bogydave

Time trial races , they are racing all out to the end, but boring as he..ll.
Top 17 today, 5 are Skye riders.
But Movie Star winning the overall team time.
Glad there's not more time trials.

Maelochs

I am so very glad I didn't live int he days when "sport" referred to athletic contests to measure people's physical, mental and emotional capacities when pitted against one another.

In these glorious times "sport" is properly and correctly defined as "The most flash and splash we can fit into the space between commercials." How lucky we all are.

OBoile

IMO they should have more/longer TTs. That would force the climbers to attack more in the mountains.

Maelochs

The other side of this is that if the guy in yellow had a strong enough tam, he could kill the opposition on the hard climbs, and get mostly carried along to a couple stage wins and have a minute's lead. Then the other "contenders" would need to win stages ... which means they would need to kill themselves to get into breakaways on every possible stage (no way to make up a minute unless the GC leader completely blew up on a climb, or had a near-fatal accident.) But the stronger team would simply squelch every breakaway, and while the contenders were killing themselves making half-a-dozen attacks at the start of every stage, the GC leader would be in the middle of the peloton hardly pedaling ... so he would be primed to take yet another stage win, or on flat stages completely deny the win because the sprinters would get the first half-dozen positions.

A lot fo the later intermediate stages are given over to the break .... the GC contenders realize the stages aren't sufficiently selective so they save their energy. If the GC contenders needed to win stages to keep up with the leader (who won a couple stages by dint of his awesome team and had a minute lead) then the GC contenders would have to kill themselves on all those intermediate stages ... and still get beat by the stronger team. After the GC leader's team totally exhausted the other contenders, the intermediate finishes would be the totally fresh leader against a handful of exhausted competitors .... and each day it would get worse, because if he won one of those intermediate stages, suddenly he is 90 seconds ahead ... though his total margin of victory might be ten seconds---so the contenders would need to try three times as hard on the next intermediate stage ... and by the time the last few high-mountain stages rolled along, everyone except the GC leader would be toast. Race would be over ... but he would probably win at least one of those too, so the whole show would be over by Stage 17.

Certainly not saying it would certainly go that way ... but it could.

Just pointing out that in any bonus scenario, a different outcome could be posited. No bonus, tiny bonus, huge bonus ... in any of those cases the race as a whole might be great or might be miserable.

Shoot, Froome won one of his Tours with a huge gain on a flat stage,as I recall .... maybe a peloton split int he wind or something, but I recall Froome gaining like a minute in the first week, before the climbing started, so his adversaries were desperate the whole race.

Big bonuses might lead to some excellent racing on some early intermediate stages ... but nothing can beat an overwhelmingly powerful team. Geraint Thomas and Chris Froome are great riders, no doubt ... but the competition is also great. But .... only one team has enough high-powered lieutenants to basically win a Grand Tour For the GC contender.

If Tom Dumoulin were had been riding for Sky this year, he'd have worn yellow in Paris. He would have been carried up the mountains, his team mates would have exhausted the competition, and he would have gone into the TT with a lead---I facilely predict.