Tour is losing its thrill factor
Team Sky’s sixth Tour de France victory in seven years has left cycling desperately seeking ways to restore suspense to the peloton.
Sky’s implacable and monotonous domination, briefly interrupted by Vincenzo Nibali and Astana in 2014, has allowed the British team to propel three different riders to the top step of the final podium on the Champs-Elysees – Bradley Wiggins, Chris Froome and now Geraint Thomas.
“You can’t blame them for winning,” Tour director Christian Prudhomme said, comparing Sky to European football’s dominant club. “They’re a version of Real Madrid.” They have “the best in each position”, said Romain Bardet of AG2R, who was the best French finisher in sixth place after being overpowered by the British outfit in the mountains.
“We have a team, a machine that has won with three different leaders,” said Prudhomme.
The youngest rider in the race was Sky’s Egan Bernal, who followed victory in last year’s Tour de l’Avenir, a race for riders aged 23 or younger, with second place in this year’s Tour de France young-rider category.
“They are preparing the succession,” said Prudhomme.
But if the same team keeps winning, cycling risks boring its public, even though viewing figures remained strong in France – once the country had won the World Cup.
“Today everything is measured to the millimetre,” said Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) president David Lappartient.
“How many people are really captivated? In football, there are extraordinary, improbable reversals.
“We do not have that much on the Tour de France, while we have it on the Tour of Flanders and in Paris-Roubaix (one-day classics). We want to dream of the new. We must not rule out anything.” This year the Tour experimented with an unusually short mountain stage (65km), the 17th to Saint-LarySoulan, to limit the role of teams. It may do so again.
But Prudhomme still preferred the 200km marathon two days later saying “it was the classic Pyrenees stage that was the most beautiful”.
The course director, Thierry Gouvenou, is looking for steep climbs to favour the climbers and solo attackers and has been doing so since 2012, said Prudhomme. A ban on radio ear-pieces has been a subject of debate between the Tour and the teams for several years but the technology has moved on and now the argument also includes power metres. Body and bike sensors supply instant data on each rider’s performance, allowing them to fine-tune their efforts, enabling managers in team cars to plan defensive tactics.
If the same team keeps winning, cycling risks boring its public