the tour director is a spineless loser

The TTT is the most exciting stage, besides the TT's and some of the great mountain climbs. Are they adding in another flat stage? Besides the finish of those flat stages, flat stages suck. It's just a big group of guys riding for 5 hours. I love the TdF, but what the hell are they thinking?

i agree with christri25, leblanc is a idiot. The greatest champion the sport has ever seen, and he wished him away and has attempted to drive his name into the ground. Next year, when the ratings and US crowd for his race suck, then maybe he will appreciate Lance for what he did for the sport

I still think it will be exciting to see how if plays outs next year. All the individual time trials will favor Ullrich. The 3 summit finishes will favor Basso, but the overall flatness of the course will favor someone like Boonan. Team time trials are great to watch, but don't really play that large of a role in the overall classification. Whoever can put it all together with a strong team and individual effort will win. I really am a big Jan Ullrich fan, but I think Basso will take it next year (but watch out for Vino).
- T

AS Triguy98 has mentioned, the TTT actually puts the result of the GC out of reach for many good riders on weak teams, so eliminating it in its present form may make it a closer contest for much longer into the tour.
Johan figured it out better than the other team managers and put together the horses to make it work for 7 years. The TTT was a big part of Lance's last three victories.
Without it, that strategy is gone. The King is dead, long live the King!

Now a climber can gain some minutes in the mountains but he won't be safe from an Ullrich assault on the final individual TT. Then again, it might rain on that stage.

So I think this will make it an even more interesting race - even witout Lance.

Geoff

I beleive that strong riders on weak teams don't have a chance for a podium spot with or without the TTT. The TTT rules instituted in 2004 limit time losses (20 seconds for the second-place team, 30 for third, etc.) actually helped the weaker teams. In addition the TTT is a fairly short race. The winner will still be decided in the mountains.
- T

Lance just kept getting better.
In 2003 before the new TTT rules, LA won the tour by 61 seconds, 43 of those seconds came from the TTT. In 2004 with the new rules in place, U.S. Postal won the TTT, T-Mobile was fourth 1:19 back. With the new rules, for GC purposes it was limited to 40 seconds (max stop-loss for all teams is 3 minutes). So LA was 40 seconds ahead of Kloden instead of 1:19 at that point, but it really wasn't a factor because LA won the GC in 2004 by 6 min 19 sec. :eek:
They tried to change the rules to stop Lance, but didn't work.
From a viewing audience perspective I think they are hurting themselves by dropping the TTT this year. They will loose a large chunk of TV audience anyway because LA is gone, but then again the French could probably care less, OLN might care but not French TV.
I just hope that OLN keeps covering the TdF, it would be a shame to loose the daily coverage.
-T

I think you folks who think that the flat stages are boring would enjoy it a lot more if you knew more about the history of professional cycling, about team tactics, about the internal competitions of the event, and even just enjoyed the spectacle of the event.

The stages through the pavé were flat stages. The stage to St. Breuc that produced the dramatic surge by the teams in front, and endangered Moreau and Mayo - who got caught out when the peloton snapped in the winds on the coast road, were also flat stages.
These stages produced high drama, but the Tour passes through astonishingly beautiful countryside too - places which have great prestige outside the world of cycling too.

It is a shame that the sport is corrupted by TV directors from the NFL coverage tradition, where the only good game is one with lots of scoring and the team with the ball last, wins. It ruins the beauty of a sport when the guys whose job it is to sell advertising and who have to have hype, hype, hype, all the time control the shots.

Al Trautwig came on the OLN show two years ago, and after a stage with a huge pile-up - a stage which changed the dynamic of the race for so many teams, and had purists like me stunned, even during the early stages of the race with the tactics that played out on the road, all Trautwig could say was, "Well, nothing happened today because Lance didn't move in the GC!"
Idiot.

People who don't understand football think it is boring. Fair enough. They should learn what it's about.
People who think "only mountain stages and the last 3kms of a flat stage are exciting" just don't understand the sport - and they should learn what it's all about.

The sport of cycling is far bigger than just one man. Patrick O'Grady and others, have suggested that Lance made the Tour boring by being so good. This is a North American website where understandably people overwhelmingly are Lance fans. Me too. I wonder what the European website forums have been saying about the Tour for the last four or five years?

Geoff

Hamilton comes back to win :)

Is the race itself, and all the strategies involved boring? No not at all.
Can the TV coverage be boring? Yes.
Seeing only overhead shots where it is just a mass of riders or close ups of the guys on a breakaway - really doesn't give the perspective or get you into the race.
With technology it could probably be improved, some POV cams that would put you into the mix and more in depth discussions of what and how the teams attack and respond would be interesting.