"The guys who want to survive in the Tour de France, and who are struggling… for them if you make the race so, so difficult, and all the races are doing it, I’d be concerned with that," he continues. "I think that the UCI should take on more control when it comes to limiting how hard a Grand Tour can be. The riders are professional but they’re only human, and they’re not robots."
This comes after riders such as
Mark Cavendish reacted with shock at the difficulty of the Tour de France route for next year. “Making it so difficult, there are so many riders who are going to struggle to get around in those races. They’ll struggle to get around and do their jobs and if there’s an opportunity to go back to the bad years, certainly the difficulty of the races will put that thought in a lot of riders’ minds because it’s their job," Kelly analyses. "When you become a bike rider, and you put so much work into coming up through the ranks, there are guys who want to do another four or five years. If that’s put into their minds then there’s always a risk again."