Gigs_98 said:
damian13ster said:
Valv.Piti said:
damian13ster said:
Thats absolutely horrible. Everything would come down to the last 2-3km uphill sprint. Why would the teams risk long range attack? Just ride tempo, have 5-6 best riders left by the midpoint of last climb and the strongest man wins. Boooooooring.
Climber's classic can't be a MTF otherwise the above scenario will play out 9/10 times.
Now doing it in opposite direction with a bit more flat at the end....
Wow, some guys in here despise MTF's. Look at the stage, dude. Even Tignes 07' when nothing happened until to the last climb, gaps were decent and we saw action further out - in headwind. But I guess its more about the new sort of thinking that MTF's is the root of all evil
It was a stage race.....(2007).
In a stage race there is an incentive to win by as much as possible.
That is not the case in the classic. You win by 1000m at the end, and thats all that counts.
Why would the strongest rider/team risk an attack instead of just following wheels and winning it in last 2km?
And if a weaker rider attacks then just let the superdoms chase.
1.) As I already wrote it, if I would have to design a climbers classic, this wouldnt be the route. Its just like Valv.Piti wrote
2.) So you think it would come down to the last 2 km's? Why? I mean its not like everyone expects to be the strongest rider in such a finish. The problem of finishes like the Flèche Wallone is that everyone knows there are about 4-5 favorites. Same situation in Liege if a big group finishes together. The big difference is, these races are, although they are hilly, still relatively easy. A climbers classic isnt. In the hilly classics of the last years we saw hardly any long range attacks because the race was too easy to control. One team could lead the bunch for 200 k's, and still driving a very hard pace. Doing that in my stage would maybe also work, but it would be sucide because your leader would be isolated on the final climb and there would still be many other good climbers with him. Moreover its hard to chase down a group of good climbers, especially if they have domestiques with them and if it is big, which should be the case, because once again. What will 90% of the riders have to loose.
In this case you would also have 4-5 favorites, from 4-5 different teams that would have an incentive to control the race. As much as I hate it, it would end up being controlled until very last section of a very last climb on which the team leaders would decide the race between themselves to see who is the strongest. At least in FW, Ardennes in general you have some chaos, fight for position, etc. Even that wouldn't be the case here. Simply a contest on who can push more watts.
Do you really think that Saxo would send someone in the break and dont chase (just look at this years Giro and them chasing Kreuziger....). Do you think that Movistar would focus on breakaway instead of driving the pace up for Quintana? Do you think Sky would do anything else other than set up Froome's sprint?
The only unknown would be possibly Astana since they have multitude of top notch climbers (well, maybe Sky with Landa as well), but this is just not enough to make race interesting.