icefire said:Don't know what to think of time bonuses
They are meant to inject incentives for teams and riders, but in practise they also inject disincentives for those that would otherwise be engaged in race-making. Teams will still try to control the race within the safe margins they feel comfortable with, and so bonus seconds are just slightly different parameters for essentially the same game. Watching a breakaway snapping up a "given" stage is as boring as a breakaway that is left hanging out there until the line is reeled in with kms to spare.
I do dislike this "breakaway for the day" attitude. I get why, but I wish that teams would cycle a bit more often as if the irrelevant riders up ahead were not really there. With them being irrelevant and all. I'd love to see new groups try to jump away before the breakaway group is reeled in more often, especially on the flat. It would create a dynamic that is harder to control and police by the power house teams, I think. It would certainly mess up the smoothness of well-trodden and perfected let-them-hang-until-we-start-reeling operations. It might even create opportunities for weaker teams to snatch victories that now never really come into play, whether you got in that breakaway of the day, or not.
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