Bavarianrider said:
If a race is challenged, ridden hard and in the end there's a sprint of a 30 man group, there is nothing wrong about this. That's the way cycling is. If you excpect high mountain action on a road like this it's only your fault. you'll get that tomorrow. Today was more of a classic type of stage. If riders chose to go easy. Well than that's there decision. Disapointing for the spectators but not the organisators fault.
This route is perfectly balanced.
-A tough mountain finish
- A TT
- A classic type of stage
- 3 stages with medium mountains (none of them was a pure bunch sprint, riders could have used it better though)
- A classical sprinter stage
- A criterium to finish the race.
Every type of rider has a chnce to shine at least once during this race. I really can't understand what more you want. If you want 7 day clmb fests, than you have to go to a different tour. As simple as that.
Sorry, what? Where's "a classic type of stage"? What classic have you ever seen where they climb at 3% for an eternity then have a sprint? The nearest thing to yesterday's stage I can think of is the Gasteiz stage of the Vuelta last year, only then at least the climbs were steep enough to make attacking a possibility, even if they were foolhardy. Urkiola > Big Bear by so much it isn't even funny.
All of the first 4 stages were more or less the same, to varying degrees. Nobody complains when the Tour of Picardie has boring flat stages because with the exception of Laon they don't really have much in the way of non-flat places to finish. California could be so much more. The 2011 edition was a pretty decent race. This year looks like repeating all the mistakes of the terrible 2010 edition, only worse, because in 2010 Bonny Doon was close enough to the finish for people to attack on. Big Bear is far too easy for anybody to make big gaps on, but too hard for people to have the reserves to ping off the front and give us that pinball racing we like. The first four stages gave platforms for attacking, but none that were convincing enough.
It's also a problem of the field they draw - a combination of weak national squads, and WT teams so strong they can pull the bunch together very easily. This race has been little different to the 2009 Tour of Britain, when Columbia pulled every stage together and Boasson Hagen won about five stages in a row.
As jens says, maybe the parcours is good at showing off the scenery of California - there's plenty of that to look at. But something needs to be done about the racing, because at the moment it's a Tourist video interrupted by some people on bikes. Great promotion for California, horrible promotion for cycling.
I don't really understand why they
a) didn't learn from 2010, and insisted on going to Big Bear again, on an easier stage this time; and
b) didn't learn from 2011, and didn't do the Sierra Road climb or the other things that, you know, were GOOD last year.
Despite my reputation, I don't JUST want to see climbing. But I DO want to see racing, and the Tour of California is providing precisely none of that. Part of that is the fault of Radioshack, Garmin and Liquigas, but to say that none of it is the fault of Andrew Messick and his band of merry self-promoters is a blatant revisionist lie.
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