Sawt Falasteen - Tour de France to start with team time-trial 'bang'

It will be the first team race against the clock in seven years and the first time the Tour has opened with one since 1971.

But the innovative way riders are being timed has got many tongues wagging about the potential for fireworks, and others hankering after a more traditional approach.

"I love this version because it truly represents what cycling is: an individual sport raced in teams," Tour director Christian Prudhomme told AFP.

"We would have never brought back the team time-trial if we didn't have this rule."

Traditionally, the team time-trial remains a group effort right to the finish line, with each rider given the same time as the fourth or fifth member of their team to cross the line.

It means that the eight-man group -- or at least most of it -- has to stay together all the way to the finish.

"You're only as fast as your weakest link," as the saying goes.

But the new rules mean that each rider is given his own time when he crosses the line.

Saturday's largely flat 19.6km course around Barcelona's city centre ends with two short, sharp, climbs.

It means that each team's bigger, heavier time-trial specialists will have the job of shepherding their punchy climbers to the last part of the race before launching them up the Montjuic hill to the finish.

It makes for a greater variety of race strategies, but also gives the overall contenders the chance to shine, and even snare a few extra seconds from each other.

- 'Multistage rocket dynamic' -

Ineos come into the stage as the favourites, boasting a team with two former individual time-trial world champions in Filippo Ganna and Tobias Foss, and the 2023 European champion Josh Tarling.

"Obviously, starting with a TTT is a great opportunity for us," said Thomas, the team's sporting director, who took the coveted yellow jersey in 2017 after winning an opening individual time-trial.

"It's just an exciting goal. Let's get out there, start with a bang and give it the best we can."

Reigning Tour champion Tadej Pogacar's UAE team and two-time winner Jonas Vingegaard's Visma-Lease a Bike will also expect to set competitive times.

In Frenchman Kevin Vauquelin, Netcompany have a contender to claim the first yellow jersey of the 2026 Tour.

He was furious last month when he missed the chance to take the leader's jersey at the Tour Auvergne-Rhone-Alpes when the team slowed to wait for Oscar Onley after the Briton dropped his chain and had to fix it while cruising along at around 60kph.

Even so, Vauquelin said then: "I like this multistage rocket dynamic" as it "shakes up the general classification more".

Fellow Frenchman Warren Barguil is more of a traditionalist.

"I'm old school. The team time-trial is a team discipline," he said.

"In terms of attractiveness, watching on television, it's maybe more exciting to watch the new format because there are different strategies...

"But I really liked the effort where everyone stayed together right to the end."

Those strategies could include seven riders working to propel their team leader to the finish, or maybe two or three riders working together all the way to the line.

"I don't think there's something special in the strategy," said cobbled classics specialist Mathieu van der Poel of the Alpecin Premier Tech team.

"It's just trying to get as close as possible to the last two climbs in the technical section and then it will be up to me to launch to the finish line."

World and Olympic time-trial champion Remco Evenepoel said he thinks the format helps in managing an eight-man team.

"It makes it a bit more easy to divide the tasks so that you can get rid of the heavier guys once you go up the climbs," said the Red Bull-Bora Hansgrohe rider, who will be sharing team leader duties with Florian Lipowitz at the Tour.

P.Tamimi--SF-PST