If you were to organize a cycling race, what would you change to make racing more interesting?
Hennie: What would be useful is fewer moves. We had plenty of moves in my time, but nothing like the ones today. Nowadays, it’s the towns that pay the most that are likely to get a stage. And if that happens to be 400 km down the road, then so be it, throw the racers onto a bus. That needs to change because it’s not sustainable.
Tom: Well, I think that part of the problem is that you’re often riding stages that are 200 -250 km long. But my experience in the Grand Tours is that 150 km stages are much more interesting. Shorter stages would be more exciting for the spectators because there would be more action. But it shouldn’t become so extreme and so hard that it paralyzes riders.
Hennie: Indeed, you can shorten the distances. Riders will adapt to that and the stages would be more dynamic. But if you make stages short and heavy, and then expect the riders to relocate 400 km up the road, they won’t get any rest time. They need time to recuperate. So if they return at 5 PM, because that’s usually prime time television, they should actually be lying in their beds in the hotel within the next hour.
Tom: Organizers simply need to focus more how to make it exciting, and they shouldn’t think that extreme is always more exciting, because it’s not. Some people aren’t into the sprints, for example, but if you see how they can film things these days, by putting cameras under the bikes, I guarantee it would keep you glued to your chair. If you can implement that across the whole race, especially during important moments, then you’ll see the tactics that are being used in a race much better, how important positioning is, for example, why someone chooses to be where he is. I think there’s a lot of room for progress in that sense.