ASO have a habit in recent years of stacking the route against the top rider to ensure as close an exciting race as possible. This has resulted in a number of routes with very few TT km's to give a close fight between Quintana and Froome.
However assuming Dumoulin continues to emerge as the strongest challenger (big if I know, but also plausible) to Froome along with Quintana then how does ASO stack their route? If they pack in the TT's it will help Dumo a lot but potentially wipe out Quintanas challenge and vice versa. I suspect with Bardet targeting the Giro in 2018 that might be enough to persuade them to stack the TDF with TT's.
Of course it could turn that out Porte is the biggest challenger anyways and maybe Froome doesn't even win this year, who knows. But it's a tough conundrum for ASO imo. What should they do?
However assuming Dumoulin continues to emerge as the strongest challenger (big if I know, but also plausible) to Froome along with Quintana then how does ASO stack their route? If they pack in the TT's it will help Dumo a lot but potentially wipe out Quintanas challenge and vice versa. I suspect with Bardet targeting the Giro in 2018 that might be enough to persuade them to stack the TDF with TT's.
Of course it could turn that out Porte is the biggest challenger anyways and maybe Froome doesn't even win this year, who knows. But it's a tough conundrum for ASO imo. What should they do?