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And here’s the thing. Amazingly,<br />
the UCI rules don’t say anything<br />
about a prologue having to<br />
precede the first full stage of a<br />
race. So under the current rules<br />
all those Vuelta Stages 1b except<br />
the first (which was 3 km too<br />
long) would count as prologues.<br />
The truth is that attempting<br />
to understand why a short early<br />
ITT is sometimes a prologue<br />
and sometimes not is a fool’s<br />
errand. It’s a distinction without<br />
a difference (with one small<br />
caveat – see below).<br />
Let’s instead ponder a much<br />
more important question: what<br />
is the point of a prologue? Why<br />
bother starting a three-week<br />
Grand Tour with a blink-andyou-miss<br />
it ITT?<br />
It is sometimes suggested<br />
that the reason for holding a<br />
prologue to a Grand Tour is<br />
to allocate the leader’s jersey<br />
for the first proper stage. And<br />
of course it does serve this<br />
purpose, to the considerable<br />
benefit of certain individuals<br />
who might otherwise never get<br />
the chance to wear it.<br />
The mighty Chris<br />
Boardman, for example, wore<br />
the yellow jersey at three<br />
different Tours de France, each<br />
time after winning a prologue.<br />
What is more, he did so at a time<br />
when cycling was just emerging<br />
as a mainstream sport in the<br />
UK, with incalculable positive<br />
consequences for the country’s<br />
appetite for and grasp of road<br />
racing generally and the Tour in<br />
particular.<br />
But if all you want to do<br />
is ‘allocate the jersey’ it isn’t<br />
obvious that an ITT is a better<br />
way of doing it than holding, say,<br />
a normal flat stage with a sprint<br />
finish. On the face of it, it makes<br />
no more sense for the leader’s<br />
jersey of a race covering over<br />
3,000 km and leading up and<br />
down mountain ranges to be<br />
worn by a specialist in 5 km time<br />
trials rather than by a specialist<br />
in going flat out for 200 m.<br />
No: the real purpose of the<br />
prologue is very different.<br />
A short time trial held<br />
in a city centre at the start<br />
of a Grand Tour can pull in<br />
a big crowd. Consequently,<br />
the host city can materially<br />
increase the economic value<br />
of the Grand Départ simply by<br />
holding a prologue the evening<br />
beforehand, especially if it is a<br />
Friday or a Saturday evening.<br />
In this respect a prologue<br />
is very similar to a city centre<br />
criterium (and both are very<br />
different to most road races).<br />
Like a crit, the racing at a short<br />
ITT is easy to understand: as a<br />
criterion for victory ‘quickest<br />
rider round’ is no more complex<br />
than ‘first over the line’. So<br />
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