Sunweb: Giro d'Italia 'gets' how to create exciting racing - Tour de France doesn't
Tom Dumoulin’s Sunweb team have criticized the Tour de France organisers, ASO, for encouraging unspectacular racing, arguing that the Giro d’Italia 'gets it' when it comes to designing an attractive parcours.
After victory at the Giro d’Italia in 2017 and second place this year, logic suggested 2019 would be the year Dumoulin placed all his eggs in the Tour de France basket, but he and his team have made the decision to focus on the Giro once again given the contrasting nature of the two routes. There will be three time trials in Italy, totaling 58.5km against the clock, while in France there will be just one individual time trial of 27km, along with a team time trial.
The number of time trialling kilometres in the Tour has dropped noticeably in recent years, just one tactic in ASO’s bid to break open the racing after several years of domination by Team Sky.
However, Sunweb boss Iwan Spekenbrink, who is also the president of the association of professional cycling teams (AIGCP), believes cutting back on time trialling actually has the opposite effect.
"In the Tour, you see the race stays locked, for hours and hours. It’s the same repetition; everyone does not want to lose time, so they keep waiting until the end. In the Giro in the last years it was proven that the best climbers really used the mountains earlier to gain time," he told Cyclingnews.
"You need a better balance. You need fantastic tough mountains and you need demanding time trials to open up the race. The moment you have natural differences from a variation of disciplines, you get a more open race."
Power Meters
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