The course for the 2008 Tour de France was revealed today, and there were two major differences that will make the first two weeks of the race the most boring ever.
First, there is no prologue, which means that the first person to wear the yellow jersey will not be a time trial specialist, or even one of the "big boys," those favored to win overall, because they usually spend a lot of time training on the ITT to maximize time separations. What we'll have is a sprinter, either a lucky unknown, or one of the twitch-fiber specialists, who will give up the jersey after the first time trial. The overall contenders will then stack the leaderboard the rest of the way. A climber may grab the jersey right before the first rest day, but his team will give it up during the long stretch of flat stages the following week. Which leads to my problems with the second change.
No more time bonuses at intermediate sprints and finish lines. The whole point of the time bonus was to make the leaders in the General Classification actually win races, or send team mates into breakaway groups to gobble up the intermediate time bonuses. Now, you may have a winner of the next year's Tour who did not win a single race, because he had no incentive. There'll be no motivation to attack the finish line on mountain stages if there's a bunch of billy goats in a group at the end. The Tour directors think that without the time bonuses, there will be more attacks, but that won't be the case. This is a three week race of attrition. If you don't have to attack the guy next to you to save your 3 second advantage, you won't. What this decision has done has made this a race only for a Lance Armstrong type: time-trial specialist and climber. The only exciting stages for the overall lead will be the last two mountain stages, and the time-trial right before the last stage. And the winner may not have to win any of them, just finish second or third.
Fans want their winners of le Tour to actually win something, not just be good enough to finish near the front.
I'm pretty sure "on of the big boys" did obtain the Yellow jersey after stage one, so much for your words of wisdom!
ReplyDeleteNo doubt. I wasn't expecting them to have two uphill sprint finishes for the first two stages. Too bad the only other guy who can sprint uphill was also last year's winner, and he wasn't even invited.
ReplyDeleteHowever, my prediction that an lucky unknown would wear the yellow jersey in the first week did bear out, so that's a point for me.