That's the ideal, because having two Grand Tours will hopefully spur both on to produce better races and outdo one another, as well as giving a better balance in the calendar and enable greater specialisation as well. My concern is that ASO's conduct throughout has given the impression that they're not interested in playing unless they're going to "win" and therefore the Giro had to take a hit before they would be interested in going in.But again, with the Giro organisers actually comitting to live coverage this year - when they have no obligation to - who's to say they won't be reinstated as a WT race from next year?
Giro overlapping with the men's TdF, Tour right after the men's. Could be a good block of racing.
I'm genuinely pleased by the calendar slot though. If they can tie it in with a prologue on the Champs on the last day of the Tour to start the race and run in the Route de France's old slot (another long-form mountainous stage race in France that the Tour protected its trademarks from, preventing it from really taking hold) it is a lot like I wished for.
I think the Dakar has been a pretty major factor in this, to be honest. This has been a pet project for ASO in recent years, but with politics making the traditional Paris-Dakar route untenable, increased travel costs and an ever-reducing number of places able to pay to host plus with the required landscape and amenities meant the project was losing money - ASO owning Le Tour is more than enough to keep them going but when you had issues with last minute withdrawals from co-hosts in South America due to political upheaval and economic troubles, the issues with keeping the Dakar afloat have probably meant ASO have been more resistant to gambling on new races, preferring instead to consolidate their ownership of existing known quantities and rake in the money from the big events. The Saudis paying to host the race going forward probably safeguards that endeavour for the near future, enabling ASO to have more freedom for financial risk in their cycling portfolio again, and it may just be coincidental timing (the Dakar had moved to Saudi Arabia before the pandemic hit, taking place in January 2020), but given the last decade of ASO behaviour in respect of women's cycling, I reserve the right to exercise caution in my optimism.