagan on stage 7)

Number of top 10 stage results: 11 (Sagan 9, Moser 1, De Marchi 1)

Victories in other competitions: Points classification (Peter Sagan)

Rating: 7

 

Few teams had as structure as clear-cut as Cannondale who lined up one star and 8 dedicated domestiques. The aim was for Peter Sagan to take a repeat win in the points competition while picking up stage wins along the way. The Slovakian's huge consistency made him lock up the win in the battle for the green jersey very early and the team could tick off the main target with many days still to go.

 

However, Sagan did not have the same amount of success as he had one year ago. A crash on stage one took away his opportunity to ride himself into yellow on stages 2 or 3 which were tailor-made to his characteristics. Those two stages once again exposed the fact that his team is not strong enough to support their captain as it was unable to bring back Bakelants on stage 2 while Sagan was denied the win on stage 3 by a strong team effort from Orica-GreenEdge.

 

They bounced back from that criticism with a huge collective effort on stage 7 at a time where Sagan's best stage win opportunities had all eluded him and it looked as though he might leave the race empty-handed. From then on, we didn't see much from the Italian squad. Sagan was his usual consistent self in the sprints but was at no point even close to beating the sprinting giants. He proved his versatile talents in breakaways and time trials but it was a very strange decision not to chase the win on the stage to Lyon which had all the characteristics of a Sagan day. In the final week, the team proved that it is more than just their Slovakian captain with some solid rides in the mountains, Moreno Moser finishing 3rd on Alpe d'Huez and Alessandro De Marchi 8th in Le-Grand-Bornand. However, those results cannot erase the impression that the team was mostly invisible in the final two weeks.

 

Lotto-Belisol

Number of stage wins: 1 (Andre Greipel on stage 6)

Best rider on GC: Bart De Clercq (38th)

Best stage result: 1st (Andre Greipel on stage 6)

Number of top 10 stage results: 9 (Henderson 1, Roelandts 1, team time trial, Greipel 4, Bak 1, De Clercq 1)

Victories in other competitions: None

Rating: 6

 

Lotto-Belisol had some huge shoes to fill after their impressive 2012 showing in which Andre Greipel had won three stages and Jurgen Van Den Broeck had finished 4th overall. Bad luck and an almost unbeatable Marcel Kittel meant that the 2013 campaign never reached similar heights for the Belgian team.

 

The team had much bad luck in the first week when the big crash saw Greipel miss out on his major target: the first yellow jersey of the race. An excellent team time trial had set Van Den Broeck up for another top result but 24 hours later, the team's GC hopes were derailed when the Belgian was left licking his wounds on the tarmac in Marseille. From then on, it was all about Greipel and the German delivered immediately as he took his only win in Montpellier just one day later.

 

He got close on a number of occasions - especially in Saint-Malo and on the Champs-Elysees - but it was clearly exposed that the Gorilla is only 2nd in the German sprinting hierarchy. On a more positive note, the team once again proved what most knew beforehand: that the Lotto-Belisol train of Adam Hansen, Marcel Sieberg, Jurgen Roelandts, Greg Henderson and Greipel is by far the best in the world. With the team purely focused on Greipel, climber Bart De Clercq got his chance to show his talents in the mountains and he did so in convincing fashion. He finished 11th on Mont Ventoux and 6th in Le-Grand-Bornand to show that the team had been a force to be reckoned with, had Van Den Broeck not been forced to give up on his GC dreams.

 

BMC Racing Team

Number of stage wins: 0

Best rider on GC: Steve Morabito (35th)

Best stage result: 2nd (Tejay van Garderen on stage 18)

Number of top 10 stage results: 7 (Gilbert 2, team time trial, Evans 1, van Garderen 2)

Victories in other competitions: None

Rating: 2

 

For BMC, it was all about the GC as a star-studded line-up of classics specialists should support Cadel Evans in his quest to step onto the podium in Paris for the 4th time in his career. With Tejay van Gaderen as a solid back-up rider who could also target a repeat win in the youth classification, the team had covered its bases, should the Giro-Tour double be too much for the veteran Australian.

 

A disappointing team time trial indicated that everything was not in place and when Evans and van Garderen both lost plenty of time in the first Pyrenean stage, the team's race suddenly looked like a disaster. Evans bounced back with a solid showing on the stage to Bagneres-de-Bigorre and it seemed that he could still save the team's Tour with a top 10 result. The fatal blow was dealt on the Mont Ventoux and the Australian was completely exhausted in the final week, himself admitting to be worried about the time limit for the first time in his career.

 

With the GC hopes dashed, the team adjusted its strategy to target stage wins and made all the key breakaways in the final part of the race. Marcus Burghardt and van Garderen were unable to benefit from their strength in numbers in the stage to Lyon while Burghardt, Amael Moinard and Steve Morabito had nothing to say in the finale of the stage to Le-Grand-Bornand. World champion Philippe Gilbert had publicly shown his dissatisfaction with the team's lack of focus on stage wins in the first part of the race but when he finally got his chance in the stage to Gap, he was - once again - a shadow of his former self. The saving angel was van Garderen whose legs finally came around and did a splendid performance in the queen stage to Alpe d'Huez. Had he not had a costly mechanical, he may have won the most prestigious stage of the entire race which would have saved what was a hugely disappointing Tour for the big-budget team.

 

Radioshack Leopard

Number of stage wins: 1 (Jan Bakelants on stage 2)

Best rider on GC: Maxime Monfort (14th)

Best stage result: 1st (Jan Bakelants on stage 2)

Number of top 10 stage results: 6 (Bakelants 2, Gallopin 1, Monfort 1, Klöden 2)

Victories in other competitions: None

Rating: 6

 

Radioshack had put much hope into a miracle but as Andy Schleck said it himself, there was no from-zero-to-hero performance from the Luxembourgish star at this year's Tour. The team's decision to fully back their ace was justified as the former race winner gave indications of growing strength early in the race and with the likes of Andreas Klöden, Haimar Zubeldia and Maxime Monfort also in its ranks, the usually GC-focused team had a number of options, should the captain fail.

 

With its emphasis on the overall, a 14th for Monfort, 18th for Jan Bakelants and 20th for Schleck certainly did not fulfill the expectations of the classy team. Nonetheless, the team leaves the race with a satisfactory result as they shone in a new role as stage hunters. Bakelants had long ago shown his potential in that area in both the Giro and the Vuelta but he was certainly not overwhelmed by the magnitude of the world's biggest bike race, the Belgian putting on a show that made most of the world aware of his talents.

 

His stage win in Ajaccio and two-day stint in the yellow jersey saved the team's race early on and he got close to another victory in Albi, Lyon and Le-Grand-Bornand. Impressively, he even had enough left in the tank to test himself against the race favourites in the final three uphill finishes, taking a solid 15th on the Annecy-Semnoz climb. Having fallen out of GC contention, veteran Andreas Klöden showed his class by taking two top 5 result while Monfort raced a mostly anonymous but consistent race to finish 14th. Another veteran Jens Voigt may not have taken a stage win but his farewell to the Tour was a beautiful one as his attack on the penultimate day stands out as one of the most impressive of the entire race.

 

Team Europcar

Number of stage wins: 0

Best rider on GC: Pierre Rolland (24th)

Best stage result: 7th (Kevin Reza on stage 21)

Number of top 10 stage results: 5(Reza 2, Gene 2, Gautier 1)

Victories in other competitions: None

Rating: 3

 

Few teams has had as much success in the Tour de France in recent years as Team Europcar but for once the French squad did very little to please the French spectators. The combination of Thomas Voeckler and Pierre Rolland is usually a winning one but this year none of the French stars reached their best level.

 

Rolland had hoped to improve on last year's 8th on GC but probably wasted too much energy by chasing KOM points early in the race. He fell out of GC contention on Ax-3-Domaines but made gutsy moves to win mountain stages in the big way by launching long-distance attacks in the stages to Bagneres-de-Bigorre, Le-Grand-Bornand and Annecy-Semnoz. This year he did not have what it took to finish it off and with the GC riders contesting the stage win in all but one of the summit finishes, his quest to win the polka-dot jersey was always an impossible one. Very unusually, Voeckler was almost completely anonymous and probably paid the price for an injury-plagued spring season.

 

With Rolland out of GC contention, his flat-stage domestiques Yohann Gene and Kevin Reza were allowed to test themselves out in the sprints and they took some solid but unspectacular results. Cyril Gautier was one of the most aggressive riders in the entire race and impressed by making it into the key breakaways in the stages to Lyon and Gap. He was unable to get a stage result from his aggression but he was the bright spot in what was otherwise a lacklustre performance from the French squad.

 

Astana Pro Team

Number of stage wins: None

Best rider on GC: Jakob Fuglsang (7th)

Best stage result: 2nd (Jakob Fuglsang on stage 9)

Number of top 10 stage results: 8 (Gavazzi 3, Fuglsang 5)

Victories in other competitions: None

Rating: 5

 

The main objective for Astana was to have a rider finish in the top 10 on GC. As Jakob Fuglsang showed great improvements as a GC rider in his second opportunity to lead a team in a grand tour and finished 7th, that goal was reached. Nonetheless, the team that so dominated the Giro d'Italia have little reason to be satisfied with their performance in the world's biggest race.

 

Without a podium candidate in its ranks, it was never all about the GC for the Kazakhs and Janez Brajkovic, Fredrik Kessiakoff, Francesco Gavazzi and Enrico Gasparotto were all expected to target stage wins with Brajkovic also being a second GC option. The team had much bad luck as the former two crashed out before the race had even reached their preferred terrain in the mountains while the latter was sick in the final part of the race.

 

As a result, the team had a very anonymous presence in France and it was mostly a one-man show by the Danish captain. Using tactical prowess, he even got close to a stage win in Bagneres-de-Bigorre and showed attentiveness by making the decisive split on the crosswinds on stage 13. Gavazzi excelled in the reduced sprints in the first week but never got close to a stage win and so there is little doubt that the team looks forward to next year when a certain Vincenzo Nibali should make sure that the blue jerseys will make a much more noticeable presence.

 

FDJ.fr

Number of stage wins: 0

Best rider on GC: Arnold Jeannesson (29th)

Best stage result: 3rd (Arnold Jeannesson on stage 16)

Number of top 10 stage results: 7 (Vichot 2, Bonnet 1, Roy 1, Jeannesson 1, Geniez 1, Fischer 1)

Victories in other competitions: None

Rating: 4

 

Thibaut Pinot carried the weight of expectations from an entire nation but the young Frenchman cracked under the pressure. All was in place for another top result when he survived the crashes of the first week and climbed comfortably in the lead group on the first mountain of the race, the Port de Pailheres. However, the French dreams were dashed on the subsequent descent when Pinot's fear for high speeds saw his lose contact with the group of favourites. Having seen months of hard work come to nothing by virtue of his mental vulnerability, he was left depressed during the second week and ended up leaving the race with a sore throat.

 

The team's second star, Nacer Bouhanni, had no luck at all and two crashes were enough to deny him the opportunity to contest a single sprint before he abandoned on stage 6 with back pain. Suddenly, the team's remaining riders had to save the race by racing aggressively and chasing stage wins.

 

With their limited manpower, they did solidly and were part of all the key breakaway. French champion Arthur Vichot was 8th in Lyon, Arnold Jeannesson 3rd in Gap, Alexandre Geniex 4th in Le-Grand-Bornand and Jeannesson was also part of the escape on the stage to Alpe d'Huez, eventually finishing 30th after having done way too much work in the early part of the stage. While the team's young  riders shone, veteran Pierrick Fedrigo was a shadow of his usual self and never had the chance to contest the stage win from a breakaway. William Bonnet took up sprinting duties from Bouhanni and finished 5th before leaving the race, totally exhausted, while Jeremy Roy was 8th in the flat time trial. Those results were all solid but cannot hide the fact that the team had hoped for so much more.

 

Ag2r La Mondiale

Number of stage wins: 1 (Christophe Riblon on stage 18)

Best rider on GC: Romain Bardet (15th)

Best stage result: 1st (Christophe Riblon on stage 18)

Number of top 10 stage results: 9 (Dumoulin 4, Bouet 1, Peraud 1, Riblon 2, Gadret 1)

Victories in other competitions: Supercombativity award (Christophe Riblon)

Rating: 8

 

A top 10 result on GC, a stage win and a top 3 in the teams classification were the three major goals when Ag2r travelled to Corsica. Three weeks later the French team can tick the latter two boxes while only bad luck took away the opportunity to make it mission fully accomplished.

 

The team's race was about to fall apart when Jean-Christophe Peraud hit the deck during the warm-up for the second time trial before crashing out of the event in the actual race. Having been firmly placed inside the top 10 on GC and shown no signs of slowing down, the Frenchman had a solid chance of doubling his tally of top 10 results in his big home race. As the team's second GC option, Maxime Bouet had already crashed out, the team's Tour suddenly looked very bleak.

 

That all changed 24 hours later when Christophe Riblon won the most prestigious stage of them all to suddenly make it a highly successful race for the French team. In general, the Frenchman was on fire and was also in the breaks in the stages to Ax-3-Domaines, Mont Ventoux, Gap, Le-Grand-Bornand and Annecy-Semnoz, finishing 2nd on stage 16 and 12th on the penultimate stage. It was certainly not unfair for him to be given the supercombativity award. Romain Bardet showed that he is another promising French climber in the making by finishing 15th on GC as best Frenchman while Samuel Dumoulin had 4 solid top 10 results in the sprints. Hubert Dupont and later in the race John Gadret both climbed good enough to secure the team's runner-up position behind Saxo-Tinkoff in the teams classification.

 

Team Saxo-Tinkoff

Number of stage wins: 0

Best rider on GC: Alberto Contador (4th)

Best stage result: 2nd (Alberto Contador on stage 17)

Number of top 10 stage results: 15 (Bennati 3, team time trial, Kreuziger 5, Contador 5, Rogers 1, Hernandez 1)

Victories in other competitions: Teams classification

Rating: 4

 

It was a race of mixed impressions for Saxo-Tinkoff. On one hand, the team's captain Alberto Contador was a huge disappointment, on the other hand the team raced a fantastic race. Keeping Contador's spring results in mind, one cannot be too surprised by his eventual 4th place but as the team was in France to win the race and has done nothing to hide its own disappointment, there is no reason that we should be too impressed either.

 

Contador was never even close to the victory and the team probably made a - fully understandable - mistake by putting complete faith in its Spanish captain as Roman Kreuziger - at least on certain points - appeared to be the strongest rider on the team. The Czech finished a career-best 5th and like Michael Rogers did a very impressive race to seal what was a fully justified win in the teams classification.

 

It may not have been a wise decision as it could potentially have cost him the podium place but Contador should be praised for his persistent belief that he could still win the race. The attack in the crosswinds on stage 13 was perfectly executed and played a huge part in what was one of the most exciting stages of the entire race. Finally, the team adjusted its tactics to try to defend its podium spot. That quest was ultimately unsuccessful but 4th and 5th on GC and a win in the teams classification would make most team managers overly happy. For Saxo-Tinkoff, it is, however, a different story.

 

Katusha Team

Number of stage wins: 0

Best rider on GC: Joaquin Rodriguez (3rd)

Best stage result: 2nd (Alexander Kristoff on stage 1 and Joaquin Rodriguez on stage 20)

Number of top 10 stage results: 14 (Kristoff 6, team time trial, Rodriguez 5, Moreno 1, Brutt 1)

Victories in other competitions: None

Rating: 8

 

Katusha had one major target and that was to put Joaquin Rodriguez onto the only grand tour podium that had so far eluded him. It was mission accomplished for the Russian team as the Spaniard came back from a hugely disappointing performance in the Pyrenees to shine in the third week, thus justifying his pre-race assessment that it was all about peaking in the hard final part of the race.

 

Rodriguez may have even had the strength to take a stage win on the penultimate stage but made the easily predictable decision to sacrifice those chances to secure his podium spot as he already has one such victory on his palmares. He may of course regret his performance in the Pyrenees as his splendid riding in the final time trial could have allowed him to finish 2nd but the win was always beyond his reach.

 

On another positive note, Alexander Kristoff was hugely consistent in the sprints, finishing in the top 6 whenever a bunch kick was on the cards and even getting very close to the win and the first maillot jaune on stage 1. On the other hand, the rest of the team was a huge disappointment. Daniel Moreno may have been of some value but was certainly far from the level that allowed him to finish 5th at last year's Vuelta. The team's other climbers Yury Trofimov, Alberto Losada and Eduard Vorganov all mistimed their form completely. The team had intentions of targeting stage wins in the transitional stages but it never got any better than Pavel Brutt's 9th in Lyon. Had it not been for Rodriguez and partly Kristoff, the team's race would have been a huge disappointment

 

Euskaltel-Euskadi

Number of stage wins: 0

Best rider on GC: Mikel Nieve (12th)

Best stage result: 3rd (Mikel Nieve on stage 15)

Number of top 10 stage results: 10 (Gorka Izagirre 1, Lobato 3, Nieve 4, Anton 1, Astarloza 1)

Victories in other competitions: None

Rating: 6

 

As Samuel Sanchez had decided to focus on the Giro d'Italia, it was never about the GC for the Basque team who hoped to shine by taking a stage win in the mountains and the polka-dot jersey. The team was ultimately unsuccessful in both quests but as the race favourites ended up deciding most of the mountain stages and so made both objectives almost unattainable, the team cannot be too disappointed. Instead, there is some reason to praise the Basques for another aggressive showing.

 

It was no surprise to see Mikel Nieve perform at an impressive level in the mountains but this time he was maybe even better than when he won queen stages in both the Giro and the Vuelta. Despite a very aggressive showing, he still had the resources to keep up his speed when he was caught by the race favourites and his 3rd place on Mont Ventoux was one of the most impressive performances of the entire race. His only real disappointment came on stage 19 when he was one of the clear favourites to win from the big break but ultimately had to settle for 9th.

 

Unlike Nieve, co-captain Igor Anton never reached the level that saw him emerge as race favourite at the 2010 Vuelta before crashing out of the race. He made a quest to take revenge on the penultimate stage but generally had a poor showing. Ion Izagirre gave indications of his allround talents in both the mountains and the time trials while his brother Gorka never had the opportunity to shine, ultimately abandoning the race due to sickness. Juan Jose Lobato showed his talents as a sprinter by finishing in the top 10 on 3 occasions.

 

Movistar Team

Number of stage wins: 3 (Rui Costa on stages 16 and 19, Nairo Quintana on stage 20)

Best rider on GC: Nairo Quintana (2nd)

Best stage result: 1st (Rui Costa on stages 16 and 19, Nairo Quintana on stage 20)

Number of top 10 stage results: 21 (Rojas 7, team time trial, Valverde 4, Quintana 5, Castroviejo 1, Costa 2, Plaza 1)

Victories in other competitions: Mountains classification (Nairo Quintana) and youth classification (Nairo Quintana)

Rating: 10

 

Sky may have a reputation as the world's leading grand tour team but Movistar are not that far off the mark. On the back of a highly successful Giro d'Italia, the team did an even more splendid Tour de France which exceeded all its pre-race expectations. The major objective was to put Alejandro Valverde onto the overall podium but those hopes were dashed on a very unfortunate stage 13 that saw the team captain and Rui Costa drop far down the GC and the team lose what appeared to be a certain win in the teams classification.

 

The squad adjusted its ambitions to the new situation and managed to simply dominate the final week of racing. Nairo Quintana revealed that the Spanish squad has a likely future Tour winner in its ranks and he proved that Froome is vulnerable in the mountains. His win in the youth classification was expected but few would have imagined that the tiny Colombian would finish 2nd and win the mountains classification at just 23 years of age. At the same time, his win on the Annecy-Semnoz climb stands out as one of the most beautiful of the entire race.

 

Valverde showed character by continuing on despite his bad lack and managed to move himself into 8th on GC, thus proving that he had finished on the podium, had he not been hit by bad luck. Costa proved his immense class by being the dominant escapee of the 2013 Tour. Only 4 stages were decided by breakaways and the Portuguese won two of them. The only slight mistake from the telephone squad was their hesitation in the stage to Alpe d'Huez when they started to chase too late to bring back the early escape. Quintana could very well have won the most prestigious stage of them all but that is only a very small blemish in what was an almost faultless Tour.