Between a rock and a fast place - Are bunch sprints in danger of disappearing from the WorldTour?

Of four potential sprint opportunities at last week’s Criterium du Dauphiné, only half resulted in a bunch sprint. Likewise, at the Giro d'Italia, just four of the already meagre six sprint chances on paper wound up in a traditional bunch finish. It’s a scene we see unfolding more and more regularly in men’s cycling of late, and with a variety of factors coming into play, it doesn’t show any signs of swinging back towards the more traditional pattern.  

There are many reasons why a stage which on paper should have ended in bunch gallop results in the fast men and their teams missing out. I touched briefly on the dearth of chances for sprinters at the Giro here, and more recently, in his appearance on the Domestique Hotseat podcast, Team Israel-Premier Tech's Nick Schultz agreed that racing is becoming harder, with the established patterns diminishing. "Sprint stages in the Giro this year still were hard," said the experienced Australian. "I don’t remember a sprint stage that didn’t throw something at us. That stage into Slovenia was supposed to be a sprint, obviously there was bad weather and a big crash, but I was thinking 'I don’t think this would have been a sprint stage anyway, it’s too hard.'"

Courses are becoming more difficult, in-built with punchy climbs that are the equivalent of an invitation to the stars of the sport – can Tadej and Mathieu come out to play? The answer, almost always, is yes. They absolutely can. Do these kids have nothing better to do these days?

If it’s not super-human riders spoiling the party, it’s plucky underdogs. Breakaways have always been a part of the sport, and while a breakaway win in the mountains used to be commonplace, even these are often thwarted by the GC racers in the modern iteration of cycling. So teams looking for success, for their sponsors or for the desperate need to rack up UCI points – particularly in the final year of a relegation cycling, like this year – will target flatter stages, and even with the weight of a sprint-heavy peloton, there are still successes to be had – just look at Timo Kielich at the Antwerp Port Epic earlier in the week, or Kasper Asgreen in the stage described by Schultz above.

On the flip side, even flatter parcours may not necessarily give rise to a sprint-heavy peloton. With teams spread thin across a number of races, they must make difficult decisions over which riders to send to where. This would ordinarily be decided on a best fit between parcours and rider profile, but it’s not always as simple as that. With conflicting goals, riders requiring rest and recovery from big racing blocks, or dealing with injuries or illness, in busy periods such as this, resources must be divided among a number of races, which can result in teams who would ordinarily hope to contest sprints going in with different goals. This in turn reduces the overall power of the bunch, and undermines the intention of the dedicated sprint teams to bring about their desired finale. 

This is where sprinters hoping to compete at the pointy end of a flat stage may run into trouble, it seems. With fewer teams to control the race and bring about the expected fast finish, there’s a far greater chance of the race breaking up and a breakaway taking the glory. 

If this weren’t enough to have the pure sprinters throwing their hands up in despair, you can add in the growing number of fast riders capable of staying the course over difficult terrain, and races exploding into action earlier and earlier, exhausting the legs before they get the chance to engage the fast-twitch fibres, and where a bunch sprint may have been on the cards, what we often see transpire in its place is a reduced bunch finish in which it’s the all-rounders who are left to fight for the spoils. 

It could be argued this is a natural evolution in the sport, as advancements in gear, nutrition, training and recovery allow riders to perform better, for longer. Some teams may enjoy the benefits of these gains – marginal or otherwise – more than others, if they have the budget to maximise on such things, but as sport moves inexorably onwards, waiting for no-one, those capable of surviving a few punchy climbs become worth their weight in gold – skilled multi-tools who can ply their trade in any number of scenarios, thus negating concerns over fitting rider to race.

Where the biggest races are concerned, there are myriad obstacles to success, the greatest of which continues to be - the other riders: those whose name on a start list will strike fear into the hearts of their opponents. For the purest of flat sprints, European champion Tim Merlier seems to be pretty much unbeatable. For long, grinding slogs to the line, Jonathan Milan’s insane raw power is almost unmatched. And for anything where there are late difficulties to be conquered, Mads Pedersen has them covered. Beyond those three imperious ‘M’s, you could add in Olav Kooij and Jasper Philipsen, but just as the best that many climbers can hope for on a long mountain stage featuring Tadej Pogačar is second place, it’s the same story for the rest of the sprinters when coming up against these titans.

It was ever thus, of course. Having to beat faster guys is kind of the point of the sport. But a subtle shift seems to be at play, in recent seasons, and even more so this season. Second place is not something to be sniffed at, in the modern era of cycling. In fact, many teams are actively targeting top ten places, without placing the onus on winning itself, rendering the concern over Merlier, Milan, Mads or anyone else, somewhat moot. Now, the battle is to be on their wheel, to make the best of what spoils remain. We saw it in the elbows-out war that ensued to track Milan’s wheel to the line in stage 2 of the Dauphiné last week. Interestingly, the eventual ‘winner’ of that race for second was not even a rider we’d usually class as a sprinter at all. It was Bahrain Victorious’ Fred Wright, who, like his compatriot Ben Turner (INEOS Grenadiers) – who made the podium in stage 12 of the Giro – has a real turn of speed but wouldn’t usually be considered amongst the front runners in an old-school bunch sprint. 

All of which brings into focus another question: in an era where riders are increasingly capable of doing everything, is a sprint specialism even warranted? Is the sanctity of the bunch sprint as an event being eroded, by a generation of riders who simply don’t care for the unwritten rules of the sport?

While this piece is by no means based on empirical evidence, and a deep dive into the statistics on ‘expected bunch sprint outcome versus actual bunch sprint outcome’ would absolutely be warranted, it’s clear to see that there is a palpable sense of ‘why not?’ pervading the bunch at the moment, at least from the outside looking in. If you’ve got the strength to be up at the pointy end of the race in the final couple of kilometres, why not just give it a shot? It’s the kind of attitude that’s seen the likes of Turner and Wright – riders not known for their pure sprinting prowess – wind up making the top three in days designated as bunch sprints on paper.

Has the respect for the bunch sprint as a concept started to dissipate? Or at least, insofar as it applies to a ring-fenced set of riders, who train for just such eventualities. It may be a stretch to find a correlation between the retirement of the purest of sprinters, Mark Cavendish, following his record-breaking 35th victory at the Tour in 2024, and the figurative opening of the floodgates, where it comes to being present at a fast finish. Yet with Caleb Ewan retiring, and former sprint heavyweights such as Arnaud Démare, Alexander Kristoff and Fernando Gaviria moving into the twilight of their careers, there is a sense of a changing of the guard. 

There are still plenty of sprint specialists of course, but unless they are all gathered in one place for a very specifically designated race such as Scheldeprijs or say, the UAE Tour, it feels as though there’s less fear over trying to bring about something different. There’s an appetite for just about anything that can be squeezed from a race, no matter whether you are your team’s leading fast man, or whether you class yourself as one at all. Even if the top sprinters are present, you can shoot for second, and if you make the top five, well it’s a bonus you would have missed out on entirely, if you had been bound by the unwritten code of the sanctity of the pre-destined bunch sprint outcome. 

There’s a no-fear versus total fear attitude that’s driving this perceived shift – fear of failing to achieve something, anything – in pursuit of UCI points, the avoidance of relegation, or the need to make the top 30 teams. A new spectrum is evolving, with the maverick ‘might as well have a crack’ attitude of the disenfranchised rider seeing Pogačar and the like helping themselves to whichever kind of stage win they fancy on the one end, and the desperate, ‘survive or die’ approach of the struggling teams on the other.

What is cycling anyway, if not for a desire to overturn the odds, to be the one in 150 or 200 who can dare to fail, and sometimes make it stick? The sport is rich with stories of times when even a strong sprint field was defeated by a wily breakaway. Kasper Asgreen did it at the Tour de France in 2023, and again at the Giro last month. Now though, it’s not just breakaways that try their luck. If the gloves are off and the GC guys can mix it with the fast men, why shouldn’t anyone be able to shoot their shot, if they feel they have the legs on the day?

These days, it seems that unless you hang a big green flashing sign over it, and call it the Tour de France, even a flat stage on paper is there for the taking. At the Tour, we will return to something akin to ‘normal’ as least as we have come to understand it by traditional standards. A peloton comprising teams which feature the top sprinters on the planet should be able to reassert their dominance and ensure that a parcours which already looks pretty sprint-y on paper, will largely comply with expectations. There are also designated punchy stages, almost like flags planted in the ground declaring ‘this one’s for Van der Poel, Van Aert, and Alaphilippe.’ This clear delineation will perhaps offer a greater incentive for riders to ‘stay in their lane’ – figuratively (or maybe literally) speaking.

It’s the lack of clarity in the parcours that so often leads to scenarios which invite attackers to upend the metaphorical applecart, in the first place. Compare the clear parcours of the Tour with the mish-mash of rolling stages served up by RCS at the Giro this year – though it did give rise to an entertaining race, on the whole. 

Should a flat stage be exactly that? As if to discourage all-comers from even having a go? You know a determined breakaway could still defy the odds, but it’s more well-defined. If you throw a few spicy climbs in the final 50 kilometres of race and add an ingredient like Mads Pedersen, as was the case in the Giro, then all hell is going to break loose – these guys can’t help themselves. And why should they? Does anyone actually enjoy watching 180 kilometres of riders chatting to their mates and pulling faces at the camera, while they all wait for the inevitable bunch sprint to unfold, anyway? (Well, I do a bit. Everyone needs a bit of breathing space during a Grand Tour. Especially if the scenery is nice). 

However, though entertainment in part drives parcours design, it’s also about catering to the stars of the sport. Teams who don’t happen to have one of those within their ranks must follow the whims of race organisers who want to bring in audiences to see the biggest names face off against one another – which they can’t very well do on long, flat stages. Meanwhile teams must try and juggle the demands of their sponsors, whose interests lie in getting their brands on TV, alongside trying to reap the rewards of their own investments – the riders themselves – endeavouring to offer them the chance to do what they have trained for.  If specialisms are dying out in favour of the multi-faceted, multi-talented all-rounder, won’t cycling just collapse into a continuum where the same five riders win everything at the top level, until next five superhumans are fully developed? I’m only partly joking.

Nick Schultz has the final word: ‘It’s a consideration for organisers to still respect that there are sprinters in the sport, and to offer something for everyone, rather than making it harder and harder and just beating everyone up for three weeks.’ 

The trade-off for the organisers is real, and they too are stuck between a rock and a hard place – unable to please all of the stakeholders, all of the time. If the past few years are anything to go by, cycling will continue to evolve at a rapid rate, and with those in charge treading a precarious line between entertainment, logistics, and income, there will necessarily be casualties – perhaps, on recent evidence, traditional flat sprint stages may be one of them.