Is The Tour De France Sidelining Sprinters?

The Tour’s relentless focus on spectacle has left some fastmen feeling like cycling’s endangered species, finds Peter Cossins

- Peter Cossins

Do Tour de France sprinters go to sleep at night and dream of the years either side of the millennium when Jean-Marie Leblanc was the race director, a time when they could count on a whole week of bunch gallops that were typically the prelude to a long time trial and, with the event already half-done, the first mountain stages? They were halcyon days for sprinters, typified by Mario Cipollini winning four consecutive stages and then swanning off to the beach without subjecting himself to anything more testing than a third-category hill.

Since Christian Prudhomme succeeded Leblanc as the Tour director in 2007, he and his technical director, Thierry Gouvenou, have made it their primary task to do away with all of the race’s established scenarios when it comes to route-planning. The prologue time trial has made only very intermittent appearances, stages above 230 kilometres have all but disappeared, and almost perennial attempts are made to lure the yellow jersey favourites into the open during the first week.

For this year, Prudhomme tasked Gouvenou with anew challenge, to programme in the earliest mountain summit finish in the race’s history, while at the same time making sure that this test wasn’t tough enough to scupper the hopes of some GC contenders within the first four days. The gamble paid off, the favourites almost all coming in together at Orcières-Merlette.

At the same time, Gouvenou has also been tinkering with other aspects of the Tour route, and with a great deal less fanfare. The result, it would be fair to say, wouldn’t please the likes of ‘Super Mario’ at all. His objective is to add some spice to stages that are likely to finish with a bunch sprint.