He's saying "it's not a 200km race, it's a 199km 'warmup' followed by a 1km sprint", so yes, it does change the perspective on how to judge how tight a race is

Many or most of the competitors would disagree it's not a race until KM 199. Only in boring flat races where the pack stays all together and there are no serious breakaways is that true.

I know, but for someone who wonders how a 200+km race can be decided at photo-finish it would maybe be more intuitive to split the race into "regions", with a sprint at the end between those in the lead. And that sprint is usually very similar to what a normal sprint stage would look like. I can see the point of asking "is it really necessary to separate them if they've been pretty much equal for the whole time?", but to me at least it does improve the experience of watching the race unfold on a few levels. It's supposed to be a competition, after all.

I know next to nothing about competitive cycling (I'm a commuter and occasional touring cyclist) but would it be accurate to say it's a strategy game for something like 180 km interspersed with 20 km total of racing?