Lazyass

The last few TDF's have been a snooze fest. I stopped watching after the last mountain stage. And when someone wins it all without winning one single stage, it doesn't sit right to me. They need to give stage winners a 30 second time bonus or something. Maybe a minute, 6 seconds isn't much. When a guy is leading by 25 seconds on stage 19 it's boring to watch him just try to play it safe. I sit there waiting for the real action to start and it rarely does. Might even give a sprinter a chance to be champion.

asgelle

What you want is called the points jersey.

Lazyass

Odd reply that makes no sense. They currently have small time bonuses for a reason, and it's not for points. They just need to make the winning time bonus bigger to promote more real actual racing among the overall contenders.

gpsblake

For several years, they did away with time bonuses all together. While Froome won by under a minute, the outcome of this was never in doubt, it was Froome's to lose. Sky's tactics in the mountains have pretty much neutralized big time gains in the mountains thus gives us "boring" racing. Also I think the riders are clean now because you don't see "superman" efforts anymore.

Kevindale

I suppose in a way the TdF is 21 shorter races and also one big race at the same time. You know the individual stages are very important because winning just one can make a rider's career, though they're nothing compared to the whole shebang. My impression is that most TdFs are pretty much over half way through the mountain stages, and true surprise winners very rare. This one was, time-wise, incredibly close. The TdF was designed to be the ultimate test of stamina and endurance - how many such races are exciting to watch except in special moments?

When watching track and field, the 10000 meters race is a snooze fest, too, until the last couple of laps. And at the elite level is usually already over by then. I can imagine giving a time bonus for the winner of each lap in that race, to make the whole race more exciting, but then it would be a very different event. And the marathon - ha! Just try to watch that.

In recent TdFs, if your suggestion was applied I can imagine that Team Sky would just put a higher priority winning some stages whenever a key competitor was close to taking it. I have little doubt that Froome could have taken a few stages himself if it had been any kind of priority. Look where he finished in KOM and points - he was clearly the strongest rider out there. The longer and harder a race is, the less likely it is to produce close exciting finishes.

This is why the monuments and other intense, short races are so much more exciting.

Cigarguy

Naw, I'm fine with no time bonuses. It's common in cycling to have a dominant team with a dominant team leader. Limit the stage to only mountain stages and time trial stages if you want action in GC all the time. Grand tours have races within races hence all the different jerseys.

For me this years TDF was boring because there's not enough mountain stages. Over the past few years the Veulta is a better race for me. More about the racing and less about French tourism and French bias.

CliffordK

How is the prize money allotted?

I don't know what would make a difference for the Pro racers. Perhaps it would depend a bit on whether they are a young rider on a weak team, or a strong rider on a strong team. But, say give out $50K for the stage winner, and $50K for the team for each stage win.

Maybe give out prize money based on the gap between riders. So, if 10 riders finish within 2 seconds of each other, they all get a little. But, if one or two riders have a 30 second gap to the next riders, then those two share most of the pot.

Of course, perhaps it would all be more exciting if France didn't kick out the sprinters for being bumped from behind.

Marcus_Ti

Yea what we all want is Sagan predictably winning the points jersey...again....in the same you-could-predict-it-before manner as Froome win the GC.

HardyWeinberg

Since Aru didn't even make the podium in the end it makes me that much more annoyed he pulled Froome to that 4 sec bonus in Chambery to stop Bardet from gaining anything. Uran's time bonus there was kind of a coming out party for him I guess.

Cigarguy

Woulda coulda shoulda is meanless and stupid in sports, especially from the comfort and security of a keyboard with 20/20 hindsight.

Had my sports teams made certain passess, scored at certain times, would only do x at y times the result would have been different. I'm sure when Aru did what he did, for whatever reason, he did not plan on falling out of a podium finish. I'm guessing at the time all he was thinking about was the yellow jersey.

markjenn

As stated earlier, there was a push a few years back to have no time bonuses at all, so the current system is a compromise between this and huge bonuses. I think they have it about right....there are a lot of drawbacks to having big bonuses and it makes many finishes much more dangerous. We have a very dominant team and a very dominant rider at the moment and I don't think adding a great deal of random chance to mix things up is the answer.

This tour was more competitive near the end than most. Sure, they could NASCAR'ize the rules to put things in doubt until the final day, but this really isn't the essence of the sport.

IMO, the biggest problem is crashes and related withdrawals. Watching Valverde, Sagan, Cavendish, Porte, and Kittel all be gone really reduces the interest to me. And many others were riding badly injured. Too gladiator for my taste.

Strategy-wise, what I don't understand is why so many teams helped Sky defend the yellow. Put a rider in the damn break and then let Sky pull the peleton all day long.

- Mark

colombo357

Agreed, but that's the riders' faults. Everyone except Froome.

You can't blame a race leader for playing it safe to hold onto his lead. That's just illogical.

You can definitely blame the guys in 2nd through 5th for not risking their positions and making an early break, like what Andy Schleck did a few years ago.

Lazyass

I never blamed Froome for anything. His team are tactical geniuses. And I'm sure if he really tried he could have won a stage or more. If the guys in position 2-5 knew they could get a 30 second time bonus for winning, I would imagine that incentive would give them a lot more motivation to attack. They would know they don't have to completely drop the guy in yellow, they just need to beat him to the line. There would be some really cool mountaintop finishes. Right now you don't even see the top five trying to get stage wins. It's like by the start of the third week they've all just resigned themselves to Froome winning it all. These last few tours are as boring as the Indurian years.

Kevindale

Uran won a stage, was second twice (clearly pushing as hard as he could to win those), and finished in the top 10 in several others. Bardet won a stage and, despite having absolutely no finishing kick he killed himself to take 3rd and beat Froome for a small bonus. I suspect if that time bonus were larger, Froome would have kicked past Bardet, as he seemed to have a bit more left. Aru won a stage and had other strong finishes. Landa seemed to be holding himself back a bit, so we'll leave him out, since he wasn't supposed to outshine Froome. Martin attacked like a mad-man, for all the good it did him. Yates seemed to be pushing himself up to the limit, and wasn't quite in the class of those ahead, at least not yet.

Bottom line is that the top 5 (not including Froome, and his teammate Landa) were clearly going for stage wins, and succeeded multiple times. It doesn't seem possible that they could have tried harder than they did. OTOH, I can see Froome and Landa working a little harder than they did to try to deny those increased bonuses. It's entirely possible that 30 s. stage bonuses would have made the race less close. I feel like we were watching a different Tour. I think Uran is the only one who could have possible been a little more reckless to make some tiny gains, and frankly I think he made the proper risk/reward calculation. Froome simply never looked like he was on the verge of cracking on those mountains, and the were never going to gain time on him in the flatter stages or the TTs.

Leinster

Froome won 7 stages across his previous 3 GC wins and his 2nd place in 2012, including TTs, summit finishes, and last year a downhill finish. I don't think he owes us a stage win.

There have been 7 Tours (8 if you count Contador in 2010) won by a rider who didn't claim a stage win. It's not exactly an epidemic that demands a solution.

Maelochs

This is something I have been paying attention to ... What makes an exciting Grand Tour?

Sheer luck.

Organizers play with the parcours (the route) and the bonuses and whatever else, hoping to “create” exciting racing.

For a while the trend was towards really hard stages--six Cat 1 or HC peaks--and really tough routes. Instead of inspiring attacks, this made everyone afraid to attack---everyone marked their rivals until the last hundred meters of each stage. They knew that if they went long and failed, they might crack and lose minutes--essentially lose a Tour (Vuelta, Giro) in a single afternoon.

Some years crashes wipe otuhte contenders. I think it was the year Nibali won the Tour, when Froome crashed out in like, Stage Five and Contador crashed in Five and Nine (I have no memory, sorry.) But the idea is, the Big Showdown of the Superstars never happened. Force Majeur.

Some people say, “If all the stages are 100 k everyone will go all-out.” Nope. People who want stage wins might, but the GC contenders will know that the stages aren’t selective enough—the short stages aren’t tough enough as a rule to make a difference.

That is why organizers tried long, really hard stages for a while—to break down the riders so that the strongest would emerge. Unfortunately, everyone broke down and no one was strong enough.

So much is variable. If a GC rider gains time early (I think Froome gained a few minutes in the first few stages last year, even in flat stages) so for the rest of the race he just marked his rivals ... no need to attack. And because of his team’s style—frequently Froome would respond to attacks by Very slightly lifting his pace, knowing that the attacker would blow up soon—because the Sky team kept the pace so high, no one had the energy to attack most of the time.

If Froome had Lost several minutes in the early stages, we might have seen some tremendous efforts—or maybe not. Maybe he would have let his team whittle away at the gap, and then accept the loss.

I think Aru realized he just couldn’t win, and that, plus physical fatigue, kept him from doing more.

Bardet tired really hard, but he didn’t have the team or the strength to match Froome. Even if there had been time bonuses, how hard would he have pushed beyond what he did? he was pretty much at his limit already ... and if Froome won one stage, his lead would have been insurmountable.

That’s the second edge of the time-bonus sword. if the same guy wins two or three stages early, no one can touch him (because the rest of the bonuses will likely be split among a few competitors) so again, a boring race.

Of course ... quite a few people (myself included) think the Giro and the Tour this year were the best in years and were really exciting. The mountain jersey competition was excellent, and watching Sunweb come good with two jerseys was great. Bardet and Barguil and Aru added a lot of excitement.

Even Chris Froome didn’t spoil things. Coming into Stage 20, a crash and a puncture could have handed the race to someone else.

I guess my point is, the more people try to make big changes to “improve” the racing, the more the unexpected consequences, and with so many variables already, there is no way to know what will work on any given year.

Managing competition is generally best done with a very light hand.

Kevindale

I agree with this. One suggestion I heard recently was to decrease the size of the teams, from 9 to 7. I believe in 2018 they're already scheduled to be reduced to 8, and hopefully if that doesn't end the domination of the "super team" concept, drop it again to 7. I've heard that some team managers complain that this will reduce the number of professionals and related team jobs, but there's always the option to add a team or two to the grand tours. OTOH, there seems to be a sense by the grand tour organizers that nearly 200 riders is just too big to be safe, and a modestly smaller number would be somewhat safer.

How big were the teams in the days of Merckx?

Leinster

They've had teams of 10 and I believe 12 in the past, but there were fewer teams back in those days. Most important, though, the "super team" concept hadn't developed (though in the years of national teams the Belgian or French or Italian squad might have been seen as a super team). You didn't have 9 of the strongest riders in the race working for one guy to win.

Marcus_Ti

1969: 10 riders each. 13 teams.
1970: 10 riders each. 15 teams.
1971: 10 riders each. 13 teams.
1972: 11 riders each. 12 teams.
1973: 11 riders each. 12 teams.
1974: 10 riders each. 13 teams.
1975: 10 riders each. 14 teams.
1976: 10 riders each. 13 teams.

Kevindale

Thanks. It's funny, when I watch old film of Merckx in action, I rarely see him towards the end of a long pace line of teammates, ala Froome. Maybe I'm just watching the wrong film, but it seems like he was often the one pushing the pace when he wanted to punish everyone.

bogydave

Caretaker

$tupid.

Homebrew01

Not 2018 !!!

Maelochs

There are people who find Any kind of bike racing, from BMX to downhill to CX to road-racing ... all boring. On the other hand, there are people who enjoy al the races, including the last few Tours.

Question is, can you grab the short-attention-span fan base .... but then, byt definition you cannot hold them.

Before long we will have riders on opposing ten-story ramps with flame-throwers and chainsaws rolling down at each other, and people will be calling some events "snoozefests" because only half the rider were burned to death and cut in half.

Once you start with gimmicks, the slope gets slippery.

colombo357

Let's be real here. Bikes are stupid, everyone agrees.