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Tour de France 2020 | Stage 5 (Gap - Privas, 183 km)

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Okay, so four non-GT debutants went into the race without ever having ridden a GT without a stage win (sorry for not writing this with a non-double-negative sentence ;) ). Wout and Primoz already made sure they keep themselves in that exclusive club.

Who knows who the other two are?

Eight riders are making their Grand Tour debut and have the hypothetical chance of joining the club: Quentin Pacher, Hugo Hofstetter, Clément Russo, Joris Nieuwenhuis, Harold Tejada, Marc Hirschi, Mathieu Burgaudeau and Maxime Chevalier (sorted after age, starting with the oldest).
 
30 Big Photos from Stage 5 (more to come) — corvos/aso/reuters
http://www.steephill.tv/2020/tour-de-france/photos/stage-05/

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Okay, so four non-GT debutants went into the race without ever having ridden a GT without a stage win (sorry for not writing this with a non-double-negative sentence ;) ). Wout and Primoz already made sure they keep themselves in that exclusive club.

Who knows who the other two are?

Eight riders are making their Grand Tour debut and have the hypothetical chance of joining the club: Quentin Pacher, Hugo Hofstetter, Clément Russo, Joris Nieuwenhuis, Harold Tejada, Marc Hirschi, Mathieu Burgaudeau and Maxime Chevalier (sorted after age, starting with the oldest).

As far as I can see, there are only two other current pro riders who are in the club. Can you name them as well?
 
I have been watching GTs for decades and never seen it as bad as today (the stage 2 days ago was also dreadfully passive). There was no point of protest and no super hard preceding day to justify this behaviour, even if logically I fully sympathise with the smaller teams in not participating in such a futile exercise. We arent even anywhere near a rest day with riders on their last legs (as you say, it is only day 5). The best GTs will feel like they contain numerous one day races to sustain interest on days when there is no GC fight. That is completely fundamental to their viability as a mass spectacle.

I suspect it is an attempt by lower budget teams to send a message to Quickstep and LottoJumbo to at least give a breakaway a few minutes lead to create the slightest hint of a contest. I suspect we will see breakaway leads opened to 3-4 mins in the coming days. I also suspect ASO will think twice in future about sprint point placement. Perhaps being so close to the start it demotivated any breakaway hopefuls even further?

If you were satisfied watching this then that is of course fine. But to try and defend it as normal is to re-write history. I am sure most fans, sponsors, TV networks and ASO will not have been satisfied and that there will be discussions behind closed doors to avoid a repeat. Either that or we shorten stages to 15km!

You are missing my point.

Sure today was incredibly boring, but we have to respect they don't ride for us, they ride to win the race, irrespective of how boring it is.

Nobody has shown up for this Tour in peak condition, because of Corona, so the apprehension is both natural and understandable.

There are plenty of other stages, where teams can spend the strength they have for a result, instead of an exercise in futility on an obvious bunch sprint stage :)
 

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