Is cycling dying as spectator a sport?

[Parrulo]

Let's face, you can't present 2 hours of racing like today and pretend like they were interesting. This kind of racing brings no one new to the sport and even drives some less enthusiastic people away, which only adds to the constant downfall of cycling over the past few years.

So what is wrong with cycling?

Imo pretty much everything is wrong. From the mentality of the people involved to the way things are run.

Without going into much detail right away, imo this are some of the things that should be changed:

1- Size of teams, they are imo too big which makes it easy to control the races. Smaller teams would also lead to more teams because of smaller rosters.
2- Point system is heavily biased towards placings. Everything out of a podium should be pretty much worthless and second and third much less rewarded than first.
3- Bonus points and prize money should be given to aggressive riders and teams. In this day of social media it would be pretty easy to have polls running during the race or shortly after, they could also use an uci selected jury to decide.
4- Length of races, particularly classics. 250km's are no longer an issue for your average trained professional athlete. This distances worked in the 60's/70's and 80's because only the top riders were real professionals.


Anyway what do you guys think?

 

[Asero831]

1. Why do we need to have 8-9 man team to start the race? Limit the number of the riders in the peloton to less than 80 and every rider will have more work to do and endure them to the audience

2. No one cares about the point system. Im sure the veteran Gilbert does not know how many WT points are given to the 10th placer

3. Prize money will not be a motivation. We all know how small the prize in all races. It will only work if they can find a sponsor to give 10,000 euros. Even if, 10,000 might even be smaller than the monthly salary of an average rider.

4. Cycling is still more of endurance rather than skill. We can leave with it but please lessen the number of riders per team.

 

[hrotha]

1. In principle I don't like the idea of having smaller teams because I think that will lead to lots of unemployed riders, but it would quite obviously be the easiest and fastest solution to the problem so I'm all for it.
2. Completely agree.
3. Too subjective to implement for anything that actually matters, I'm afraid.
4. Something I would be willing to test, but to be honest I think the lack of selection has more to do with the easy racing.

The organizers and the UCI need to acknowledge the problem, that's for sure. Good race design can go a long way to mitigate the problem, but that isn't enough. Limiting gears would be a drastic but probably very effective measure in this regard, and is something only the UCI can do.

 

[DFA123]

I agree with the points you have made; there certainly needs something to be done. Team size should be reduced; this may also help to spread the talent more evenly. There are rides at Etixx or Sky, for example, who could be great and attacking at a smaller team with a free role, rather than riding as 6th or 7th support rider as they do now.

Race radios would be top of my list to be banned. Continental tour races have shown that they don't necessarily guarantee more racing, but it often happens, and it adds an extra quality that riders need to win - tactical nous.

Also, perhaps some limits on equipment. It used to be a skill to change gear when accelerating on a climb, or to take a tight corner on slightly dodgy tyres. Modern equipment (electronic shifting / amazing grip tyres etc..) now takes out a lot of the bike handling skills that used to be needed to win races. It's probably too late to do this now the equipment is already being used; but, imo, it levels the field between those with good and poor bike handling, which isn't good for exciting racing.

 

[The fridge in the blue trees]

Not much wrong, Amstel Gold Race is just not an interesting race.
1 Size of teams. Ok, make it 6. Or 5? Races will not necessarily be more interesting. Long fight for the escape, when it's gone, it's gone. 30 riders up the road, peloton stops riding after 200, if not earlier, the 30 in front. Can happen as well as overly controlled races with 8 riders. Orica btw didn't manage to control Brabant for Matthews at the end...
2 Nothing really to do with today I think.
3 Do a poll here and you'll get Contador as most combative rider of the Amstel Gold Race.... without even starting. I'd go with the selected Jury... But.... do we want people riding for the win or for show and prize money bonus points?
4 Amstel should be 200 km. 150 is enough actually.

BTW, what downfall over the past few years?

 

[Velolover2]

You are right that there are waaay to many riders in today's peloton. Seven riders for GT's and six for classics and one week races should be enough. The hyper-organized trains have killed the sport.

 

[BigMac]

Size of teams: Yes, I agree. Not just for the reasons you mentioned, but for what I said in the Amstel thread. Having hordes of domestiques riding in the front inside the last kilometers is unfair for leaders who haven't got mates around and whose only intent is to get a spot near the front. Trains clogging up the roads such as today, in the approach to Valkenburg, is a plain nonsensical sight.

Race lenght: Would keep it as it is. Don't think increasing the mileage is the way to go. It's the performance gap between domestiques and leader that is pretty much non exitant until some real trouble gets underway - which may itself be a reflection of conservative riding. On the other hand, the thing is quite polarized: what we also see is some helpers performing better than assigned team leaders from other teams, which would take me to another section of this forum.

 

[Netserk]

Agree with team size, but I don't think drastic changes will have to happen. 6-men teams in one day races would be good though. 8-men teams in GTs. Don't know for one-week stage races, maybe 7, though it's an odd number.

Agree with points as well, though I'll add that I think they should have less importance (compared to when 19 teams want 18 WT spots. As it is now they are pretty much meaningless thanks god)

Don't really agree that much with your redistribution of prize money/points. I'm fine with intermediate sprints like in Liege having significant price money though. No thanks to polls and greater rewards to some random botd rider. I enjoy cycling the most when several teams do what they can to maximise their chance to get first.

Increase length of races? Can I get a big AMEN! Of course general course design is part of this as well. Less back-ending routes thankyouverymuch. Another hour of racing to all of the classics would be welcomed from me. More barriers to force riders to ride on the cobbles in Roubaix would be nice as well (I'm thinking Carrefour de l’Arbre and Gruson iirc). More use of smaller/narrow roads would be welcomed as well, but done with care, so after some selection and not a crash-inviting bottleneck. etc.

 

[killswitch]

Scrap the WT points system

 

[hrotha]

The thing with the points is not how they affect the big favourites but their impact on everybody else. At every race there's lots of people who can't win under normal circumstances, but might if something unusual happens. The problem is that those riders have learned to see a 9th placing or whatever as a very good result, so they're not likely to risk it, and therefore they're hoping someone else will do the work to make that something unusual happen. While it's not the case the last few seasons, it's absolutely true that such results have earned many a rider a WT contract in the recent past. Changing the points system would have little impact on the current generation, I'm afraid, but it's absolutely necessary in the mid to long term.

 

[SeriousSam]

Seems like an empirical question. Are viewers and revenues going down?

 

[Red Rick]

Reducing team sizes.
Any points heavily biased to winning, may even give some weird intermediate prizes wt points too
Prize money at finish is winner takes all
Change parcours to disfavour waiting till the last hill/last 5k

 

[Velolover2]

Re:

Increase length of races? Can I get a big AMEN! Of course general course design is part of this as well. Less back-ending routes thankyouverymuch. Another hour of racing to all of the classics would be welcomed from me. More barriers to force riders to ride on the cobbles in Roubaix would be nice as well (I'm thinking Carrefour de l’Arbre and Gruson iirc). More use of smaller/narrow roads would be welcomed as well, but done with care, so after some selection and not a crash-inviting bottleneck. etc.

I wholeheartedly agree as long as it is not done with the fence. It will create even more bottlenecks and crashes. Put rolled turf in the gutter and shortcuts instead.

 

[Bushman]

Smaller teams. Like 5 or six riders per team. Maybe 7 in GT's.

Then there could be done something about the parcours. Amstel, amongst others, would benefit from a better route.

But I think a lot of people should accept the fact that the riders ride to achieve the best possible result they can. Frankly, they don't really care if the race is spectacular or not.

I think the source of the problem is that the difference between the 'stars' and the domestiques is a lot smaller than it used to be. And that is why we need smaller teams. And it's not just about making the racing spectacular, it's also about giving strong riders better options to ride aggressively and get results of it.

 

[hrotha]

Everybody knows the riders don't care about making the races attractive, and few people argue they should. That's why we're proposing changes that are not up to the riders or the teams, but to the UCI and the organizers: to force the riders to race differently.

 

[Bushman]

Re:

Everybody knows the riders don't care about making the races attractive, and few people argue they should. That's why we're proposing changes that are not up to the riders or the teams, but to the UCI and the organizers: to force the riders to race differently.

Doesn't seem so whenever there has been an important race.

 

[Irondan]

Let's face, you can't present 2 hours of racing like today and pretend like they were interesting. This kind of racing brings no one new to the sport and even drives some less enthusiastic people away, which only adds to the constant downfall of cycling over the past few years.

So what is wrong with cycling?

Imo pretty much everything is wrong. From the mentality of the people involved to the way things are run.

Without going into much detail right away, imo this are some of the things that should be changed:

1- Size of teams, they are imo too big which makes it easy to control the races. Smaller teams would also lead to more teams because of smaller rosters.
2- Point system is heavily biased towards placings. Everything out of a podium should be pretty much worthless and second and third much less rewarded than first.
3- Bonus points and prize money should be given to aggressive riders and teams. In this day of social media it would be pretty easy to have polls running during the race or shortly after, they could also use an uci selected jury to decide.
4- Length of races, particularly classics. 250km's are no longer an issue for your average trained professional athlete. This distances worked in the 60's/70's and 80's because only the top riders were real professionals.


Anyway what do you guys think?

I think the teams are way too big for most of these races but not all. Race radios should be banned for WT races too.

 

[hrotha]

Re: Re:

Everybody knows the riders don't care about making the races attractive, and few people argue they should. That's why we're proposing changes that are not up to the riders or the teams, but to the UCI and the organizers: to force the riders to race differently.

Doesn't seem so whenever there has been an important race.

What do you mean?

 

[el_angliru]

I think we had a similar discussion after L-B-L 2014 - a race with 40 or 50 riders in the main group 3 or 4 km from the finish.

I don't know what to do. But it's mainly up to the teams and riders, I think. They can make an interesting race or they can make a boring race. Only one man will win in the end no matter which version they choose.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

But when there is a reward for 7th or 8th, riders will see that as a good day and be happy with their lot. It was always the old thing about the GTs, the Giro had 10 guys trying to win and the Tour had 25 guys trying not to lose. In 2010, you had the embarrassing situation where Garmin got on the front to nullify the advantage of a break which had Chris Horner and Rubén Plaza in it. Why? Because they were threatening Ryder Hesjedal's tenth place.

TENTH.

The 2012 Giro (coincidentally - and I actually mean that - won by the same Ryder Hesjedal) was the tipping point where that negative mentality spilled over. A super-backloaded course where everybody was too scared of putting their cards on the table that at the end of the day Ryder went home with the money and none of them put a single card down. And it seems that this type of racing has permeated into the Classics. Now, Flèche has been an uphill sprint for quite some time, but Amstel Gold could still be won by earlier moves than the final climb recently - Sergey Ivanov and Roman Kreuziger have won this way - although the weakness of the penultimate climb on the current course tends to preclude that and make it into an easier, less tough Flèche Wallonne finish (the old route with Keutenberg and Eyserbosweg closer to the end was better). Liège may have had a chronically awful edition last year (the worst of a few poor editions recently) but there are still recent races that have been won from distance and in style - Andy Schleck in 2009 and the bizarre Maxim Iglinsky victory with he, Nibali and Purito all soloing at different points in the run-in in 2012.

It's times like this I really appreciate Vincenzo Nibali. Because with the awful changes to the Lombardia route in recent years, he was moving 80km from the finish when Zaugg won. In the best Liège-Bastogne-Liège in the last few years it was him attacking earlier on that opened up the possibilities that ended with Iglinsky's win. And in today's race he was by far the biggest name willing to do anything before the final climb. If he feels good, he will try to win the race. John Degenkolb won Paris-Roubaix by mostly being negative because it suited him, but being positive when he had to. That's something Valverde will also do, but Gerrans seemingly won't (see his comments post-Worlds). Nibali isn't suited to negative racing, so he will typically be positive.

There are too many people who try not to lose. As Óscar Freire once said (and Van Morrison before him), "in order to win, first you have to be prepared to lose".

 

[DFA123]

The key is obviously reducing the power and size of the peloton from much earlier in the race. I guess this could be done by restricting numbers from each team, banning race radios to make them less organised or by adding more tehnical difficulties to the race (i.e tight corners, funnels in the road) - although the last of these would probably have safety implications.

Moving the finishing line or changing the points system won't change much if there are still 4 or 5 riders from each team in the last 100km, whose sole responsbility is to reel in any riders up the road. Especially if those riders can get constant time gaps and info on any break, and be told exactly how much power they need to put out to catch them at the right time. At least 5 or 6 teams will always have a rider they think will be able to win on the last climb or in the last few km, so won't risk much with long range attacks - and that is more than enough manpower to reel in any break.

 

[Miburo]

Maybe not as much to do with the points brought up in this thread but I always would have loved to see an all stars event in cycling.

Like a few days before the tour where they do different events eg. 1km sprint between the best sprinters, a 10km MTF between the best climbers etc.

Just for entertainment value, they don't even have to go all out orso. Could be fun i think.

I think btw many solutions you guys brought up are valid but at the same time:

If you've in a generation a few guys (like nibali and vino) who really don't mind going all out earlier, then that's enough to make the race way more entertaining and interesting. Or having a guy who is way stronger than the rest forcing the other guys to anticipate.

But the teams don't care about entertainment, they don't even care about winning anymore.

Remember JV at the flanders 2011? Winning has to be rewarded more. Or give WT points to riders who finishes first at certain sections in a classic.

 

[Flamin]

Re:

But the teams don't care about entertainment, they don't even care about winning anymore.

Remember JV at the flanders 2011?

Out of a gazillion examples you could have taken, you choose this one, really?

 

[Bye Bye Bicycle]

I find it only slightly ironic that this thread pops up at same day that one of the most amazing races on the calendar, the Tro Bro Léon, took place. With barely anyone taking notice.

 

[IndianCyclist]

If we look at the peloton vs breakaway, a breakaway can win only if
a) Shorter distance (difficult to pull back in time)
b) Lesser team size (Tremendous effort required)
c) Greater number of teams ( Increased size of breakaway & reduction of collusion in the peloton)
What this is also going to do is that it will leave the strong sprinters/top leaders without teammates and lead to a very open race.
Longer distance can also do that through attrition but b) & c) have to be implemented.