rodneycc wrote:2.1km Prologue? Or is it laps of 2.1km?
Edit: ok didn't know Prologue's were usually under 8kms. Looked it up.
Hardly worth getting on the bike for 2.1kms!
A prologue is needed to separate all the riders (albeit by seconds or split seconds) in tours where the 1st stage is flat and a bunch finish likely / possible. If the first stage was a decent hill you would not need a prologue.
So we have this situation where in NRS tours, or even the Sun Tour, the stages are so SHORT and so SOFT, that you have Joe Cooper from Avanti win the prologue as he always does, and then the team just has to defend and keep everything to bunch finishes and Joe who is the best prologue rider but not the best rider in the race (or even the best rider in Avanti) wins the tour. I think he was 3rd in the 2015 Sun Tour? It actually would not surprise me to see Joe Cooper hold Froome and the other big stars at bay, due to the usual weak course
This Sun Tour is not a stamp on the Sun Tours of the past which were 9 days of stages ranging from 140 -200km per day in the Victorian Alps. Even the Arthur's seat stage, arguably the best and hardest, is not really hard. The non-climbers still go good up there, but being a decent hill it separates the GC contenders nicely.