Teams in the Grand Tours and "several other key races will have one less rider from next season" to improve safety and "enhance the spectacle for fans, race organizers said on Friday," according to Julien Pretot of REUTERS. Teams in the Tour de France, the Giro d'Italia and the Spanish Vuelta "will have eight riders instead of nine" and several key races will feature seven-man teams instead of eight-man outfits. The Amaury Sport Organisation, the organizer of the Tour and the Vuelta, RCS, which runs the Giro, and Flanders Classics "between them own 17 of the 37" World Tour (elite) races, including the top one-day classics. The organizers said in a statement, "This decision has a two-pronged objective: the first being to improve the safety conditions for riders with a smaller peloton on roads equipped with more and more street furniture. The second, which is a consequence of the first, is to make it more difficult to dominate a race as well as to enhance event conditions to offer better racing for cycling fans" (REUTERS, 11/25). CYCLING WEEKLY's Henry Robertshaw reported the mountain stages of the Tour de France in particular have been criticized in the last few years, "as strong teams such as Team Sky sit on the front of the peloton with a string of riders setting a hard pace that leaves other riders unable to attack." In contrast, races with smaller teams, such as the six-man teams at the Tour of Britain for example, "have generally seen more exciting as teams have fewer domestiques with which to control the race" (CYCLING WEEKLY, 11/25).
