Not much talk about it but it should be more interesting then the tour of Qatar as Oman actually has a few hills, the final tt should be decisive. Other stages have very steep sections (20%+) although short hills they could separate the group.
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Hibbles said:
This! 20 degrees below zero here. So, a bit too cold for cycling.Highlander said:I'm stuck in my house with freezing temperatures and nearly 2 feet of snow on the ground, so any race looks interesting at this point regardless of what kind of course they come up with.
sublimit said:The Sky team might do something as they seem to have turned up with some decent riders.
but I still dont understand why they went into the current race Bessages without a sprinter.
dimspace said:Im wondering...
Tour Of Qatar, two day break, then new New tour Of Oman (both run by the ASO), how long before a third race appears and we see the formation of a 3 week "grand" tour?
hektoren said:Following that coast that would be the tour of Yemen, then? I really look forward to the tour of Yemen for women. In burka. Here's a photo of the peloton in the 2011 inaugural TOY for women....
Hibbles said:The perfect race for Tammy Thomas.
hektoren said:Following that coast that would be the tour of Yemen, then? I really look forward to the tour of Yemen for women.
dimspace said:Yemen, or in between the two the Emirates.
There is obviously finance in the area. Those countries are already making strides into other sports, f1, sponsorship of football etc.
Would not surprise me in the slightest to see another gulf tour spring up (is it me or has qatar moved slightly - in time/date, not geographically)
dimspace said:Im wondering...
Tour Of Qatar, two day break, then new New tour Of Oman (both run by the ASO), how long before a third race appears and we see the formation of a 3 week "grand" tour?
hektoren said:It's probably you. I get a distinct Cuba-pre-Castro-era feeling just reading about Qatar, knowing a teensy bit about the neighborhood and leaning heavily on knowledge gleaned from Wikipedia. Qatar has about a third of the world's gas reserves, and since 1995, Emir Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani has ruled Qatar, seizing control of the country from his father Khalifa bin Hamad Al Thani while the latter vacationed in Switzerland.
A few things sort of doesn't go down well with me here. First of all, a history as a former british colony (in itself, a feature that usually doesn't bode well for the future), secondly, huge wealth from natural resources under the sole ownership of one person that's bound to attract hoards of british and american riff-raff, and thirdly, a connection to Switzerland.
Switzerland? What's wrong with Switzerland?
Well, take Italy, a country with two millennias worth of bloodshed, revenge, omertà, civil war, wars, mob assassinations, Red Brigades, bloodshed, Mussolini, Spartacus trials and Berlusconi combovers. Yet they've produced Michelangelo, daVinci, Corelli, Vivaldi, Botticelli, Ferrari, Maserati, Parma ham, mozzarella, Pinarello, Battaglin etc. etc.
What has Switzerland, with its corresponding two millennia's worth of peace, love and brotherhood and isolation produced? The cuckoo-clock? (Sorry, all readers from Schwartzwald, I know it's you who really left us with that legacy of true ingenuity, and not the Swiss, whose only claim to fame really is a pocketknife and an oversweetened chocolate as well as getting rich from eradicated jews)
No, I don't see a great future on the arabian peninsula for what is, in effect, a european sport. I'd rather see a "Tour d'Europe" with stages in most of the european countries (we could forget Denmark, unless it's the TT-stage).
It'd be a great vehicle for showing off our common cultural heritage, local food, great sport and fantastic landscapes.
zapata said:hopefully not. three weeks of sand and straight, flat roads, doesn't seem particularly grand to me.
zapata said:hopefully not. three weeks of sand and straight, flat roads, doesn't seem particularly grand to me.