6-man teams discussion thread

[roundabout]

Nah, people seem to have found the activity bonus thingy too confusing.

Nothing to do with team sizes.

 

[veji11]

Nah, people seem to have found the activity bonus thingy too confusing.

Nothing to do with team sizes.

The activity bonus was a bit of a mess true, but I don't think everything should be disqualified. I for one would really like to see a Paris-Nice or so with teams of 6, just to get an idea.

 

[DirtyWorks]

... We don't want to see world tour teams invading lesser races just so they gan have their race days. That or teams will have to shorten their roster which isn't good.

They already invade lower-ranked races, it's just that you tend not to see a broadcast feed for the event.

Teams would not actually have to hire fewer riders for lots of reasons. However, the UCI is obsessed with this idea that there is ONE AND ONLY ONE highest-ranked race going on most weekends. Using that constraint, teams would very likely be smaller. That makes new teams cheaper though! Maybe more WT teams would be the result.

6-rider teams is definitely the way to go at the elite level. Below elite, four-rider teams should be the limit.

 

[proffate]

Are crashes really caused by too many riders in the peloton? Some riders just like to take risks, some have mediocre bike handling skills.

How often do you see a crash in a break of 10 vs. in a peloton of 200? The bigger the pack, the greater the advantage of being at the front rather than the rear, the more pressure to get to the front, the more risks you'll take (like hopping on sidewalks); it's pretty clear to me that a bigger field is more dangerous. The alternative is to remove choke points but that more or less defeats the purpose of Belgian racing.

To address the thread at hand: I think they should reduce the number of riders in a race but there's a delicate balance. Teams help set up the heads of state, and what we really want to see is the heads of state duking it out mano-a-mano, not some random lottery winner (sorry, Nuyens). Perhaps shortening the races would help ameliorate the lack of control. You only need 8 riders or w/e because there are hundreds of KM to cover / many hours of racing to control.

 

[SafeBet]

How often do you see a crash in a break of 10 vs. in a peloton of 200?

But how much of a difference is there between a peloton of 200 and one of 150? Because that's what we're talking about.

Plenty of crashes occured yesterday when there weren't more than 120 riders left.