Eshnar said:
Final stage: Individual Pursuit
Gc leader starts first, then the others, at the time established by the gc itself.
Whoever cross the line first wins the GT.
will10 said:
I've thought this before, like in the biathlon events for skiing, works really well there. Only issue for GTs, or even short stage races, is you'll have guys starting hours down which won't make for great viewing for the crowds - bit of an anticlimax
ergmonkey said:
I'd go a step farther and say just tell everyone outside of the Top 20 to not start. They can still be "official finishers" but just leave the final day tt to the top 20.
Also, you would need to have minimum intervals between riders or very strict no-draft enforcement applied to both forward-distance and lateral-distance between riders. You don't really want a guy starting two seconds behind a higher-placed rider only to immediately find himself in that rider's draft.
Still, I like the idea a lot. Very spectator-accessible and potentially very exciting.
Eshnar said:
yes, this is an issue to be solved yet.
I'll work on it
I don't think this idea is reasonably workable for a Grand Tour, simply because of the time gaps. In the biathlon it works precisely because the times are set by the sprint race, the shortest race format. And even then, it seems a bit unfair that the sprint pays medals at the Worlds and Olympics too - in Whistler, Anastasiya Kuzmina and Magdalena Neuner in the women's event were so far ahead of people from the sprint event that you could guarantee that, bar being complete idiots at the shooting range (admittedly a definite possibility in Neuner's case), they were going to 1-2 the pursuit too. They use it in short Tours in XC skiing, but it's most notable with the mountain climb of Alpe Cermis in the Tour de Ski.
However, on the other hand, I think for short stage races, especially relatively flat ones. Say, the Tour Down Under or the Tour of Britain - both races that could do well from including this. But I wouldn't do it as a full length stage. Take the Tour Down Under - you could do a circuit lap of the Old Willunga Hill circuit in pursuit format - do the sprinters wait for backup and then sprint it out or do they try to climb in earnest? It works because you wouldn't be waiting necessarily any longer than on a normal stage for the final finishers given the nature of a race like the TDU.
Patterned after the wintersports, however, I most definitely would NOT enforce a no-drafting rule. In the Nordic Combined, for example, part of the fun is seeing the likes of Gottwald and Kokslien having to work together to pull back a Lamy Chappuis or a Frenzel who has made their gains on the jump. In a long GT this will likely be irrelevant because of the gaps being larger, only that it takes all the late-goers completely out of their willingness to compete as they have to go it all alone and the crowds have likely cleared off - in essence turning all but the top 20 into the few stragglers in your average road stage, with the broomwagon at their back wheel. And if you don't let everybody start, they haven't finished the GT, so although they may officially be recorded as having done so they don't get the satisfaction. However, in a short stage race, especially one where you get a few riders on the same time (as happens not infrequently in the Nordic disciplines), it could be very interesting. For example, a TDU Willunga loop - should the likes of Greipel drop back and wait for teammates and try to have a sprint? Do you work together with your GC opponents to hold back those better climbers and ITT riders in the chasing pack behind you? Cameron Meyer, for example, would have to TT to victory had this happened in 2011 - but in order to get any help to chase him down the sprinters would have to sacrifice giving him a quite hefty headstart. And with the GC on the line, attacks like Evans/Valverde/Sánchez/Sagan on Willunga could have been helped immeasurably by Greipel having to wait an extra 30 seconds or so before help even arrived.