# Tour de Fr, Sprint Within Stage, How Does That Work?



## TomBrooklyn (Mar 15, 2008)

I see there Sprints within Stages in the Tour de France. 

How do these Sprints work? i.e. How is the winner of a Sprint within a stage determined?


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## pretender (Sep 18, 2007)

TomBrooklyn said:


> How is the winner of a Sprint within a stage determined?


Whoever crosses the line first.


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## PG_Gary (Jan 21, 2008)

TomBrooklyn said:


> I see there Sprints within Stages in the Tour de France.
> 
> How do these Sprints work? i.e. How is the winner of a Sprint within a stage determined?


Are you referring to the intermediate sprints? There are spots during the stage where the first three guys across that spot (line) get points towards the green jersey. The guy with the most sprint points for the entire tour at the end of each stage wears the green jersey for the next stage. Intermediate sprint points help, but winning a stage earns quite a few more sprint points.


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## TomBrooklyn (Mar 15, 2008)

Where does the Sprint start? Is it simply the start of the Stage?


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## moabbiker (Sep 11, 2002)

There are designated areas on a stage where intermediate sprints are held. It's announced well in advanced so every rider is aware of them and tactics that may dictate whether a sprinter should attempt them.

Often you see the intermediate sprint points won by non-sprinters in a breakaway group. They usually aren't interested in the points nor at wasting energy at a sprint move so don't contend for them and just make believe they don't exist.

It's simply points awarded to the first three riders across these lines whether they are sprinting or not (riding regularly). Any rider coming in after gets zilch.

In the past with the Tour, there used to be time bonuses awarded for the intermediate sprints as well. So team tactics had to be anticipated for this too. You would need a fairly good sprinter on the team to shut down an attempt by a GC rider looking to earn a time bonus. George Hincapie would do this for Armstrong back in the day, since Hincapie is a fairly good sprinter on a team that didn't have a real sprinter.


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## bolandjd (Sep 12, 2008)

Do the intermediate sprints really serve any purpose anymore? As best as I could tell, they were almost never contested by the actual green jersey contenders, as noted above. I think I saw Pettachi go for it once on one of the Alpine stages when there was absolutely no possibility of a sprint finish. But other than that, the sprinters just saved their energy for the ends of flat stages. Seems sort of pointless and stupid to be awarding sprinting points when nobody's sprinting. Maybe it made more sense back in the day before all the riders got so specialized in sprinting, climbing, lead-out, or whatever and [email protected] like Eddy Merckx would try to break out and dominate on every stage.


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## Crack Monkey (Apr 19, 2007)

TomBrooklyn said:


> Where does the Sprint start? Is it simply the start of the Stage?


There is no official start to an intermediate sprint. If somebody wants to get the points, they have to pick when to go.


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## Crack Monkey (Apr 19, 2007)

bolandjd said:


> Do the intermediate sprints really serve any purpose anymore?


Yes. Thor stays in the hunt for Green with them; and a lack of intermediate points keeps Cav out of Green. But, the stage win is WAY more important.


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