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  • Procycling

    RUNNING OUT OF TIME

    Jun 12, 2020 7 minutes
    Writer Jeremy Whittle
    Image
    Getty Images

    In the opening week of the 1978 Tour de France, they had a team time trial. Nothing unusual in that, you might think, but it was quite a long one. It was so long that you could savour canapés, a mise-enbouche, a three-course lunch; have an Armagnac, a cigar and a snooze and still have time to wake up and watch the riders come over the line.

    Those 153 kilometres from Evreux to Caen took the highly-drilled and stage-winning TI-Raleigh team over three and a half hours to complete. That is an hour and twenty minutes longer than the 2018 Tour’s F1-style grid start road stage to the Col du Portet, won by Nairo Quintana.

    Times have changed, of course. The Tour - pro racing as a whole - has a different audience now and has to cater for their expectations and attention spans.

    Old-schoolers may yearn for the days when Jacques Anquetil, Bernard Hinault or even Miguel Indurain got into a low tuck, perched their nose on the handlebars and spun their aero wheels past endless kilometres of hay wains and vineyards.

    Forty, even 30

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