What idiot designed this course, the game's basically over one week into the Tour..? They hooked everyone in nicely with the Stage 1 TTT and then it's already decided by Stage 7
Like the old days, week one is supposed to let the small teams grab a stage or two, have the breakaway artists go at each other like crazy, let the sprinters battle it out for early points, give guys like Alaphilippe, Magnus Cort, Niels Politt a shot at glory, throw in one Mohorič zipper-suit celebration, have Van der Poel fight for the half-watt, give us one emotional ride like Hoelgaard's, and then the GC riders start poking at each other lightly just to check form, and then into week two, back and forth until maybe just the top three survive, not exactly seesawing but enough to keep the tension alive, then a Lidl-Trek rider gets pissed off and DNFs for a shock moment, and finally in week three Pogačar launches the rocket and locks up the maillot jaune!! That's the whole appeal of watching the Tour
But this? The game's basically ending in week one. At this point it's not even as good as the Vuelta, worse than the Giro, that level of fun
There's no reason to stay up till dawn for this ㅠㅠ Whoever at UCI designed this course is gonna catch some flak, doesn't ending this early directly hurt the buzz around the race??
Mont Ventoux, the queen stage, whatever... zero anticipation left at this point
