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Historical Classics & WCRR Routes

Guys, what is a good website to find as many one day race maps & profiles as possible? Especially the biggest of the classics (the five biggies, Amstel, Fleche, Omloop, Tre Valle etc.) and also the WCRR and the defunct ones?

And of course I'd appreciate if any of you post some here instead with stories and comments :)
 
For WC, I'm under the impression that Lasterketa Burua made a compilation of the profiles of the circuits for several decades a few weeks ago, but I can't confirm that now. If they have done, it should be on their twitter feed or on their blog.
 
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Ricco' said:
For WC, I'm under the impression that Lasterketa Burua made a compilation of the profiles of the circuits for several decades a few weeks ago, but I can't confirm that now. If they have done, it should be on their twitter feed or on their blog.
They have indeed, I also think ammatti has made a little comment to each of the Worlds races/routes in the wake of that work.
 
Very cool.

Obviously there's a huge variation of courses, and sometimes similar looking courses on the profiles have totally different racing. Geelong looks decently hard with a very tough first climb, and yet it was all sprints.

I would really like to know more about how the circuits affect the racing and how it affects certain groups of contenders, particularly

- total altitude gain
- altitude gain per lap
- distribution of altitude gain (length and steepness of climbs, amount of climbs)
- lap length
- amount of flat and distribution
- distance from the last climb to the finish

Especially the last one really decides if it's a sprinters race or a puncheur's race if the parcours allows the race to be very controlled.

One thing to notice is that the great majority of climbing in worlds is at fairly shallow gradients, and especially in the current peloton that's not gonna lead to great selection. We saw that this year. Shallow climbs + a lot of flat doesn't do much, unless the final climb is close in which it's the same except for puncheurs winning

The way of racing Worlds has definitely changed. I think Valkenburg had identical circuits in 1998 and 2012. In 1998 there were minutes of gaps everywhere, in 2012 it was your average uphill sprint.

Lastly, I think a circuits with one climb are pretty stupid. There have been a lot of them with the 5 @5% or 4@6% type climb, and you basically have one point to attack on the entire route. Racing will always be pretty closed.

I think the 1-2km climbs of 7-8% give the widest range of contenders, especially if the hardest climb is early in the circuit. My favourite routes are proably Lugano 1996 and Mendrisio 2009.
 
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Red Rick said:
Lastly, I think a circuits with one climb are pretty stupid. There have been a lot of them with the 5 @5% or 4@6% type climb, and you basically have one point to attack on the entire route. Racing will always be pretty closed.

I think the 1-2km climbs of 7-8% give the widest range of contenders, especially if the hardest climb is early in the circuit. My favourite routes are proably Lugano 1996 and Mendrisio 2009.

Two climbs is more or less the standard for WC routes. Most of the courses the last 15 years had two climbs. The normal course have something like 200-250 height meters per 20 km. The number of climbs, the number of laps and the length/gradient of climbs often vary, but in terms of total height meters it's often not to much variation. And far too often it favorizes riders like Freire, Sagan or similar types.

The problem is that they are often too easy or it's too long flat sections between the climbs. Mendrisio didn't look that tough at first glance, but the short course (only 14 km) meant lot of laps and less time for the riders to rest between the climbs. It's a big difference two climbs coming 19 times like Mendrisio and to climbs done 12 times like Salzburg. Ponferrada was neither too tough because the gentle gradient of the climbs.
 
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Lance Armstrong said:
So is Innsbruck the toughest course in the history of WC?

Duitama was also pretty brutal. The climb might be a bit shorter than Innsbruck, but they did 15 laps with the climb and it was all at high altitude. Innsbruck has 7 times 6,9km at 5,9% + two muritos, whereas Duitama had 15 times 4,2km at 6,9% starting at 2490 meters with the climbing reaching 2831 meters.
 
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Red Rick said:
The way of racing Worlds has definitely changed. I think Valkenburg had identical circuits in 1998 and 2012. In 1998 there were minutes of gaps everywhere, in 2012 it was your average uphill sprint.
It was raining all day in 1998.

valkenburg1fs.jpg
 
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TMP402 said:
Maybe I'm imagining things but from what I saw, Bergen looked even more of an aberration than it is already held to be: nothing difficult in the final half of the course at all. 90% of courses had at least something in the final half.

I think that was partially due to creating a good course for Kristoff and Boasson Hagen and partially because of practical reasons. They wanted a finish close to Bryggen, and had to loop around to finish there and start new laps. Using the steep hills just north-northeast of the city centre, like they did on the time trial, would have been very difficult in the RR because that would have meant descent on steep and narrow roads.
 
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Maaaaaaaarten said:
Lance Armstrong said:
So is Innsbruck the toughest course in the history of WC?

Duitama was also pretty brutal. The climb might be a bit shorter than Innsbruck, but they did 15 laps with the climb and it was all at high altitude. Innsbruck has 7 times 6,9km at 5,9% + two muritos, whereas Duitama had 15 times 4,2km at 6,9% starting at 2490 meters with the climbing reaching 2831 meters.

Nürburgring is really hard, too. Specially the 1927 course where they had to climb Steilstrecke.

tn1928_steilstrecke_gesamt


Also interesting is 1928, which might be the only WRR that wasn't held on a circuit. They just took dirt roads in the Puszta at over 40 degrees celsius.
 
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fauniera said:
https://lasterketaburua.wordpress.com/2016/10/15/circuiti-mondiali/

That is an incredible resource. It is interesting that there were more circuits in previous years. Any guess as to why that is?
 
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Netserk said:
But they could have changed Salmon Hill to the steeper hill just nearby that was used in the TTT.

One climb is enough if the circuit is short (or if there's very little of real flat parts where a bunch can chase effectively).

Probably to make it easier for Kristoff and EBH.

But that hill would have meant a couple of kms more of descent/flat after the hill, and even a couple of kms longer laps.

They could have done something like this if they wanted to have a hill closer to the finish, but as you can see, this could have been a tricky descent.
 
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TMP402 said:
Maybe I'm imagining things but from what I saw, Bergen looked even more of an aberration than it is already held to be: nothing difficult in the final half of the course at all. 90% of courses had at least something in the final half.

The riders tried. Bergen just wasn't that difficult. Looking at the courses since 07, Bergen was probably the third easiest behind Copenhagen and Doha. You could even make the argument that due to the wind and heat, Doha was tougher.
 
The riders tried. Too late. The Vermote-tempo was ridden for too long.

Richmond was far easier, but also more backloaded. Valkenburg was a bit easier, but again more backloaded.

I hope we'll return to laps only, like before Melbourne.

OlavEH said:
Netserk said:
But they could have changed Salmon Hill to the steeper hill just nearby that was used in the TTT.

One climb is enough if the circuit is short (or if there's very little of real flat parts where a bunch can chase effectively).

Probably to make it easier for Kristoff and EBH.

But that hill would have meant a couple of kms more of descent/flat after the hill, and even a couple of kms longer laps.

They could have done something like this if they wanted to have a hill closer to the finish, but as you can see, this could have been a tricky descent.

Too long circuit for my taste, but this was proposed by Lasterketa Burua‏:

DKev1ExW4AAxZ5B.jpg
 
roundabout said:

Nice! Thank you. I always wonder how today's peloton would race a Milan finish of mid to late 1980s.
 
The courses do miss the 1969 amateur Worlds course, which was held in Brno, Czech Republic, on the Masaryk-Ring, while the pros raced at Zolder.

I have for a long time wanted to do a long post on the use of motor racing circuits in cycling, since back in the day there were much longer, more technically challenging and complex courses used in car racing than in the present day now that racing technology has rendered those courses entirely impractical for cars in any head to head format and we have become more keenly aware of safety concerns. The large number of prior World Championships using these longer, more tricky courses was a major part in the consideration, as now often we see autodromes used more to provide a safer, wider atmosphere and stands at the finish so that a sprint can be done safely, rather than in the hope of genuine selectivity, mainly as the courses are so much shorter nowadays that in stage races lapped traffic would become an issue, and that the number of courses with severe gradients are fairly limited nowadays, though there are still a few - Eau Rouge-Radillon at Spa-Francorchamps, for example, has a steep punchy climb up onto the Kemmel straight, and the Tour of California included Laguna Seca's famous Corkscrew a couple of years ago. Courses that incorporate a racing circuit to give a wide, safe finishing sprint but still incorporate other obstacles certainly have their benefits, such as the Imola circuit used in the Worlds in 1968 and the Giro in 2015. Extended road courses like the Solitudering (never used) and the Masaryk-Ring (1969 amateur Worlds) can still be used in full, but the fact that the open road sections of courses like the Sachsenring (1960 Worlds) and Spa-Francorchamps have been closed off to traffic or built over with the new permanent autodromes so that aping the old course in full would be impossible mean that they are no longer viable for cycling (I had to extend the circuit somewhat to incorporate the 1960 Worlds course in my DDR-Rundfahrt in the Race Design Thread, because the old home straight has been re-appropriated as the home straight of the new permanent facility). There's also the Schleizer Dreieck course, which hosted the Friendship Games Road Race in 1984 and several editions of the DDR national championship, to mention, but courses of sufficient length in modern motor racing are few - there's the most famous part-permanent part-temporary facility in the world at Le Mans, of course, but the profile there is almost totally flat. Perhaps the most interesting possible course not previously used would be the Mount Panorama Circuit in Bathurst, Australia, which reaches gradients of 17% on its ascent and is a good 7-8km with roads leading out into the town to give the options of an Imola- or Goodwood-like circuit course. And also... damn, I'd forgotten just how bad the Circuito de Lasarte-Oria was in comparison to almost any other San Sebastián based circuit you could ever conceive...

World championships held on motor racing courses:

- 1928 Nürburgring
- 1954 Solingen - Klingenring
- 1960 Karl-Marx-Stadt - Alte Sachsenring
- 1965 San Sebastián - Circuito Lasarte-Oria
- 1966 Nürburgring
- 1978 Nürburgring

World championships held on circuits incorporating motor racing courses as part of the circuit:
- 1958 Reims - Reims-Gueux
- 1959 Zandvoort - Circuit Zandvoort
- 1968 Imola - Autodromo Enzo e Dino Ferrari
- 1969 (professionals) Zolder - Circuit Zolder
- 1969 (amateurs) Brno - Masaryk-Ring
- 1970 Leicester - Mallory Park
- 1982 Goodwood - Goodwood Motor Circuit
- 1984 Barcelona - includes all of the former Montjuïc street circuit alongside other parts of the city
- 2002 Zolder - Circuit Zolder

Also related:
- 1962 Salò del Garda - course incorporates some parts of but is different to a motorcycle street circuit used at the time
- 1973 Barcelona - same finish as the Parc Montjuïc street circuit that fell out of disuse at this time but different course otherwise

As you can see, courses incorporating motor circuits are increasingly rare but for a period through the 60s and 70s were extremely common. Given that purpose built feature length road cycling circuits are very rare (Krylatskoye Ring and Izu are the only ones I can think of) these courses give a few options for producing interesting courses with comparatively minimal interruption to traffic which is part of the reason I think they were successful for a period, however the developments in both sports contrived to move away from their being conducive to one another; the tendency towards shorter and less dangerous motor racing courses meant that the long courses like Pescara, original Spa-Francorchamps and Reims-Gueux faded from vogue as they were too difficult to marshal and making the required safety improvements too costly over such a distance, while simultaneously the increased professionalism in the péloton meant that more sustained changes in gradient and elevation, often precluded in the newer, shorter autodromes.