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Tour de France Tour de France 2024: Stage 16 16/7 Gruissan - Nîmes, 188.6k

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DenisMenchov

DenisMenchov

May 5, 2009
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Danskebjerge said:
The sprinter teams can only achieve success through stage wins, while the GC teams can create their time gaps without being the first to cross the finish line.
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There are also bonus seconds in the end and overall hard stages produce bigger gaps. They are free to race as hard as they want. There was just one clear breakaway stage (stage 9) so far and break took it. There are 2 more stages in the last week (stages 17 & 18). Again that's not teams' fault but ASO's.
 
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Danskebjerge

Jul 4, 2009
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DenisMenchov said:
There are also bonus seconds in the end and overall hard stages produce bigger gaps. They are free to race as hard as they want. There was just one clear breakaway stage (stage 9) so far and break took it. There are 2 more stages in the last week (stages 17 & 18). Again that's not teams' fault but ASO's.
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A team like Uno-X has tried time and time again, both on the flat and the mountaineous stages. They have been nowhere near a stage win, and even without being in a breakaway that succeeds all the way, they have rightfully expected to be in breakaways with some chance of making it - but this hasn't happened. In the mountains, there are always stages that are won by breakaway riders, with the GC riders taking a couple of stage wins. That's the norm that Uno-X and other minor teams have been calculating with. This may still happen, of course, but I understand they are losing faith.

The unwritten rule about not being greedy when you're leading is as old as I can remember. The commentators mentioned it often in the 1990's even.
 
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DenisMenchov

DenisMenchov

May 5, 2009
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Danskebjerge said:
A team like Uno-X has tried time and time again, both on the flat and the mountaineous stages. They have been nowhere near a stage win, and even without being in a breakaway that succeeds all the way, they have rightfully expected to be in breakaways with some chance of making it - but this hasn't happened. In the mountains, there are always stages that are won by breakaway riders, with the GC riders taking a couple of stage wins. That's the norm that Uno-X and other minor teams have been calculating with. This may still happen, of course, but I understand they are losing faith.

The unwritten rule about not being greedy when you're leading is as old as I can remember. The commentators mentioned it often in the 1990's even.
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They have 2nd and 3rd place, what do you mean not near a stage win?! How closer can you get?

Arkea and TotalEnergies both won a stage each, so did DSM. On paper those are 2 really small teams and one medium. Intermarche has 3 stage wins. So all in all smaller teams already have 6 wins out of 15 stages. That's good odds.
 
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Danskebjerge

Jul 4, 2009
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DenisMenchov said:
They have 2nd and 3rd place, what do you mean not near a stage win?! How closer can you get?

Arkea and TotalEnergies both won a stage each, so did DSM. On paper those are 2 really small teams and one medium. Intermarche has 3 stage wins. So all in all smaller teams already have 6 wins out of 15 stages. That's good odds.
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Uno-X are not complaining about the result lists, they are saying that it has been too hard to get into successful breakaways because they are being chased down hard by the big teams. And you've got to admit they have tried.
 
zlev11

zlev11

Jan 23, 2011
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yeah they should be complaining that there have been barely any stage designs that actually lend themselves to a breakaway. everything has either been a flat sprint stage or a GC mountain stage since after the opening weekend. if the break still doesn't go these next two days i think thursdays stage is going to be absolutely nuts, or it could be either way.
 
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Danskebjerge

Jul 4, 2009
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zlev11 said:
yeah they should be complaining that there have been barely any stage designs that actually lend themselves to a breakaway. everything has either been a flat sprint stage or a GC mountain stage since after the opening weekend. if the break still doesn't go these next two days i think thursdays stage is going to be absolutely nuts, or it could be either way.
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I don't think their point is that all the breakaways need to go all the way to the finish line. They just want more than those 1-2 minutes so that they can start believing they may succeed.

And that's how I feel about it, too. That small chance of making it contributes to the excitement when you're watching a race.
 
scribers

scribers

Oct 30, 2023
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For breaks to have a chance you need to de-incentivize sprinters and GC team chase control.

Hills (walls) plus finishing ramps for sprinters. Maybe rethink intermediate sprints too (though they are usually decent).

For GC maybe remove the bonus seconds at the end. I think they regularly added bonus seconds in to incentivize more GC action at the finish. I can’t recall now why it was lagging so much. Maybe doping controls for stage winners?
 
zlev11

zlev11

Jan 23, 2011
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Danskebjerge said:
I don't think their point is that all the breakaways need to go all the way to the finish line. They just want more than those 1-2 minutes so that they can start believing they may succeed.

And that's how I feel about it, too. That small chance of making it contributes to the excitement when you're watching a race.
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whatever their point is, it's still the fault of the route. you cant blame the GC riders for wanting to race the mountain stages.
 
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Danskebjerge

Jul 4, 2009
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scribers said:
For GC maybe remove the bonus seconds at the end. I think they regularly added bonus seconds in to incentivize more GC action at the finish.
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True. It's not like we've always wanted breakaways to succeed. Often, the opposite has been the case. Then we have been talking about what could be done to make the GC riders win more stages. ;)

It's not contradictory. Things change. And the Tour should adapt to that.

So they should make it harder for the GC leader to win the polka dot jersey, they should change the criteria of the young riders jersey (preferrably abolish it), they should remove the bonus seconds on mountain tops (as you mention), and they should put in more KoM points on the flatter stages to avoid stages with no breakaway attempts.
 
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Valv.Piti

Valv.Piti

Aug 3, 2015
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Danskebjerge said:
That's exactly what was different earlier, for decades. The GC riders took it easy in the beginning of the mountain stages.
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I remember when GC teams didn't bother. That was a terrible watch watching break after break winning stages with 10-20 minutes of actual racing going on behind. We don't wish to go back to that at ANY POINT. At least I don't want that.

Mostly its on stage design, simple as. Usually there are more varied transition stages, but this year there's not and that has been a big complaint for most posters engaging in discussions of the route. ASO has simply done a poor job because you can simply not fault sprinter teams for controlling on the flat days and GC teams for racing the mountains stages hard. If anything, we can blame the smaller teams going for very unlikely sprinters on flat days and not engaging in break action AT ALL.
 
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scribers

scribers

Oct 30, 2023
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Danskebjerge said:
True. It's not like we've always wanted breakaways to succeed. Often, the opposite has been the case. Then we have been talking about what could be done to make the GC riders win more stages. ;)

It's not contradictory. Things change. And the Tour should adapt to that.

So they should make it harder for the GC leader to win the polka dot jersey, they should change the criteria of the young riders jersey (preferrably abolish it), they should remove the bonus seconds on mountain tops (as you mention), and they should put in more KoM points on the flatter stages to avoid stages with no breakaway attempts.
Click to expand...
The problem with making it harder for GC to win mountains classification is the best climber is usually the GC guy. But they usually don’t desire it anyhow, so there’s that. Climbers in the break have every incentive to get those points compared to GC guys. With KOM points along the way and sometimes at the end.

Maybe smaller teams would help breaks survive too
 
B

Brullnux

Mar 31, 2015
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DenisMenchov said:
Interesting how Visma and UAE are gready with 4 stage wins among them, but Alpecin and Intermarche are not gready with 5? Pogacar and Vingegaard are payed to win stages the same way as Philipsen and Girmay. Yet many teams just sit in the bunch and don't want to work for it on a "sprinters" day but still expect gifts on mountain stages?!
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Intermarché, in true intermarché style, have done absolutely no work at any point in this race.
 
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hayneplane

Sep 4, 2017
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One good tweak could be to dish out more points for cat 4 (3points) and cat 3 (5points) instead of the current 1 and 2 points respectively so that there is more reward and incentive for a first week battle for the KOM jersey as this year very quickly went to Abrahamson winning unchallenged. It would also allow a rider to build up a bigger tally that would less easily be overhauled by one big climb from a GC guy.
 
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