6. There’s a new rule to help make things safer
The Union Cycliste Internationale announced the rule change in June 2017, which will try to reduce the “stress and risk” for riders during the bunch sprint stages in the Tour de France. The UCI wants to try and reduce the amount of crashes that occur when the riders “sprint” at the finales of stages during the race.
Instead of having a one-second gap between groups of riders in those stages, the new rule will have a three-second gap, which the UCI says will “retain the integrity of the sprint and the stage,” according to Cycling Weekly.
“I think the riders have got to be very careful with the new rule being tried this year to try and reduce the carnage at the finish in the sprint,” Liggett says. “The three-second gap might work, but the guy at the back of the group in the race can’t ever know what the gaps are at the front, so he’s still going to have to race to the front to stop losing time. So I don’t see that really helping very much at all, actually.”
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