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Tour de France<\/a><\/p>\n A concession ASO announced to liven up the green-jersey fight has quietly vanished from the roadbook, while another takes its place. <\/p>\n Fake sprinting his own teammates is as close to a bunch sprint as Poga\u010dar generally wants to get. <\/p>\n Cor Vos<\/p>\n When Jonathan Milan won the green points jersey at last year\u2019s Tour de France, the rider who pushed him closest wasn\u2019t another sprinter. It was Tadej Poga\u010dar, who spent his month winning the whole bike race, its climber\u2019s jersey, and, mostly by accident, slowly working his way up the points classification without ever contesting a bunch sprint.\u00a0<\/p>\n The result seems to have kept ASO up at night, because since last summer it implemented two sizeable changes, and then recanted on one. The intention of both is to make it harder for a rider like Pogacar to wear green into Paris.\u00a0<\/p>\n Balancing the green jersey<\/p>\n Last October, around the Tour\u2019s annual route announcement in Paris, ASO announced what sounded like a peace offering to sprinters. It had just presented a route that isn\u2019t exactly friendly to them. It has seven \u201cflat\u201d stages, but at least two, possibly three, of those are likely to end without a bunch sprint. Sprinters have minimal chance of wearing yellow, too, because of the early TTT and difficult stage 2.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n 2026 Tour de France route preview: Your full stage-by-stage guide<\/p>\n A preview of all 21 Tour de France stages, from the Grand D\u00e9part in Barcelona to the grand finale in Paris.<\/p>\n The offering was that the Tour was going to double the number of intermediate sprint points on the race\u2019s flat stages, from one to two. This would make more points available to the pure sprinters \u2013 generally, the middle of a sprint stage is about as flat as the start of one, and isn\u2019t really Poga\u010dar territory. Top sprinters like Jasper Philipsen or Tim Merlier would be far more likely to wear green to Paris.\u00a0<\/p>\n This post is for subscribers only Already have an account? Sign in<\/a><\/p>\n Did we do a good job with this story?<\/p>\n \n \ud83d\udc4dYep![\"Caley](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/CF_PROFILE-150x150.png\")
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