Tour de France director intends to reduce number of sprint stages into future: "They disappointed us a little bit and we won't include that many in the future!"
CyclingSaturday, 20 July 2024 at 08:30
Joining a breakaway in flat transition stages had become sort of a suicide mission in recent years which only the smaller teams were interested in taking on - either for sponsor visibility, or to get a headstart into regularity classifications (such as the re-introduced Intergiro competition at the 2024 Giro d'Italia).
However this year not even the wild card teams were often interested in wasting their energy in front of the peloton, despite teams like TotalEnergies were lacking a real sprinter or a GC leader. As the race took off with two hard stages in Italy, there wasn't a leader's jersey in the stake on transition days, which likely put off most of the adventurers.
A result? We have seen way too many stages where a breakaway never even formed, with the peloton cruising through the stage at a local commute pace. Naturally, not many fans were willing to glue themselves to the TV on such days, which was probably noticed in the numbers too.
Race director and architect of the course, Thierry Gouvenou, has a strong opinion on the matter. After seeing the spectacular racing in mountains, his resolution is to bring more harder, and presumably more entertaining stages. At least as long as teams refuse to put on a show on flat days themselves: "I think that we'll try to grow the number of stages like these. The sprinters stages disappointed us a little bit and we won't include that many in the future!," he told Radio Sports.
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5 Comments
What is Jasper Philipson and friends going to do if there are less sprint stages? Is it worth a sprinter even being there for two stages that "might" end in a sprint? I cant see them settling for being bottle carriers.
Was 4 (genuine sprint stages) out of 21 stages really too much? Surely those stages are essential for giving the GC guys a bit of recovery time?
The sprints are dangerous as it stands. Reducing the number will make it more competitive and even more dangerous for the riders.
Great replace at least three of them for hard classics type stages where anything can happen and it is impossible to control.
Agreed. Don’t necessarily need more hard mountain stages. But definitely would like to see more hilly stages where anything can happen.
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