Re:
jsem94 said:
God. They should just start using Cronoescalada and not give a crap.
I don't see why that's necessarily a bad thing. Some of the smaller race organisers are using Cronoescalada. The Emakumeen Bira profiles were made using it, for example. It's not necessarily about not giving a crap, frankly if the best that comes out of them giving a crap is they produce something as bad as those Madrid profiles, or even the Volta ones which are nothing like as bad as that but are still misleading, then Cronoescalada offers an improvement. It's free software, so maybe they could partner with the Cronoescalada guys and build their own profile-creating algorithm so it doesn't just clone the existing features, even if it just means a different colour scheme. After all, the Paris-Nice and Dauphiné profiles are the same as the Tour ones but in a different colour. If more cash-strapped organizers can get something that looks half-decent and is less misleading than some of the stuff we've been given for free, why shouldn't they?
For example inconsistent height scales that make sprint stages look like they're climbing the Manhattan skyline like you see in the Tour of Turkey, or the Giro Rosa profiles that only take the height at the points noted on the profile (towns, climbs etc.) so as to completely flatten out sections between. Or just difficult to read ones like the Volta ones that don't allow you to get a real handle for how steep or difficult climbs are. Sure, larger race organizers like those on the WT should definitely be producing their own graphics, but for small .1 and .2 races Cronoescalada is not necessarily a bad thing. After all, one of the things that we have seen happening for several years is that when terrible route profiles have been released, fans have used sites like the sadly soon-to-be-departed Tracks4Bikers and more recently Cronoescalada to produce more realistic profiles so that we can gauge expectations more accurately.