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hippy
Going back to Cooke's assertion that Womens' races should be the same length as mens' - why would you want that? The biggest strength of womens' cycling is the shorter stages. That translates to more exciting racing, almost always. Coverage for the mens' races is almost always for the second half, and because people don't do elephantine amounts of EPO, amphetamines and blood bags these days the 100km solo winning attack is a thing of the past - so the first half of races is sheer boredom. I'd argue for the mens' races/stages to be 50km shorter on most days. Look at the Queen stage of this year's Giro:
That looks like 5000m of climbing up some brutal roads - Giau is insane, but overall the Dolomite roads are pretty steep anyway - and 210km. It'll look spectacular, but there's just too much work to do that day for any interesting racing to happen.
You want a massive battle that looks good on the telly, then you need shorter stages which allow riders to properly compete.