Tour de France 2017

It's a fair point, it just seems worse this year because of the preponderance of sprint stages.

Somewhere, there's a sprinters' forum that believes strongly in the benefits of organising 200km five-hour stages for the joy of five minutes of sprint preparation and ten seconds of sprinting at the end. :)

Cav has compained about it before:

“If they go on like that, there won’t be many sprinters coming,” he said. “All year [2015] I thought there would be seven sprint stages, Zeeland wasn’t a sprint, even the one I won wasn’t a proper sprint stage. It could become hard to focus your season on the Tour if there are only three sprints in 21 stages.”

Even given his profile, I doubt he has much influence over the route planning, but for the love of god stay in the race if it's built to suit you.

Yeah, come on Cav, stop whinging about your broken bones and get back on your bike, you wuss.

And don't get ill in the first place while we're at it!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/live/cycling/40033905

5 Live radio coverage through the top of the page

We've had one stage for attackers..

I.e. uphill finish?

ouch for Cotaldo. bad news for Aru

Monday was a bit dull

yeah, i reckon next monday will be a repeat on dullness zzzz

You're forgetting that he had it broken deliberately in hospital after the crash...

Just be glad you're not a sprinter. Imagine how boring it is for them. What a shit skillset.

Saturday's stage, too hard for sprinters, not hard enough for GC riders.

Anything that looks good for Cummings?

Sunday I reckon for Cummings

Why doesn't anyone switch bikes with 30k to go onto a TT bike and beast out the rest of the stage?

they just need to introduce random green points primes throughout the stage, keep the sprint teams racing hard throughout, and while they are at it make the stages proper hard 300km slog fests.

Yeah, why so stingy with the green bits? Why not three/four per stage. Make those primadonnas work for their points.

go on son

They are only allowed to use TT bikes in TT stages.

they want it to be for the best outright sprinter, not best overall. There used to be more and which is when people like Sagan would win the jersey as opposed to people like Kittel.

I stuck £1 on Maciej Bodnar as soon as he broke away at 110-1, I see he has now come down to 14-1. I guess it's pretty unlikely barring a crash though. Is it wrong to secretly want a crash?

Contador had a little lie down. Probably fell asleep through boredom.

That'd be why then!

yeah, but he aint there now, so I vote for mid race rule changes!!

this is way more interesting now though, sham that the GC teams feel the need to get involved..