The Tour de France responds to the UCI's radical Grand Tour plan; the Giro and Vuelta are also opting out

According to the UCI, shortening Grand Tours from 21 days to 16 is one of many ideas aimed at making cycling better and more enjoyable in the future.

A Grand Tour lasting just over two weeks would mark a significant departure from the current three-week format. For now, this is explicitly a proposal from the consultation process and not a decision by the UCI. Below are the reactions.

The head of the Tour de France briefly commented on the idea during an interview with RMC Sport. He clearly doesn’t feel that the proposal really applies to the Tour de France, the world’s biggest cycling event.

“The issue concerns certain Grand Tours. The Tour de France lasts three weeks, including four weekends, and that’s just fine.”

Faced with Prudhomme’s remarks, the new RCS Sport boss, Luca Guercilena, immediately dug in his heels in an interview with Domestique. “Grand Tours must remain Grand Tours; the Giro d’Italia isn’t going to change. All three Grand Tours must be the same length; there can be no differences,” said the Italian.

"We have to defend the 21-day Grand Tours," Guercilena continued. “Cycling is about testing riders’ endurance, and a three-week Grand Tour guarantees that the winner is a special talent.

If we change that, we’ll change the sport in a dramatic way. It’s not worth it. Riders train very deliberately these days; they can handle two Grand Tours in a single year.

That leaves the Tour of Spain, and surprisingly, Javier Guillén isn’t keen on a Grand Tour lasting less than 21 days either. In recent years, the Vuelta a España has increasingly been viewed as the last and least significant of the three.

Does that make changes to the Spanish stage race the most likely scenario? Guillén tells Marca that he doesn’t think so.

"We are not in favor of eliminating any days, not even one. It’s true that the debate is ongoing, but at this time, it is not being discussed at any official or institutional level. We believe that the days honoring the great icons of cycling should remain untouched, because otherwise we would all be worse off. There’s no point in doing that.”