Grand Tours are big business.  There is real investment in the riders.  Those Tours should look at the pro sports that have succeeded.  We will leave football in both its forms out of this.  One makes hamburger out of the athletes, the other attracts hooligans, both on and off the playing surface.  Ice hockey for the same reason.  No, lets look at baseball, basketball, tennis and golf.  All four work well from a $$ standpoint.  Rather well in fact.  And what so they have in common?  THEY DON"T PLAY IN THE RAIN!

The players are too valuable.  Greens get messed up.  (You say cycling doesn't have greens?  I beg to differ.  There is a certain rider today wearing a ripped up green kit.)  Cobbles aren't the problem.  It's those wet roads.  Yesterday: one retirement; from two crashes on wet roads.  I saw one crash total on cobbles and he wasn't hurt.  Today more crashes, more retirements.  The Tours need to institute rain delays and rain days.  (Take a hint from track racing.  They have been doing that forever.)



Ben