Yes because that would totally make a race uncompetitive that could have been competitive with a different route.By the nature of these arguments, there shouldn't be any hard MTFs either. They just decide the race and then it's over. Hautacam 2000, Alpe d'Huez 2001 etc.
Any race can be competitive with a different route.Yes because that would totally make a race uncompetitive that could have been competitive with a different route.
By the nature of these arguments, there shouldn't be any hard MTFs either. They just decide the race and then it's over. Hautacam 2000, Alpe d'Huez 2001 etc.
Just make up something I never said so you can be right.Any race can be competitive with a different route.
So TTs are bad when the main contenders are all good at it, as it doesn't add anything. And TTs are bad when the contenders are not equally good at it, as it then could decide the race. Better not have any, ever.
Of course there is the added implication that MTFs are much more exciting to watch and hence more justified as the deciders of races.
You sound dismissive of this, but at the same time TV viewing figures would appear to back this implication up, however.Of course there is the added implication that MTFs are much more exciting to watch and hence more justified as the deciders of races.
Why?
The races were much better balanced, instead of only allowing the flyweight climbers a chance to win
A rider like Pantani would be nearly unbeatable on today's routes (except maybe to Lance himself and only if Lance was in top form), even though he was not even close to being the best all around rider
Silly things happen when you take one element of the past and nothign else changes. Pantani could win unipuerto stages by minutes just flying away because he wanted to.The races were much better balanced, instead of only allowing the flyweight climbers a chance to win
A rider like Pantani would be nearly unbeatable on today's routes (except maybe to Lance himself and only if Lance was in top form), even though he was not even close to being the best all around rider
Oh, okay, which riders today are like Pantani, and which are like Armstrong?
Silly things happen when you take one element of the past and nothign else changes. Pantani could win unipuerto stages by minutes just flying away because he wanted to.
And Quintana was a poor man's Pantani?closest to an Armstrong in recent years was Froome. Basically a poor man's Armstrong
And Quintana was a poor man's Pantani?
2022 Giro and 2020 Tour are the same case, namely that 3 weeks of racing was bad because of the final ITT. I'm mainly arguing against the 2 long ITT idea, like you take GTs with already one decent sized TT and then adding another one. I think you need one long one that's like stage 10 at the latest. Especially in the Tour it needs to before the first block of Pyrenees/Alps.What is happening? Where are the times when the average opinion of this forum was that a GT without a bazillion TT kilometers can't even really be called a GT anymore?
On a more serious note though, I don't really understand how the gt's of the last few years have changed some peoples opinion about TT's to the worse. Let's go through the GT's of the last few years and look at how the TT's affacted them.
2022 Tour: Barely affected by TT's, hence not negatively affected either.
2022 Giro: Hardly any TT km's, race sucked.
2021 Vuelta: Roglic gained a lot in TT's, but the racing wasn't really negatively affected.
2021 Tour: Pogacar was dominating anyway, again racing wasn't negatively affected by TT's.
2021 Giro: Same but with Bernal. At least at the beginning climbers were afraid of Remco.
2020 Vuelta: The TT decided the race, yet the race was still very close.
2020 Giro: Strongly affected by the TT's which made the race much better.
2020 Tour: Both contenders great TT'ers yet the TT is what made the entire race memorable.
2019 Vuelta: TT's caused big gaps which made the race great.
2019 Tour: Alaphilippe gaining and Bernal losing time in the TT made the race much better.
2019 Giro: Again the big time gaps from the TT's completely made this race.
I don't really want to go back any further but I think you understand what I'm trying to say. Maybe you could argue one of these races could have been better without TT's but even then not by a lot. Meanwhile I'd argue every GT between the 2019 Giro and the 2020 Giro (hence 5 gt's in a row) were made siginficantly better by TT's and the race with the fewest TT kilometres on this entire list, the 2022 Giro, was by far the worst of these gt's
Do you honestly think the Giro this year was negatively affected by too much TTing?! That it would have been raced differently, to the better, if the last ITT was a flat road stage instead?2022 Giro and 2020 Tour are the same case, namely that 3 weeks of racing was bad because of the final ITT.
Do you honestly think the Giro this year was negatively affected by too much TTing?! That it would have been raced differently, to the better, if the last ITT was a flat road stage instead?