Here at Cyclingnews, we love cycling, obviously. We love talking about it, but mainly, we also love arguing about it, debating tiny things, dissecting the details of the sport.
This morning, spurred on by this year's Tour de France's first sprint stage on stage 5, we were having a quick discussion about whether we like these flat, sprint-guaranteed stages or not. They're becoming less common in the Tour, as the organisers opt for punchier and more challenging courses more frequently, and the days of seven or eight flat days are over.
Most of us agreed that we like sprint stages and the frenetic, if short, period of excitement they bring. Our senior tech writer, Will Jones, agreed too, but then took the debate even further, suggesting that the sprint days can be more exciting than mountain stages these days, given the dominance we often see on those stages, whereas sprints are naturally more open. But then he said something that really got the debate going.
"When was the last time a mountain stage was genuinely exciting?" Will chimed in. Cue the outrage.
"You're not baiting me with this," I replied, despite then immediately rising to the bait and what I consider a totally wild take.
"I start twitching every time the word boring is used," Tom Wieckowski said, echoing a feeling I'm sure we've all had at the endless discussions about the Tour, Tadej Pogačar and the perceived boredom and dominance.
"I'm afraid I do find it dull to watch now," Will retorted (alright then, go and hunt out more tiny marginal gains in bike tech, I replied back.)
From there, the discussion descended into hyperbole, I must say. Statements like "There's no tension anymore", "Nobody bonks anymore, game's gone", "Do you not remember the Team Sky days?" and "I've never been bored by a single second of the Tour. It is life" were thrown around, as well as some popcorn emojis as the debate heated up.
Even though we got a bit silly and hyperbolic about it, this is ultimately a debate which I'm sure many friends, colleagues and fans are having at the moment. Has modern cycling taken the tension out of many Tour de France stages? Or should we all just find a bit more excitement in our lives?
We made our views clear to each other – and I'm sure we'll be bickering about this throughout the Tour – but really, we're interested to know what you, our readers, think. So we want to open the debate up to you, too. Drop a vote in the polls, and then share your thoughts in the comments, too.
