Ex Tour de France winners Stephen Roche and Carlos Sastre have shared their views on Oleg Tinkov’s one million Euros Grand Tour challenge that he has proposed for 2015 with Cyclingnews.

“I think that it’s not going to happen, because all of those riders are in a different team. He can control what happens in his team but not what the other riders are doing,” Sastre tells Cyclingnews about Tinkov’s plan.

While 2008 Tour winner Sastre has ridden all three Grand Tours in one year twice before, and done well in all three on each occasion, 1987 winner Roche, who has never ridden all three Grand Tours in a year, but has done the Giro-Tour double in 1987 as well as taking the World Championships and he probably should have added Liege-Bastogne-Liege in the same year, think the idea is a good one, even if the chances of it happening are slim.

“He’s (Tinkov) right that all the big tours should have all the big riders, giving those tours their just value,” Roche says to Cyclingnews. “I think that it’s a good initiative, but it needs more thought.” 

Once the one million euros is broken down, into 250,00 for Froome, Nibali, Contador and Quintana, many think the prize is not enough and thus renders the challenge a waste of time.

“Those riders they make a lot of money, so €250,000 more for all of those riders means nothing. It’s a lot of money for a normal rider, but not for them,” said Sastre.

Roche thinks that the stakes should be raised even higher to make the challenge more attractive. “I don’t think €1 million is enough,” he says. “I think everyone should bring one million Euros into the pot and make it really interesting and worthwhile for the rider.

“Then they’re asking them to do all the three major tours, which, in turn, might leave them dead for the following season. It’s a risk.”

Only 32 riders have ridden all three Grand Tours in a year and only one man, Gastone Necini in 1957, actually managed to win one of the three races, the Giro. However, he also finished ninth in the Vuelta and added two stage wins and the Polka Dot Jersey at the Tour for good measure. Only 8 men have ridden all the Grand Tours in a single season in the last decade. The odds are not stacked favorably against four men doing it in the one season.

“They are not doing only the three-week tours, they are doing a lot of races during the season. If you want to be good in every one it isn’t possible. I think many things need to happen before we see something like that,” Sastre explains. His best attempt was fourth in the 2006 Tour and Vuelta, but he was a domestique in the Giro and thus was nowhere near winning. He suggests brining the number of race days in Grand Tours down from 21 to 16, but Roche wholeheartedly disagrees.

“It’s like having Paris-Roubaix and taking out half of the cobblestones,” Roche tells Cyclingnews. ”You have to make the races extreme. I think that the Grand Tours are extreme. They are generally quite balanced with the parcours but the length of it is always three weeks.”

But Roche knows that something needs to be done as three 21 stage races is likely to result in the return of doping on a large scale in the peloton.

“Between training camps and tours you’d be on the road all the time,” says Roche. “It is extremely tiring and being away from home could cause a lot of problems.”

“Of course it was very difficult, because it is three weeks where you try to be in the best shape and if you try to focus on the GC it isn’t easy,” Sastre says of his attempt in 2006. “In the last race, perhaps you have the motivation but you are missing some energy.”

“When you are not feeling focused or strong, you have some kind of weakness, then luck will not be with you. Maybe you try to look for it, but the luck is not there.”

Tinkov also hasn’t considered that there are other men with legitimate claims to win a Grand Tour such as Thibaut Pinot, Romain Bardet, Jean-Christophe Peraud, Rigoberto Uran and Tejay van Garderen. Astana and Movistar also have second GC contenders on their team in the shape of Fabio Aru and Alejandro Valverde, who would be able to take advanatage of the fatigue of the big four in the Vuelta and Tour.

Roche believes that the challenge, should it be accepted, may backfire on Tinkov’s big four and allow other riders to have their shot at success, when normally they wouldn’t be able to win a three week race.

“If I’m Mr (Vincent) Lavenu or Mr (Patrick) Lefevere from QuickStep, I’m going to tell my riders that these boys are going to get a hammering in the Giro and then ride the Tour,” he says. “If we start 110% at the Tour and we send the B team to the Giro and we can win the Tour then that million Euros we can get back in advertising easy.”