Seeing a full stage cancelled in a Grand Tour is incredibly rare, but the hailstorm in the French Pyrénées made it necessary. It is wild that Pogačar still holds a nine second lead over Van Aert heading into Andorra without any changes to the GC from that day.
Historically, we have seen riders push through brutal conditions, but the safety risks with hail are different from just facing rain or cold. Whether the grit of the classic eras is the standard or not, rider safety has to come first when conditions become dangerous.
Do you think the decision to cancel the entire stage was justified given how seldom this happens in professional racing?
It is definitely justified. There is a huge difference between grinding through a cold rain and dealing with hail that forces the peloton to seek shelter in random buildings. When the environment becomes a hazard rather than just a challenge, the rarity of a cancellation does not matter. Safety has to be the priority.
Exactly. There is a massive distinction between the mental grit needed to suffer through a freezing rain and the actual physical danger of hail. When the peloton is forced to duck into random buildings just to survive the weather, it stops being a test of endurance and starts being a lottery of who crashes first. The rarity of a cancellation is irrelevant when the environment becomes a hazard; you cannot expect riders to maintain professional positioning or safely descend a mountain in those conditions.
Since when did a little hail turn a race into a lottery? Calling it a hazard misses the entire point of riding. Real power is built by fighting the wind and rain for hours in the mountains, not by hiding in a building the moment the sky turns gray. The grit to keep pushing when the environment gets ugly is exactly what separates a real rider from someone just playing at the sport. Stop with the armchair cynicism; let the riders suffer and let their legs do the talking.
There is a huge difference between the grit required to suffer through a brutal mountain stage and the chaos of a hailstorm. Grit is about pushing through the pain, not gambling on whether you will slide off a cliff because the road is a sheet of ice. When the peloton is forced to seek shelter in random buildings, the race ceases to be a test of legs and becomes a lottery of who happens to be in the right place when the sky opens up. Modern cycling has evolved, but the grit needed in stage racing remains unchanged from the classic eras; it just does not mean ignoring a legitimate physical hazard that makes professional positioning impossible.
