but are we politely ignoring the race has shrunk a stage ? UCI originally had it 5th to the 10th, ie at least 6 stages, now its 7th to 11th with only 5.
It's ok, the race seems to get a lot more rope than anyone else. They got away with failing the broadcast commitments and kept their status when others were downgraded, and the voices that were shouting about other races were begging for fans to give the Women's Tour some leeway and not criticise it too harshly for its failings.
I've always found it frustrating that they can't show the stage profiles when they release the course, but then the Tour de France does that. If I'm honest, the route looks like it will be an absolute turd; stage 1 is in a very flat area, stage 2 is in a flat area that hopefully will have a couple of small hills like stage 2 of the 2018 edition but we can't really hope for much more, stage 4 finishes in a city which has some good climbs in at least OK distance, but on the wrong side of the city for where they'll be approaching so that will limit what they can do, and stage 5 is going to be a featureless inner city circuit race around a city which doesn't have any hills in it.
It's therefore highly liable to be dependent on the parcours of stage 3 and while Guisborough doesn't have much by way of significant climbing in the immediate vicinity, there's definitely the scope to include the likes of Egton Cliff close-ish to the finish, hell in theory either Blakey Bank or Rosedale Chimney Bank could be included and would likely be pretty selective around 20km from the line. If this stage is disappointing, we're in for a 2014-15/2018 bonus second fiesta that really isn't becoming of a race with the status and the ambitions of grandeur that the Women's Tour has. If this stage is good, there's a good chance that it will at least give us something interesting on stage 3. The Women's Tour started out with top drawer presentation and although the parcours was pretty underwhelming (and did suffer from the same problem as the men's Tour of Britain, of judging difficulty in absolutes in terms of the amount of climbing without sufficient attention paid to where in the race those obstacles were, leading to poorly-designed, sprint-heavy races), there was the definite feeling that they were trying to build something, especially once they started introducing better stages and we got editions like 2016 and 2019 which were pretty good races, they started introducing HTFs and TTs, and varied the race. But now the coverage has stagnated and become decidedly second-rate in the face of the massive progress made in the decade the race has been running; and the race organisation and design has not just stalled but regressed, making the race very passé. They came to the sport with the intention of making the biggest women's race and an event that would really stand out... and while at first they had the foundations of it... that's still all they have and in that time others have built whole houses. It wasn't even Tour of California-like delusions of grandeur. Their aims were not unrealistic or unachievable like Messick's. But that just makes it more disappointing when we are delivered a fairly middling stage race with no distinct characteristics, which has a tendency to see a lot of crashes and a lot of GC riders have stopped even contesting.
At least no to-formula East Anglian stage this year, I like that they reward the area for its support but ever since the 2017 miscalculation they don't even let a break form and when they arranged a stage which literally rode past the toughest climb in Suffolk and avoided another climb just 15km from the finish before delivering another dangerous and crash-marred finale on stage 1 last year I came to the conclusion that they aren't going to investigate what few, paltry opportunities there are for racing in the area (there genuinely are some, but you wouldn't know it from any of the races that have been there) so it's best if they just go somewhere else which will at least be halfway new. The bad news is they look like they're starting in similar fashion, just putting the featureless opening stage in a different geographical area.
I mean, even if stage 3 is really good, there's a likelihood it's a one-stage race... but that would still give us one really good stage, you know? Plus also the fact Yorkshire is back on the agenda speaks to two things, one positive and one negative. Firstly this means that the parcours opportunities (that the organisers will likely ignore if precedent is anything to go by) are vastly increased for at least increased variety in the parcours; but on the other hand this also means the Tour de Yorkshire is almost certainly gone for good.
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