"There are so many riders who are going to struggle" - Sean Kelly calls on UCI to limit difficulty of Grand Tours

Is it just a myth or a Grand Tours really getting more and more difficult? Well according to former Vuelta a Espana champion turned Eurosport analyst Sean Kelly they are and he believes something needs to be done about it.

"From a UCI point of view, maybe they need to restrict the amount of metres climbed in the first few days of a Tour because, if not, are we not going down the danger of pushing riders to the limit and doing bad things again,” Kelly told GCN, referencing the growing difficulty of Grand Tours following the reveal of the profiles and routes of the 2024 Tour de France.

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"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."

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Profiles & Route Tour de France 2024 | Italian start, Galibier on stage 4, gravel, two time-trials, brutal Pyrenees and finale in Monaco

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