Tour De France 2018

When and why did they stop doing split stages?

The last one was in 1985. The riders hated split stages as they inevitably led to much longer days, more faffing around doing nothing, more media obligations, and so on.

I love this famous shot of the Badger from his first Tour in 1978, leading the riders' protest during Stage 12A into Valence d'Agen:

Oof Brian Holm pulls no punches. The Movistar honcho has also come out in support of Sky. I think rumours of them being unpopular in the peloton are just guff. You also wonder if Lappartient is thinking small and playing purely to the French crowd.

https://www.cyclingweekly.com/news/racing/seems-like-david-lappartient-something-team-sky-looks-quite-personal-thats-wrong-389055#t8QzXHtWHI8IvE6S.99

Well dave b did say he had a small town mayor mentality .

He does. He has a French small town mayor psychology. Column inches are more important than actually doing anything useful or productive.

Can anyone name anything Lappartient has done since becoming president of the UCI which has had a genuinely positive impact on the sport? I can't.

Brailsford is a PR nightmare sometimes, but that description is pretty spot on!

"It's up to the UCI to make sure races are attractive" if translated correctly is just imbecilic for a sport's president to say.

Brian Holm is a twat with a fancy haircut and redwing boots though. Great DS but he oft says some daft things.

I'm finding it difficult to disagree with anything he said in that interview.

+1

The Tour has featured stages like that before. The year Indurain was challenged by Piotr Ugromov (93 or 94) definitely had one, which Ugromov won.

Ahh, 1994...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1994_Tour_de_France,_Stage_11_to_Stage_21#Stage_19

Can't have been often that someone put 3 minutes into Indurain on an ITT, hilly or not!

Ahh, 1994...

Ugromov's team doctor that year being Michele Ferrari, ofc. As well as beating Indurain by over three minutes, I see Ugromov also put 1'38" into Pantani, the same week Il Pirata had climbed Alpe d'Huez in then record time.

Not a bad season for Gewiss: Sanremo, Liege, Giro, Lombardia, and not forgetting their crazy 1-2-3 at Fleche Wallone that changed pro cycling and Ferrari's subsequent orange juice / EPO comparison.

Crazy days.

Let’s not forget that Indurain was a client of Conconi, who was Ferrari’s mentor. For all that he was a genetic freak, it was EPO that was powering his 80 kg body up those mountains.

Can anyone name anything Verbruggen, McQuaid, Cookson or Lappartient has done since becoming president of the UCI which has had a genuinely positive impact on the sport? I can't.

ftfy

Yeah but at least they weren't trying to change the entire sport because of one team winning one race. Plenty of other shady shit of course. The rider's and team's reaction shows how out of step he is with them.

Verbruggen is a bit before my time, Quaid no, but Cookson yes. Stopping the UCI/WADA war, and setting up independent panels to review adverse doping results and TUE applications were two positive things Cookson did when he was elected.

I’m wondering about the sense of the TTT. A GC contender can lose/gain a hell of a lot of time based upon the quality of the team and the impact appears disproportionate. How about the TTT counts as part of the team competition but not GC. After all KOM and Points jersey points are not available on a TTT stage.
Concede you’d have to do something to get the teams not in contention for the team prize to actually race.

If you give riders their individual times in the TTT, Sky would have an advantage.

Because they only care about GC they'd burn up every rider towing their protected rider to near the end before catapulting him off on his own. Other strong teams would still try to win the TTT and not be able to be as aggressive.

TTT could just give time bonuses/penalties rather than actual splits. As a result, you'd still want to race, but no one person could have their race completely ruined by a bad performance. Say the winners gets no time added to their total time, but second gets 3 seconds, third gets 6 seconds and so on. The worst team would only ship 63 seconds to the winners.

Under that scenario, Dan martin would only have lost 42 seconds, rather than the 1:38 he actually did. Bardet just 33, rather than 1:13.

Why not just increase the bonus seconds 45 seconds for a win but then 2nd place has a bigger reduction. 45 seconds, 25 seconds, 10 seconds.

Someone like Valverde would win the Tour.

Do not like.

The good old days, before Sky ruined cycling.

A little bit more bonus seconds would benefit the aggressive climbers, the Dan Martins and Yates etc.

It would also make every day manic with a crazy battle for the breakaway, and will make some people knackered by the end (Yates in Giro for example)

It does open the door for Valverde which we don’t want.

changing rules based on who you like/ dislike puts you in the same camp as Lappartient though.

Valverde - another TdF rider escaping the vitriol this year despite actually being a proven and unrepentant doper.

I think what people want is more riders in contention for GC in the 3rd week. By stage 15 there were only 4 riders in realistic contention with 3 teams represented.
The last week was nervy for anyone wanting G to win simply because of his past record for problems. I would imagine non-G supporters couldn’t see a way he could lose.