Why is La Course so short?

[themosquitoking]

I have a feeling the short distance today may have been to limit massive time gaps at the finish due to the nature of the start on Saturday. It'll be interesting to see how it goes especially as someone suggested it happening as a stage at the TdF.

 

[PK99]

[QUOTE 4886977, member: 76"]Just 67.5km today.

Surely the pro women could cope with a 'full stage'? 595 amateur women completed L'etape on Sunday, so the distance/difficulty should not be a problem for them.

Or are they just being 'squeezed' into the schedule and have to be finished before the men start or something?

Does anyone know?[/QUOTE]

Comfort breaks?

 

[smutchin]

Good point. If it had been much longer the first riders in the "thing" would be finishing just as the last starters set off.

They had a five-minute cutoff, which means only 19 riders will be starting tomorrow (ie only the ones who finished inside five minutes of Van Vleuten's time).

Of the 126 starters yesterday, only 46 were deemed to have finished inside the time limit, the last of those being just over 10 minutes behind the winner.

Another reason for the cut-off time would be to avoid delaying the start of the men's race.