Tour de France 2020

[Graham Breeze]

Thank you Graham...

It does seem to the outsider that it will generally always swing in favour of a strong mountain cyclist, due to the time gaps that can be attained (in a similar way that gaps in fell races are usually far larger than flat races).

Not necessarily. Miguel Indurain was tall and heavy and so struggled to get over mountains and won hardly any stages but he won 5 consecutive Tours because he was almost unbeatable in Time Trials. Light mountain climbers are often rubbish at Time Trials (they just don't have the muscle) and cannot get back the time a strong Time Trial rider can gain.

There have been Tours with maybe five Time Trials and long ones at that and that is how Anquetil destroyed his opposition.

The Indurain years are regarded as the dullest era in Tour history since WW2. However they immediately preceded the EPO years when Riis and then Ullrich, Pantani and Armstrong started winning - by being good climbers.

In recent years to win the Tour you have to be more of an all-rounder and the balance has swung to favouring climbers but you still have to be able to Time Trial well - as we saw today, although "hill top" finish Time Trials are somewhat unusual.

I didn't really care who won the Tour - as long as it wasn't Ineos - and I hope 2020
has seen the end of the fear other teams have had for the Sky/Ineos machine.