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General News Thread

Page 519 - Get up to date with the latest news, scores & standings from the Cycling News Community.

Adam hansen did a couple of .2 races in Czechoslovakia last year.
 
Apologies if this has already been posted/mentioned elsewhere but the route of the UAE Tour is out.

It looks really boring, unless the wind blows on the flat stages.

There's also a TTT instead of a ITT.

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Vladimir Gusev will reportedly start as well Sharjah Tour with Abu Dabhi CC, featuring among others Alexander Pliuschin and Annas ait el Abdia. Race of the century.
Some awesome blasts from the past there. Hoogerland is especially fun! The route actually looks very good too. A short ITT, a sprint, a nice hilly stage, a short MTF and a sprint at the end.
 
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Yup, the UAE Tour's dull route is kind of brought home when a 2.2 race that uses the same terrain includes these stages:

tour-of-sharjah-2023-stage-3-profile-fdddb7ff6f.jpg


tour-of-sharjah-2023-stage-4-profile-571928b596.jpg


I don't mind them not doing Al-Suhub as three MTFs would be too much for a one week race, but at the same time being around 6km at 8,5% it's a different kind of climber's terrain than the long tempo grinders of Jebel Hafeet and Jebel Jais. Also Jebel Hafeet is the tougher climb I believe, so might be better to put them the other way round, although at this time of the season it's probably less significant as it's still prep race territory. If they decide that the Wadi al-Hilo finish is too out of the way for a WT race they could always just make a circuit with that 3km at 7,3% climb and finish in Fujairah, the only one of the Emirates which is based on the east coast.

It's not like these stages would be super decisive or I'm asking them to put a Liège-Bastogne-Liège clone out there. Just that a route with two sprints, an ITT, the Hatta Dam not-quite-sprinter-not-quite-puncheur finish, a hilly stage around Fujairah or Wadi al-Hilo and two out of the three mountaintop finishes available (the two in the real race and the one in the Tour of Sharjah) would be a much more varied and interesting race, and without doing much that would make it too difficult for its role as a February prep race. We're only talking about adding a couple of climbs which are realistically cat.3 by most Euro races' standards to vary things a bit.

Just as how the Tour Down Under hasn't really made itself that much harder in recent years, but by better placement of the obstacles it has at its disposal it has made itself far better.
 
A subtle change to this year's Liège-Bastogne-Liège. They will turn right at the top of the Redoute, instead of left. Thereby cutting out the false flat section where Evenepoel rode away last year. They will head straight to the Côte de Forges, before the Roche aux Faucons. This will also mean that the Redoute is about 4 km further away from the finish.

View: https://mobile.twitter.com/LasterketaBurua/status/1618318201611497472

Well, that's not a bad change. The Cornemont, immediately after the Redoute is a nice place to atack as well, with the sore legs from la Redoute.

cote-de-cornemont.png



However, this change means no Hornay anymore (not really some climb that really will be missed) and they removed the mont-le-soie as 'first' important climb before the Wanne.

Furthermore, with Roche-aux-Falcon still there, not much will change. I still hoping one they they spice up the zone around the stockeau, with climbs like Hezalles, Brume and/or thier de coo and remove the roche-aux-falcon.
 
I'm not really sure. The article does say that preliminary receits showed it would likely be a financial loss.
Most of these economic assessments use a form of magic maths rather than real accounting: X people attended and spent a theoretical Y euros per head, generating Z income for the city on the day. Some go further and say that N visitors will return in future years and so add in future income from these visitors.

It's not a case of the organisers spent however many hundreds of thousands or millions of euros and generated ticketing and merchandising and sponsorship income to match that. The organisers and the towns/cities spent the money, local businesses reaped the rewards

Colour me jaded but the modelling is built in such a way as to not fail. I've read many of these economic assessments over the years and they all come to the same conclusion: we did a really good job, go us.

What few of these reports do is question the visitor traffic displaced by the event (eg you probably won't want to holiday in Paris in the first weeks of August 2024 if you're not an Olympics fan so for some businesses income may actually be flat rather than rise) and they obviously do not take account of other factors that might have attracted you to the area at that time (eg the year-round efforts of the Dutch tourism board).

Soz, that's a long response to a small feel-good story.
 
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Off topic question- not sure where to post it.

Is there any where I can find if there any shuttles from Colmar to Le Markstein for stage 20 of the Tour? Do you expect there to be any? I am not too familiar with the finish. It's a ski resort? I am looking for backup stages to go to and that might have to be it so I am just trying to figure out how difficult it'll be to get there on race day via public/group transit.
 
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Off topic question- not sure where to post it.

Is there any where I can find if there any shuttles from Colmar to Le Markstein for stage 20 of the Tour? Do you expect there to be any? I am not too familiar with the finish. It's a ski resort? I am looking for backup stages to go to and that might have to be it so I am just trying to figure out how difficult it'll be to get there on race day via public/group transit.
This kind of stuff never gets announced this early, there will be spectator information on the site of the department (Haut-Rhin in this case) as the event draws nearer. For example, this page for this year's finish at Planche des Belles Filles is still up, with shuttle buses for both the men's and women's races. However, I can't find anything on there having been such a service for the women's finish at Le Markstein last year.

Alternatively, there's a train service from Colmar that terminates in Metzeral, about 2 kilometres from the bottom of the final climb. There may be increased service on the day that the Tour passes (this is also something that is sometimes done), but in any case any form of access will of course be crowded. There are also regular bus services in the tourist season to Le Markstein (see here - scroll down to the summer section), kind of doubt if those will be in operation that day though.

Finally, there's also this initiative.
 
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