Is the Tour de France sidelining sprinters?

Do Tour de France sprinters go to sleep at night and dream of the years either side of the millennium when Jean-Marie Leblanc was the race director, a time when they could count on a whole week of bunch gallops that were typically the prelude to a long time trial and, with the event already half-done, the first mountain stages? They were halcyon days for sprinters, typified by Mario Cipollini winning four consecutive stages and then swanning off to the beach without subjecting himself to anything more testing than a third-category hill.

Since Christian Prudhomme succeeded Leblanc as the Tour director in 2007, he and his technical director, Thierry Gouvenou,