Isn't it criminal what they are doing with GTs?

[MacBAir]

What should GTs be all about?

Shouldn't GTs being the crowning of the most complete cyclists? Shouldn't GTs be to cycling what decathlon is to athletics? Why is it that we are letting the transition from where cycling was THE popular sport, where GT riders where very complete, to a point where it become just all about mountains and TT, and now we removed the TT aspect?

Puny colombians (incomplete cyclists) should be targeting the KOM.

The whole notion of GC rider is at risk. With the exception of some very, complete riders like Froome (See tour), the main candidates are skeletons with skin or the tiniest guys, that can't even handle a bit of wind. Heck, this is killing time-trialists, too, because what's the point?

A good GC route should have mountains, long stretches of TT, the ocasional sprint stage, the ocasional pave stage, and a lot of hills. Teams should also be smaller: If you can't handle the flat and wind, you don't deserve to be called a cyclist, not to mention competing for GTs.

What do you think? Is it related with TV transmissions too?

 

[LaFlorecita]

No.

 

[Bavarianrider]

Of course they should.

100km of flat TT shoud be the minimum standard.

 

[MacBAir]

Re:

No.

No what? I hope you aren't deciding to start your trolling and usual and sickning "defend alberto at all costs no matter" mentality.

This isn't about Alberto or you. It's all about cycling. If you don't have anything useful to contribute, not even a justified opinion, do me/us a favor and don't post here. Go to your thread.

 

[jsem94]

This poll is so flawed.... and the answer is: keep it mostly as is but reduce team sizes by one or two, add TT kms (because GTs with less than 40kms of ITT is just wrong), and have more difficulties even on flatter stages like pave, sterrato etc.

 

[hrotha]

Pure climbers should be able to win GTs, but only if they earned it by taking advantage of the stages that suit them the same way time-trialists take advantage of the ITTs. Yes, 100 km of ITT should be more or less standard.

 

[silvergrenade]

Atleast 50 KMs of TT, with 10 uphill finishes and 5 hilly stages plus a few windy flat stages.

 

[Arredondo]

Most people are bored with riders like Wiggo or Martin. People tend to see explosive climbers who are winning GT's by attacking in the mountains. Instead of riders who dominating a TT and defend their lead in the remaining mountain stages.

Froome is the ultimate cyclist: a great climber and TT'er, and good in echelon and cobble stages. But riders who can climb and TT with the absolute best are rare. So spectators and eventually organizers always give the edge to pure climbers.

 

[hrotha]

Re:

Atleast 50 KMs of TT, with 10 uphill finishes and 5 hilly stages plus a few windy flat stages.

That's an insane amount of uphill finishes. It gets predictable and repetitive.

 

[silvergrenade]

Re: Re:

Atleast 50 KMs of TT, with 10 uphill finishes and 5 hilly stages plus a few windy flat stages.

That's an insane amount of uphill finishes. It gets predictable and repetitive.

Makes it interesting though. This Vuelta was fine with 10 of them.

 

[LaFlorecita]

Re: Re:

No.

No what? I hope you aren't deciding to start your trolling and usual and sickning "defend alberto at all costs no matter" mentality.

This isn't about Alberto or you. It's all about cycling. If you don't have anything useful to contribute, not even a justified opinion, do me/us a favor and don't post here. Go to your thread.

"Isn't it criminal what they are doing with GTs?"
My answer is: No.

You are just upset Quintana beat Froome. Build a bridge and get over it.

 

[DFA123]

I voted for the third option. The best classics riders should be able to win tours, like they did over 30 years ago. Teams are too strong now though, so the only place to realistically gain significant time is in the mountains.

Difficult to see how that situation can change now though. So I guess the logical thing to do is value GTs less and monuments more.

 

[Red Rick]

Re:

No.

Ding ding ding. Winner winner chicken dinner.

That, or

Vino

 

[StryderHells]

Re: Re:

Atleast 50 KMs of TT, with 10 uphill finishes and 5 hilly stages plus a few windy flat stages.

That's an insane amount of uphill finishes. It gets predictable and repetitive.

Makes it interesting though. This Vuelta was fine with 10 of them.

I'd argue that many uphill finishes does the opposite and isn't interesting

 

[Cance > TheRest]

Voted for the 5th option, mainly because it was a funny idea. But in all seriousness, I don't see what's "criminal" about the current state of GT's. We just witnessed the best GT of the year, while the Giro was very good aswell

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Well, the problem is that we're biasing the routes in favour of the mountain goats whilst also providing a multitude of shoddily-designed mountain stages. If the climbers don't have deficits to pull back (e.g. from an ITT) they won't have any reason to provide fireworks on the climbs, and we'll get something like the 2012 Giro unless the climbs are so steep that drafting becomes an irrelevance (the Vuelta's preferred method in recent years). If you provide 100km of ITT on some of the courses we've had in recent years, then of course a strong TTer who can get over a decent amount of mountains would be favoured by the course, like the extreme examples of the 2012 Tour and the Indurain era. If you have the right mountain stages, however, you can easily balance out that amount of time trial distance. The problem is the advent of MTF fever (even on climbs which are great passes so it's completely unnecessary, such as Stelvio, Galibier or Tourmalet - notwithstanding that 2011 Galibier was of course great, but only because the Pyrenees were raced so badly that Andy had little other choice) and that in a serious block of mountain stages the subsequent stages often scare the péloton into inaction, so that you need mountains so brutal time gaps are almost guaranteed in the first ones of a block in order to create separation, or - as we're increasingly seeing - making the last stage of them a short stage, which encourages more action as riders don't have to be afraid of the stage. A further problem is the way the péloton behaves. The increased professionalism and greater depth in the modern bunch means that the difference between the best and worst rider in a race is much less than it was, so there's far less mano-a-mano action and more group riding; more domestiques can make it to the base of the final climb so that a stage where a leader is isolated early like happened in Formigal is a rarity, not the norm. The other problem is the péloton itself - seeing the bunch protesting the race and refusing to even contemplate trying to meet the time cut because of the brutality of a race which has had just one multi-col odyssey and a lower average speed than the Tour does not speak of a péloton that would take well to a stage where the mountain stages were arranged to balance out 100km of time trialing, which means the current trend is likely to continue. Also, greater coverage means that there are fewer pure waste-of-a-day stages (plus the development of the train template for sprints has sucked a lot of the previous value of those stages out), and at least in the Giro and Vuelta (I don't know about the Tour) there has been a clear tendency for much stronger audience figures for hilly and mountainous stages than flat stages and TTs. Plus the fact that a perfect storm of factors meant that the 2012 Vuelta was far better than it had any right to be, which has meant the organizers have been back to the well over and over - and in fairness to them, the Vuelta has done well for itself in terms of entertainment value in recent years, but I think more of that has been to do with some chronically bad editions of other races (2012 being case in point) as well.

Until recently, a pure climber COULD win a GT, but they had to be a truly special, exceptional figure among those to do it - and those guys have gone down in legend. Bahamontes, Gaul, van Impe, Fuente, Herrera, Pantani. Nairo Quintana is a great climber. His palmarès now eclipses Herrera's, but I'm still not prepared to anoint Nairo greater than Lucho.

 

[May0maniac]

What should GTs be all about?

Shouldn't GTs being the crowning of the most complete cyclists? Shouldn't GTs be to cycling what decathlon is to athletics? Why is it that we are letting the transition from where cycling was THE popular sport, where GT riders where very complete, to a point where it become just all about mountains and TT, and now we removed the TT aspect?

Puny colombians (incomplete cyclists) should be targeting the KOM.

The whole notion of GC rider is at risk. With the exception of some very, complete riders like Froome (See tour), the main candidates are skeletons with skin or the tiniest guys, that can't even handle a bit of wind. Heck, this is killing time-trialists, too, because what's the point?

A good GC route should have mountains, long stretches of TT, the ocasional sprint stage, the ocasional pave stage, and a lot of hills. Teams should also be smaller: If you can't handle the flat and wind, you don't deserve to be called a cyclist, not to mention competing for GTs.

What do you think? Is it related with TV transmissions too?

No, a good Tour should be like that, but the other GTs should have their own identity.
Take the Giro for example, it never was a race with many km of ITT, that only became a thing in the Moser/Saronni years (probably the worst era of the Giro) and was still a thing in the 90ies.
Just look at Eddy Merckx, all of his 5 Giro wins came on routes that had less km of ITT than the 2015 Giro.

 

[Escarabajo]

Re:

Pure climbers should be able to win GTs, but only if they earned it by taking advantage of the stages that suit them the same way time-trialists take advantage of the ITTs. Yes, 100 km of ITT should be more or less standard.

There is absolutely no strategy for a mountain goat with 100 TT especially if they are flattish. Please don't try to paint me a picture where there is a possibility because you will only find flawed ones, like Pantani. In the year when Cunego won there was no real strong TT in that Giro with decent climbing skills.

 

[Red Rick]

I don't think there should be a fixed answer. GTs being competitive is more important than GTs being balanced. With teams like Sky around, old GT routes with 100km of flat tt'ing wouldn't work anymore.

And what Libertine said, as always.

 

[GenericBoonenFan]

None of the above, a hard GC like the vuelta with less mountain top finishes but an equal (or -1) amount of mountain stages and a little more sprint stages

 

[Escarabajo]

Re:

I don't think there should be a fixed answer. GTs being competitive is more important than GTs being balanced. With teams like Sky around, old GT routes with 100km of flat tt'ing wouldn't work anymore.

And what Libertine said, as always.

+1.

It would be a walk in the park.

 

[SeriousSam]

Re:

Whatever makes for closely fought, intriguing GC battles, with the historical way of how things have been done serving as a loose constraint to prevent gimmicky changes or a complete change of the type of rider that can win the GTs (eg Sagan)

That rules out Froome-proofing a GT.

 

[May0maniac]

Re: Re:

Pure climbers should be able to win GTs, but only if they earned it by taking advantage of the stages that suit them the same way time-trialists take advantage of the ITTs. Yes, 100 km of ITT should be more or less standard.

There is absolutely no strategy for a mountain goat with 100 TT especially if they are flattish. Please don't try to paint me a picture where there is a possibility because you will only find flawed ones, like Pantani. In the year when Cunego won there was no real strong TT in that Giro with decent climbing skills.

Honchar?

 

[Valv.Piti]

I would like to see ITT-miles similar to 2008. The mountain stages were horrible that year, but I think they got it about right in terms of the time trials - 30 early, 40-50 km later. Or switch it, depending on what you like. I actually like a long ITT early, for one, but that probably won't happen.

 

[Escarabajo]

Re: Re:

Pure climbers should be able to win GTs, but only if they earned it by taking advantage of the stages that suit them the same way time-trialists take advantage of the ITTs. Yes, 100 km of ITT should be more or less standard.

There is absolutely no strategy for a mountain goat with 100 TT especially if they are flattish. Please don't try to paint me a picture where there is a possibility because you will only find flawed ones, like Pantani. In the year when Cunego won there was no real strong TT in that Giro with decent climbing skills.

Honchar?

Thatt's why I put decent climbing skills.
Honchar would be no match for Quintana because TBH he would lose too much time in the mountains.