2023 Tour de France route rumors

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The CPA has in the past been accused of not doing enough for the ríders and for being nothing more than a UCI sock puppet. If Hansen has support from the riders and manages to change things to their liking, then I'm not going to criticise him, because the riders should be heard in these matters.

However I'm not sure the riders actually believe everything will magically become safer, just because they add 3 km of flat roads after a finishing descent, nor that they want to ban descent finishes all together. But we'll see what happens in the end.
 
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Stage 2 this year at Basque Country.

Well, I guess having the stage only flatten out about 500 metres from the line is pretty close to a literal downhill finish.

itzulia-basque-country-2023-stage-2-profile-81733aedbf.png


I meant, a race finishing either on the descent, or just where it ends.
 
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Well, I guess having the stage only flatten out about 500 metres from the line is pretty close to a literal downhill finish.

itzulia-basque-country-2023-stage-2-profile-81733aedbf.png


I meant, a race finishing either on the descent, or just where it ends.
The descent in the Leitza stage really only ended at the roundabout inside the final 150 metres, that was a worse finish than the PCS profile shows and is definitely the most dangerous finish in a WT race this season.

The classic Arrate finish ends with 1k at about -5% that lasts all the way to the line, not sure if that's long enough to count as a 'true' descent though.
 
The Tour is too generous with its label "Hors catégorie". Only Tourmalet, Joux-Plane and Col de la Loze should count as HC. Soudet, Puy de Dôme and Grand Colombier should be 1st cat.

I'd rather see that they do away with HC altogether. Especially as the current point system has effectively a category above HC. Much prefer the categorisation of the Giro, where Cat 1 is only trumped by the Cima Coppi, and where points for the smaller climbs aren't as irrelevant as in the Tour.
 
Joux-Plane isn't harder than any of those latter three though...

The HC takes into account other factors or certainly ought to,than just toughness of climb such as position of stage and length of a stage. Given parcours I would very much argue joux plane deserves the HC category. Soudet as a stand-alone climb probably tough enough to be worthy. Grand colombier in context of stage not so much. I would say yes for puy de some given it is a very up and down stage though could be harder still in the massif central.
 
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Actually at the moment it doesn't mather or there will be more TT's KM's because it wouldn't change the favorites for the GC.

The beste climbers are also the best ITT specialists. Almost no TT doesn't make much difference.

I don't think the amount of TT Kilometres is a big deal. Last year Vingegaard was 39 seconds from Pogacar at the start of the Granon stage. 8 of those seconds was from a TT. With the top riders we have right now, we do not need many TT Kilometres. Pogacar and Vingegaard is almost as fast as each other. At the 40 Km TT there was also 8 seconds between them. But everybody else was miles behind. The next person from the top 10 (Vlasov) was 2 and a half minute behind them. It isn't the TT that creates the gap, there make them attack. It just send everybody else minutes behind. And it won't prevent Pogacar or Vingegaard from attacking, the want to win, a second place isn't good enough. It just give everybody else a bigger chance, so we wont get a battle between Vingegaard and Pogacar the next 10 years. And riders like Bernal and Carapz (Maybe Mas) there can compet against them in the mountains, will also get a bigger chance to win, so more people would attack.

The two big favourites are almost equal in the ITT and also happen to climb faster than the pure climbers. A longer ITT would change very little.

ITT is irrelevant because small gaps between Top 2, guys. I hope this idea is dead by now.
 
ITT is irrelevant because small gaps between Top 2, guys. I hope this idea is dead by now.
I find it really funny that the people who argued, we don't need more TT kms because Pogacar and Vingegaard are equally matched anyway, were completely disproven, but so were the people arguing there weren't enough TT kms to make a real difference.

Sometimes we are just all wrong.