How to improve the Tour

[Pross]

White jersey U23 (to match other events) and first time in the Tour.

 

[Pross]

That's kinda what the points competition does. From 1906-1912 that was how the Tour worked, sort of. You got 1 for first on stage, 2 for second etc, and fewest points won. I seem to remember they couldn't decide whether it was to be total time or points and swapped between the two. Eventually total time won out. The points classification is a kind of echo of this except they've monkeyed around with the number of points and added intermediate sprints.

Yeah, the points has been amended so it no longer does what I was thinking I.e. rewarding the most consistent finisher. It could either work in making riders try to place highly every day or fail dismally by making everyone race like Valverde / pre-2025 Roglic. It probably wouldn’t help with crashy finishes though. It would need stringent time cuts to stop people having really easy days on stages that don’t suit them too.

I reckon Pog would love it as he could try to win all 21 stages and not worry about taking a big time hit if he blew up. It was the talk of his fairly dejected interviews that made me thing it might liven things up. It might also open up GC to a wider range of riders instead of those that can climb and TT.

 

[Dogtrousers]

Yeah, the points has been amended so it no longer does what I was thinking I.e. rewarding the most consistent finisher. It could either work in making riders try to place highly every day or fail dismally by making everyone race like Valverde / pre-2025 Roglic. It probably wouldn’t help with crashy finishes though. It would need stringent time cuts to stop people having really easy days on stages that don’t suit them too.

I reckon Pog would love it as he could try to win all 21 stages and not worry about taking a big time hit if he blew up. It was the talk of his fairly dejected interviews that made me thing it might liven things up. It might also open up GC to a wider range of riders instead of those that can climb and TT.

I guess that bonus seconds are intended to serve much the same purpose - to draw the big guns out into going for the win instead of marking each other. Similar-ish intent but different.

 

[Aravis]

White jersey U23 (to match other events) and first time in the Tour.

This is certainly logical. I thought it might be interesting to see how the system might have worked out in the Tour just gone.

I'm finding it difficult to find a straightforward explanation of what U23 means, so for the sake of argument I'll assume that anyone born on 1/1/2002 or later would have qualified as U23 in 2025. By my reckoning there were 14, of whom 4 had ridden in at least one edition previously. Pulling out all the relevant data gives the following table which I hope is self-explanatory:

In years where qualification was based on age only, the fewest riders eligible for the white jersey was 11 in 1991, followed by 19 in 1989 and 2000. The most was 45 in 1993. So 10 is historically low, but the competition would've worked. However I think an age limit of 23 is a bit too low. Not all races are the same in that regard.

There was once an award at the end of a Tour to the youngest rider to complete. That sounds like a nice simple idea - what about doing the same for the oldest. Get them to stand side by side on podium in Paris and give them each a nice plaque; I reckon that would be pretty popular.

 

[Dogtrousers]

I'm finding it difficult to find a straightforward explanation of what U23 means, so for the sake of argument I'll assume that anyone born on 1/1/2002 or later would have qualified as U23 in 2025.

I think you're a year out. I think you have to be Under 23 for the entirety of the calendar year. So you'd have to be born on 1/1/2003 or later to guarantee that you are still 22 on 31 Dec. I'm sure I've read that somewhere but I don't know where.

If we look at the Tour de France Femmes, it's quite clear what the rules are:

The tour de France Femmes rules say https://storage-aso.lequipe.fr/ASO/cycling_trf/tdffaz25-reglement-en.pdf
ARTICLE 9. BEST YOUNG RIDER CLASSIFICATION
The best young rider classification will be contested only by riders born on or after 1 January 2003.

A case in point is Ella Wyllie. She was born 1 Sept 2002 so was actually still 22 at the time of the race, but alas, considered too long in the tooth for the white jersey. Shame because she came in 12th, 7 places ahead of the White Jersey winner Nienke Vinke.

I think what you have above is Under-24. The current TdF white jersey is Under-26. Of the ones on your list only Gregoire, Blackmore, Martinez, Romeo & Fredheim qualify as U-23 (I think. Usual caveats...). That would be a pretty limited field, so maybe U24 might be better.

I'm not 100% certain of all this. Although I'm certain of what the TdFF rules were this year, I'm not sure if they align with what U23 normally means. The more I look into it the confuseder I get.

 

[Aravis]

I think you're a year out. I think you have to be Under 23 for the entirety of the calendar year. So you'd have to be born on 1/1/2003 or later to guarantee that you are still 22 on 31 Dec. I'm sure I've read that somewhere but I don't know where.

I was getting the same message, but when I looked at Pro Cycling Stats it seemed to be telling me that 2002-born Oscar Onley is a current U23 rider. So I went with that. If you do use 1/1/2003 as the cut-off, the result is exactly as you predicted, remembering that Gregoire and Martinez weren't debutants:

Congratulations to Joseph anyway, a significant achievement

confuseder

Quite

 

[cyberknight]

Back to the future with some split stages. 20km sprint, lunch, afternoon stage. Do it on both flat stages (the trains have already gone deep, so might struggle to contain a fresh-legged break in the afternoon) and on mountain days (which might solve some of the GC issues with the polka dots)

Split stages were the bane of earlier tdf , basically a way for the tour to get more cash from staging towns and no income going to the teams .the infamous strike of 1978 that thrust Hinault into the limelight was the result of too many split stages

 

[Dogtrousers]

Re the white jersey: There's also the question of consistency with the other GTs and multi-stage races. The Giro, like the tour, is U26 (ie 25 and under for the whole year). The young rider classification in the Vuelta has only been going since 2017 and is also U26 I think. Paris-Nice and TDU are U-26 too.

This is maddeningly hard to research as websites are vague and sometimes just plain wrong.

 

[No Ta Doctor]

There was once an award at the end of a Tour to the youngest rider to complete. That sounds like a nice simple idea - what about doing the same for the oldest. Get them to stand side by side on podium in Paris and give them each a nice plaque; I reckon that would be pretty popular.

If both those existed Geraint Thomas would have one of each

 

[Dogtrousers]

I found this UCI regulation

2.1.007 Unless prior authorization has been obtained from the UCI Management Committee, organisers may not set other age limits than the ones corresponding to the junior, under 23 and elite categories. (article introduced on 1.01.05).

So the GTs must have special authority to be running U-26 white jerseys.

This may be why TdFF, Vuelta Feminina and Giro Women is U-23. These are races that were introduced after that regulation. The men's U-26 classifications probably just got grandfathered in. (Athough the Vuelta's U-26 youth classification wasn't introduced until 2017 and didn't get its own jersey until 2019 when they got rid of the combined classification that was using the white jersey. It was won that year by one T. Pogačar).

I think the UCI would probably be happier if they could get rid of the U-26 and align everyone with U-23.

Stop me if I'm boring you.

I'm certainly boring myself!