Team time trials were once a common feature of Grand Tours in cycling, with the format offering a chance to see great innovation in action and the best teams to work seamlessly for victory, but they’ve become some of a dying art in recent years.
That is, except for at the Vuelta a España, with three of the four last editions containing a team race against the clock in its early phase and much of the 2010s seeing team time trials continue to feature in Spain, while they fell out of fashion at the Tour de France into the current decade. The same is true of the Giro d’Italia, with no TTT in the past 10 editions, having featured in the 10 prior editions between 2006 and 2015.
Often criticised for their unfairness, team time trials have long been said to benefit the wealthier teams, with investment into aerodynamics, science and technology – alongside being able to commit training time to the TTT – playing into the hands of the biggest teams.
So they all but died notably at the Tour de France, but alongside the continuation of their use at the Vuelta, in the men’s and women’s Grand Tour in Spain, there will be a return to the forgotten discipline at next year’s Tour in Barcelona on stage 1 – the first since 2019.
Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at CyclingNews RSS Feed…