Originally Posted by
gpsblake
The yellow jersey team would never let a competitor get into the breakaway period, they would just ride his wheel. Even in the late 2000's when the tour was decided for 3 years with less than a minute lead, no one challenged the yellow. The only way I could see it ever happening is if a massive cross wind would be around on the final stage before Paris and split the peloton into two and the yellow get caught in the 2nd peloton. I have to look but I think LeMond won by 8 seconds, I wonder if his closest rival (who I think was a team mate of his), did any challenges on the Paris stage.
That LeMond win by 8 seconds was against Laurent Fignon in a time trial and it was the final stage that year. Of historical note, LeMond used aero bars and a then new aero helmet. Fignon had like bullhorn bars and no helmet with long hair in a pony tail to boot. I don't think they were on the same team.
As it happens, GCN posted a video on just this topic some time after I made my post, and I think it pretty much answered my question as well as I could have liked.
salient points:
- attack on the last day for a win happened once in like the 1940s
- usually, by the time the last stage comes around, the time gap was just too large to make a realistic try
- up until the 1980s though, when conditions made for a possible change in GC (or other things like points classification... that would *also* have implications on GC) there's support for the notion that attempts were in fact made to win on the final day in Paris. Argument is made on this point that no such tradition of not attacking on the final day existed
- from the last instance where a bridgeable gap existed on the last stage in the 1980s and the next time that happened with a 16 second (?) gap in the early 2000s between Armstrong and Ullrich, the tradition had been established that the last stage was more ceremonial (drinking champagne, goofing around, etc) and no play had been made by the rider 2nd in the GC standings
My assessment then is that as tradition goes, this is a recent phenomenon. As far as this year goes specifically, the gap is too large for any attempt to be realistically made and, barring any mitigating factor as you had pointed out, so it make sense to talk about the winner to be established after stage 20 in definitive terms. However, I think it's just a matter of time before we see two or more riders close in time at stage 21 where this tradition gets set aside. It seems that during the normal course of things, such close gaps at that stage are infrequent though. For my money, I think a possible likely scenario would be a rider being 1st in GC that is weak in the time trial and getting close to caught, or even slightly surpassed on the last TT.
edit:
Given the kind of race the last stage into Paris usually is, what kind of time gap would you expect to see an attempt made? Is a minute too much? Is there usually any time bonuses on the final stage? How does that factor in?