veji11 said:
Why on earth should there be a climb today ?? This year's design is proving quite awesome, and flat stages are part of it. Today it is the Echelons and the wind that are the difficulty, no need for a token climb. Gouvenou is doing an awesome job so far.
The existence of the stage is not the issue. It's the pacing that places this on a weekend, when almost all that remains are mountain stages (which are over before the final weekend). Maybe it's less so in France, but in Italy audience figures for flat stages are chronic compared to hilly, mountain and ITT stages, which was part of the reason for Zomegnan's route designs going in the direction they went, while in Spain a similar effect (plus the strengths of the main Spanish riders of course) has led to the ridiculously imbalanced routes. A couple of years ago I did a bit of research into what stages are placed on weekends and found that the Tour is far more likely than the other two GTs to place a flat stage on a weekend, while the Vuelta is the most likely to "play it safe" with a mountaintop finish.
The route this year has seemingly been fine, but it's just a shame on a maximum potential audience day, they have a stage where, if the weather doesn't play ball, we have minimum potential intrigue, and on days with maximum potential intrigue, half the audience are at work and unable to watch live.
The other problem of course is that for stages like this the maillot vert intrigue can carry it (think years like 2010 with Petacchi holding the jersey, Cav winning stages and Thor getting in breaks, or 2011 with 'can Rojas get close enough to the front of the sprint to make it to the jersey if Cav is penalised in the mountains?'). The maillot vert is all but dead at the moment. In 2012 Sagan took it on the third day and held it to Paris; in 2013 he took it on the third day and held it to Paris; this year he's taken it on the second day and barring crashes, will take it to Paris. The current format suits him so well and he's competitive over the hillier stages that the pure sprinters can't make it to the end on, that there is simply no intrigue in that competition. In fact, bar one day with Gallopin, it looks like both the yellow and green jerseys will be held almost unopposed from the first weekend to the finish.
So what does that leave? There's an interesting battle in the GPM, with Purito looking to get points and Nibali picking them up in sledgehammer-like chunks as the GC leader... but there are no points for Purito to try to pick up today. Which just leaves the white jersey.