2014 Tour De France stage Stage 2: York – Sheffield: 201km

[red_flanders]

None of the contenders (or even pretenders) lost any significant time here, but to setup the rest of the early flat-ish stages nicely, we need more serious firepower in the break. Bigger morning battles and higher overall pace during these stages would be good. That requires a large portion of the peloton to be gapped, like we have after today's stage. Still doesn't guarantee better racing moving forward, but it does make it more probable.

Every GT should have a early semi selective stage.

And I concur with you view earlier, this was a great racing especially considering how similar stages/races pans out these days. When you add the context it became a fantastic stage.

Agreed, makes sense.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

The key thing here is that there is time to be gained and opportunities to improve your position in the race in the first week. With a totally backloaded race, all the main contenders just look to be in peak form in week 3, and then are content with not losing out to their rivals until then, so you get something like the 2012 Giro, or you have a very tense and nervous péloton as everybody has something to defend, and everybody wants to be in the front 20 until half the field crashes out, like we saw in early stages of the 2011 and 2012 Tours. Putting in some selective stages in week 1 means some reappraisal of goals has gone on (for example, NetApp are no longer protecting König from time losses, ditto Katyusha for Purito and Trek for the Schlecks) and so those teams are no longer looking to be in the top 20 for their guys because they don't mind a bit of time loss now, in fact they may even want it in order to have more freedom to go for stages.

 

[Eclipse]

The onboard footage clips from this stage are out

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2...am-lampre-merida-stage-2-york-sheffield_sport

some nice pictures.