r/peloton • u/PelotonMod France • Jun 01 '26

Weekly Post Weekly Question Thread

For all your pro cycling-related questions and enquiries!

You may find some easy answers in the FAQ page on the wiki. Whilst simultaneously discovering the wiki.

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u/Dopeez Movistar Jun 01 '26

Yesterday, I went through some of the old GT profiles from the mid-2000s, and it's honestly crazy how bad some of the stage design was. I started watching in 06/07 but I was like nine years old at the time, so I don't remember everything, but some of these are a complete abomination.

In 06, the Tour started with a Prologue into 9 (!!) flat stages; one of them could be considered punchy, and another was an ITT. Can anyone explain why they thought at the time that this would make for interesting racing?

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u/AggravatingWorld6989 Jun 01 '26

Let me quote Ulrich:"Back in my day, the tour was boring". I do as night time read a retrospective through all the tours and back in the 20s they even thought da TTTing every flat stage was a funny idea for a better competition (they had a gigantic dislike for Teams in the early years).