In 1927 the Tour de France founder, Henri Desgrange, decided that almost all the stages of the race would henceforth be team time trials. The idea was that this would make the race more exciting. As a fortuitous side effect, at least from Desgrange’s point of view, it made the riders very unhappy, since there would now be no opportunity at all for slacking off and sitting in the wheels for a bit.
It was not interesting. In fact, it was immediately obvious that it was very dull indeed. It speaks much to Desgrange’s commitment to misery that he still persevered with the disastrous format until 1929.
