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

[Singer01]

i'm fine for TTTs to be included if either they don't massively affect the overall result (<15km), or they are long but with varied terrain (who wouldn't want to see 25km of flat, followed by a 10-12km cat 1 climb followed by a technical descent TTT?).

 

[gregrowlerson]

Re:

They don't call it the race of truth for nothing, but fashions change.

Ten years from now us believers will be saying, "The truth is out there", whilst "Government denies the existence of time trials"

 

[pablopaul]

Re: Re:

They don't call it the race of truth for nothing, but fashions change.

Ten years from now us believers will be saying, "The truth is out there", whilst "Government denies the existence of time trials"

:lol: The way it's going that might be an accurate prediction of the future.

Joking aside, balance is the key. The problem at the moment is GT routes have moved to much to the side of favoring climbers. I don't think there is any argument about that. A move back to the center is needed. Why can't riders like Dumoulin and Dennis, high class against the clock, decent ability climbing, be contenders at GT level.

The issue of course is Froome. There is a fear, no doubt, that by making routes balanced Froome will suddenly become unbeatable. I understand this, but you don't change sport because of one person. Froome won't be around for ever.

Let's get back to proper GT racing with the proper amount of TT kms.

 

[Amnes2015]

yes ofc its criminal

TdF at least should have 100km of flat ITT

what's the problem if Froome wins 8 TdF's ? he's the best GT rider by far. let his palmares reflect that.

 

[gregrowlerson]

Re:

Another thing is that there are plenty of factors that go into designing a GT. We can talk about Froome-proofing a GT, but I suspect we may see less of that going forward, for the simple reason that the fans' rejection of Froome this year was far less aggressive than in 2013 or 2015. Whether it be because we've just got used to him, or because he raced a more interesting race this year (and there was more frustration at others not challenging him rather than at him as a result) and there was no "Clinic explosion" dominant performance like Ax-3-Domaines or Pierre-St-Martin, or whatever the reason may be, one of the reasons for organizers trying to design routes to allow others to get close to Froome is quite possibly because they realized they have an unpopular champion; if somebody dominates and is popular, it can galvanize the sport's fanbase. But if somebody dominates and is not popular (notwithstanding that Froome's success being consistently followed by doping innuendo in the media and on social media) then fans want to cheer for somebody to dethrone them, or will just switch off in frustration. Obviously ASO don't want that. If the fanbase is ready to accept or at least tolerate Froome as a major champion, they won't need to try to engineer a course to prevent him winning too easily anymore.

At the same time, organizers have done plenty of tailoring of courses towards the riders they want to win. Back in the 50s and 60s especially the Vuelta used to tailor its course directly to the foreign stars it wanted to turn up, in an attempt to secure their participation, even at the expense of their own homegrown stars. This only really started to change in the era of Ocaña and Fuente (although the race director did in fact ask KAS' DS to call Fuente back in his legendary Formigal raid to prevent the GC being settled with a comparative unknown winning, with the KAS DS understandably and thankfully telling him to go forth and multiply). We still see it to this day though; the way the Tour removed the TTT after 2005 and then didn't have one for three years, but when Armstrong was returning we saw a long, difficult TTT early and then the first set of mountains being neutered, it was clear a lot of the route was designed around the thinking that, if Lance wasn't all that good (we had no idea how strong he'd be in his comeback at this point) then he'd at least be in contention for the first two weeks, guaranteeing the spike in public interest. 2012 is a similar example, where it seemed fairly transparent that the organization wanted Wiggins to win and capitalize on the new-found British interest in the sport (coming off the back of a number of other ASO-organized races which favoured a strong time trialist who could control the race).

At the same time, we've seen a parallel development in the Giro and Vuelta to horrendously imbalance the routes because of the audience figures, as previously mentioned. ASO will always have less trouble attracting the world's eyeballs at the Tour, because the Tour is the one race which has truly global currency even outside of the cycling fanbase. Zomegnan and Guillén, although their philosophies related to these were different, both noticed that the increased audience figures for hilly and mountainous stages were notable, and tailored their routes in that direction to capitalize. Zomegnan, of course, went a bit too far, and of course lost his job, but Guillén is still in his role. He got very lucky in 2012 that both the Giro and Tour were absolutely awful that year, and that a range of lucky circumstances led to his route, an experimental affair with no stages in the south, some absurd transfers, a dozen mountaintop finishes, next to no major mid-stage cols, hardly any time trial mileage and some absurd circuits, being a success. Even so, just like this year when the same formula was used, it was the least anticipated mountain stage that created the story that people will remember.

Great write up as usual LS. Just some comments in regards to the conversations doing the rounds of this thread in general.

No rest days? Yes, not a bad idea. But I don't see how a GT would be happy to start on a Monday or finish on a Friday?

Though perhaps it could start on a Sunday and finish on a Saturday? First weekend is usually boring from the GC perspective anyway, so that could work. By stage 7 (the first Saturday) we'd be ready for something decisive.

I like the idea of including a TTT every few years; so a little like the cobbles. Let's make it decisive when it is in though. Put in a 70 km TTT; fairly flat too, really throw the cat amongst the pigeons. What's the point of having a 20 km TTT? It's just a bit of eye candy. I'd rather see a prologue or short ITT instead in the first week. Sky isn't going to rethink picking Landa because there is a 20 km TTT, but if that distance is 70 kms, then it could make for some interesting and varied team selections.

Having a TTT of any distance doesn't help any GC rider who is on a small squad who has no access to strong domestiques for either the flat terrain or the mountains though. This is it's problem. But consider this:

Say Contador goes to Ettix next season, and the TDF include a 70 km TTT. Helped by Tony Martin and so forth, Contador suddenly finds himself two minutes ahead of Froome and Quintana. Now Contador might have no domestiques for the high mountains, nor be able to match Froome or Quintana himself, but at least the GC battle has an added dimension to it, a cool contrast.

Courses should be created that give some chance for teams to attempt to defeat Froome and Sky on flatter terrain.

ITT is good. We should have more of it. Didn't exactly harm the '06 and '07 Tours did it?

Good points have been made about the organizers wanting to keep the race close for as long as possible (Lance '09), but you could do that and still end up with a relatively balanced route. Casual viewer who watches a stage once every few years (or someone who has never tuned in at all) sees on the daily news sports report that Quintana is just twenty seconds ahead of Froome after stage 14. They even see the duo finishing atop a mountain together and think that this looks exciting (whilst the cycling news forum is screaming, "Stop holding each other's hand!"). "I might just change the channel and see what all of the fuss is about." And then maybe you have the start of a new fan to the sport. They may not have decided to check it out if Froome was four minutes ahead.

So this goes against having a long ITT at the end of week one. But there is no reason why you can't make the final ITT on stage 20 60 kms. The casual observer doesn't know that Quintana is going to most likely get destroyed by Froome in that stage (so still watches the final week), and we forum members are all relatively satisfied that at least we got a somewhat balanced route.

Perhaps up until that point the race had only had 15-20 kms (of ITT).

However (so many points seem to contradict each other!) having such an extreme test against the clock at the end of the race may also discourage long range attacks during the third week. And most of us would probably agree that the best GT course will encourage long range attacks during week three.

Onto the Froome proofing of GT's. Give Chris his time trials. He deserves to benefit from those. Should the NBA have banned the dunk so as to lessen the impact of Shaq?

Or if you dunk it, then for those two points to count you have to go and hit two free throws

Froome is a great time trialler, a great climber, and a more than adequate descender. But he is not a complete rider. What is his kryptonite? DISTANCE.

Chris didn't exactly dominate the Olympic road race did he? So this is also an argument for smaller teams, but it's about extreme distance on individual stages too. When has Froome ever done anything in a stage in excess of 250 kms?

GT's should be kept to around the 3,000 kms or just over total distance. But we need more variation, more EXTREMES. The recent Vuelta just showed us what impact combining a mini Queen stage with a short medium mountain stage can have. But that Queen stage wasn't a long stage.

I propose three lumpy-medium mountain 250 km plus stages over the three weeks. And a true Queen stage, of 220 kms or more, with 5 decent mountains. The really long stages could be spaced out so as to have one in each week. The first one may or may not include cobbles (I don't believe that there should be anything as dramatically difficult as P-R in Le Tour; I like the idea of GC contenders having an increased likelihood of dropping 2-3 minutes in a stage, but not increased likelihood of having to abandon the race due to a crash).

Of how much value is Landa as a domestique in a TDF with three 250 km + stages??

The inclusion of stages such as these surely improve the chances of someone like Nibali.

And of Contador - hypothetically on Ettix - who can possibly use his strong roulers to good effect on these stages.

And about the final week. On the second last Saturday you might have a _/ Vuelta style MTF stage, followed by a harder multi mountain 200 km stage. Then the rest day, then the final high mountain stage, the Queen stage (the second mountain stage has still been properly raced though because of the encouragement of the rest day). After this Tuesday, stage 16, it's fair to say that the peloton are pretty damn tired. Oh, but the high mountains are over, so we're just going to transition to the time trial you say? Not so fast, and not so easy. On the Wednesday we'll hit the riders (and Sky's exhausted climbers) with a 260 km lumpy stage. All of these long stages include a significant hill in the final 20 kms too, so as to discourage the sprinters trains. So an ambush here is clearly a possibility (particularly if we have seven man teams).

Then on the Thursday we present the opposite kind of opportunity for an ambush. A 120 km course over medium mountain terrain, hopefully like Formigal (although of course the general terrain of France may not allow this), or if not exactly that hilly, something fairly close to it.

Then we have an easy stage on the Friday. So that riders feel like they can ride hard on the Thursday, and still recuperate in time for Saturday's race of truth.

 

[StryderHells]

Re:

yes ofc its criminal

TdF at least should have 100km of flat ITT

what's the problem if Froome wins 8 TdF's ? he's the best GT rider by far. let his palmares reflect that.

Total domination is not good for business unless the rider is sympathetic and marketable, Froome doesn't fit that description

 

[freddybobs]

Re: Re:

yes ofc its criminal

TdF at least should have 100km of flat ITT

what's the problem if Froome wins 8 TdF's ? he's the best GT rider by far. let his palmares reflect that.

Total domination is not good for business unless the rider is sympathetic and marketable, Froome doesn't fit that description

So we should distort races in favour of someone that can sell shampoo?

 

[hrotha]

It's OK to try to handicap someone who dominates, but within reason. Making gimmicky routes for one-trick ponies creates more problems (and more serious ones) than it fixes.

 

[Vino attacks everyone]

2 tts making it to around 100km
3-4 mtf
3-4 mountainstages that doesn't finish on top of a mountain
atleast 5 hilly stages that on a rainy day can create carnage
a few transition/sprinting stages are fine (preferably with a toughish finish suited for Sagan, Kristoff etc. on a couple of them)

The winner of the gc should win at least one of the mtf stages, top 5 in one of the tts and win the most agressive rider of the day on one of the hilly stages. I you don't fit into all of these criterias you'll get a 10 minute penalty

 

[This Charming Man]

The format needs to be changed, more, and longer TTs, no race radios, more varied terrain, smaller teams, including non world team in letour, safer courses, for sure for sure.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Re: Re:

yes ofc its criminal

TdF at least should have 100km of flat ITT

what's the problem if Froome wins 8 TdF's ? he's the best GT rider by far. let his palmares reflect that.

Total domination is not good for business unless the rider is sympathetic and marketable, Froome doesn't fit that description

So we should distort races in favour of someone that can sell shampoo?

It shouldn't happen, but it absolutely does. Look at the number of flat stages that emerged in the Giro when Cipo and Ale-Jet were at their peak. If somebody winning races is marketable, you will see race organizers try to capitalize on that to maximize the attention given to their race and to maximize their race's appeal to those stars, so that those stars show up. If somebody winning races is not marketable, their continued dominance of your race turns people away from it, so you want to modify the race so that, even if that unmarketable star is still winning, it is at least a close contest so that fans will continue to watch in the hope that that unmarketable star can be toppled. It's like a wrestling promotion: you need the bad guy to be strong enough that people want to see them beaten, but to have enough of a weakness that people buy into the challenger, believes they have a chance, and will want to see the two of them fight. If they don't believe the challenger has a chance, they won't part with their money to see it.

In fact, so much of it is built around the same principles. With the Lance-friendly 2009 route, because the organizers had no idea what Lance's shape would be like, they wanted him - because of the spike in viewers that would come with his being in contention - to remain a viable threat for as long as possible, hence producing a route intended to keep him up near the forefront as long as possible (as it was, they needn't have worried as he was pretty strong anyway). If Lance's level wasn't strong enough to contend, they didn't want to expose that early in the race and risk alienating that part of the fanbase that only cared about Armstrong.

Similarly, the 2012 Vuelta was another experiment in tailoring. Who are the biggest names in Spanish cycling at present, they said... the answer was, of course, Rodríguez and Valverde (Contador's status was unclear at the time of unveiling the route). The Vuelta had suffered a bit in 2011 from several key riders missing their peaks, and they'd found the fans were most interested in mountaintops and hilly finishes, well suited to the best Spanish riders at the time - so improved likelihood of home success and improved audience figures, for Unipublic it was a win-win.

It's something that's happened for many, many years. And it's not confined to the GTs either, of course. Remember the farce that was the 2009 Tour de Suisse, a course designed almost entirely with Cancellara winning in mind? Or the disappearance for several years of time trials from the Volta a Catalunya, coinciding with the peak years of a Catalan rider at the forefront of the sport whose time trial classified as a toxic weapon? Or the way that the Bayern Rundfahrt for several years avoided all of the interesting terrain in the region in favour of a route that benefited the strongest time triallists, many of which were German?

 

[DBotero]

100 km TT should be mandatory in every TDF.I don't think they actually making anti-Froome routes,more likely they try to make them as friendly as possible for the French riders.

 

[Bolder]

Sprint stages are just dull. If the organizers want to throw a bone to the sprinters, why not just to 10 x 10 km circuits instead of 150k flat k, where the only suspense is when the break will get reeled in?

My ideal GT favors a Sagan-type rider -- basically a classics man with a kick. MTFs are great, but c'mon, why favor climbers every time? I'd like to see one of the GTs try some experiments: circuits, as above; 2-hour climbing stages; or 2 stages in a day, one being a short ITT, the second ending with a climb? What about starting the TDF in Alps?

 

[jsem94]

Fantastic point from LS. The organizers cater the races according to the circumstances. If we had an Indurain nowadays, the Vuelta would have 100km of ITT, but that's not the type of riders Spain have been producing lately. The Tour have done away with a lot of ITT kms, in part to give the French riders Bardet and Pinot a better chance at a good placing.

I don't agree with this. If a rider is just dominant then so be it. Reducing TT kms to the current level is just ridiculous, even if more kms would mean a greater advantage for Froome.

 

[gregrowlerson]

Re: Re:

They don't call it the race of truth for nothing, but fashions change.

Ten years from now us believers will be saying, "The truth is out there", whilst "Government denies the existence of time trials"

:lol: The way it's going that might be an accurate prediction of the future.

Joking aside, balance is the key. The problem at the moment is GT routes have moved to much to the side of favoring climbers. I don't think there is any argument about that. A move back to the center is needed. Why can't riders like Dumoulin and Dennis, high class against the clock, decent ability climbing, be contenders at GT level.

The issue of course is Froome. There is a fear, no doubt, that by making routes balanced Froome will suddenly become unbeatable. I understand this, but you don't change sport because of one person. Froome won't be around for ever.

Let's get back to proper GT racing with the proper amount of TT kms.

Mulder: Scully, I have seen one.
Scully: Seen what Mulder?
Mulder: A time trialler.

In their skin tight costumes they do look a little extraterrestrial

I agree with you. Normal (around 100 kms) amount of ITT in an average GT; Froome might not even be on this same level next season. Besides, it's up to the others to raise their games and try to be more competitive against the clock.

 

[Jan the Man]

The reduction in TT kms these days is ridiculous. It is the consistent reducing which gets me. The odd mountain stacked GT or TT stacked GT is possibly acceptable but the relentless obsession with MTF which gets me.

An ideal GT, particularly Le Tour should in my view have the following-

a) 1st week containing, Prologue - under 7km 4 sprinter stages, 3 stages hilly stages for the puncheur or classic specialist, relatively shallow summit finish and prior to the first rest day and serious mountains a flat TT of 30-40km.
b) 2nd week should have, 4 mountain stages (2 at the start of week and 2 over weekend (2 of which are mountain top finishes, 3 descent finishes with mountains placed in such locations to make the finishes interesting, 1/2 transition stages for breakaways, 1/2 flat stage for sprinters)
c) 3rd week should have 3 mountain stages (1/2 MTF 1/2 descent finishes), 1 long lumpy TT (45-55km) 1 transition/sprint stage, 1 ceremonial sprint stage.

 

[gregrowlerson]

This is an encouraging article.

http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/dumoulin-im-targeting-a-grand-tour-in-2017/

Let's hope that Le Tour gives Tom 100 kms of flat ITT next year!

I think that's his main chance, as you can't rely on La Vuelta to include more than 50 kms, and the Giro probably won't have more than 80 kms, and will have three or four mountain stages that might be harder than the Tours Queen stage.

And Froome is considering the Giro; so that's good news for Tom....and Alberto

 

[avanti]

The problem with longer ITTs is that they tie up long lengths of road for a long period of time which is not acceptable to local governments (and other road users). Longer ITTs also require more team cars to support riders.

But I do agree that longer ITTs would nice.

 

[Finn84]

Would it help if they had start and finish in the same location? Like Cholet 2008 or Grenoble 2011.

Generally, the variety from year to year in ITTs is fine. 2012 was very TT based but it was really made worse due to relatively easy MTFs. Other editions of this century having about same amount of TTing (2006, 2007) plus Armstrong years which included TTT had better MTFs.

 

[Pippo_San]

Re:

of course it's criminal. any grand tour should have around 100 km of ITT. it's horrible.

The discussion ends here. 100+ km of ITTs. And tricky descents. And a few cobbles here and there. And coastal stages.

Can't TT for the life of yourself. No GTs for ya.
Can't do cobbles. No GTs for ya.
Can't suffer the wind. No GTs for ya.
Can't sustain fast tricky descents. No GTs for ya.

 

[42x16ss]

Re:

Sprint stages are just dull. If the organizers want to throw a bone to the sprinters, why not just to 10 x 10 km circuits instead of 150k flat k, where the only suspense is when the break will get reeled in?

My ideal GT favors a Sagan-type rider -- basically a classics man with a kick. MTFs are great, but c'mon, why favor climbers every time? I'd like to see one of the GTs try some experiments: circuits, as above; 2-hour climbing stages; or 2 stages in a day, one being a short ITT, the second ending with a climb? What about starting the TDF in Alps?

I wouldn't quite go that far, but I would like to see riders who have a serious chance of winning Liege and Lombardia being able to win (or at least truly contend) a GT - someone like 2011 vintage Gilbert or Michele Bartoli at his peak. You would have to be very careful with a route like that though, as riders like Tony Martin, Cancellara, Dumoulin, Dennis, Castroviejo etc could completely suck the life out of the race through TTs.

 

[spiritualride]

To take a few steps back in the discussion... why do grand tours have time trials? Or have just one really long ITT instead of spacing them out to take up 3-4 stages?

Why not have a grand tour without time trials and without high mountaintop finishes?

There could be some 250-300km classics type and flat stages mixed with short hilly stages, maybe cat 3 or cat4 hilltop finish or two, maybe one long 'queen stage' of high mountains that ends after descent... ?? And 1-3 high mountain stages that are 150km or less and end after a descent. A cat2 or even a cat1 MTF might work if it's preceded by a really hard HC climb.

MTFs and ITTs at the TDF turn into simply watt/kg and watt/cda number-crunching lab-specimen tests, as long as there are 9 man teams + power meters + radios. A MTF or ITT today is worlds apart from what riders would experience in the 80s and earlier. It's racing, but it's not "real racing" in the way that I personally feel bike racing should be. And they're simply really boring for the most part. The worst combination is a mountain time trial... doesn't make any sense to me because it's a day wasted as a time trial while not even giving the big engines a chance.

There are ways to give chances to big engines without ITTs.

There are ways to design races so that there is action before the last 20 minutes of the stage. I'm not seeing much of this at the grand tours.

 

[JRanton]

I agree with the OP. Grand Tours should be about finding the most complete rider (with plenty of mountains, flat TT metres and exposed roads/some cobbles too). The reality is that the race organisers, and particularly ASO, want their races to be competitive until the final few days. It's almost as if we should be grateful for the roughly 30km of flat time trialling in this year's Tour and Vuelta. The Giro wasn't much better with about 45km of flat TT.

On what should be a normal grand tour route with 80-100km of flat time trialling, Froome vs Quintana is a complete mismatch. I dread to think how little there will be in 2017. Remember in 2015 there was just 13.8km of flat ITT and even then Quintana was only just able to make things interesting on the final day in the mountains. With the proper amount of time trialling it would be embarrassing for the tiny Colombian.

 

[JRanton]

Re:

Yeah...Put 100km of TT and Froome will win the triple every year. When a rider like him is so much better than the rest, and has such a strong team, at least the parcours should favour his rivals.

What's wrong with Froome winning (more realistically) the double every year? You don't handicap the best grand tour cyclist just so the other lesser riders have a chance of winning. It's ridiculous.

 

[Durden93]

Re: Re:

Yeah...Put 100km of TT and Froome will win the triple every year. When a rider like him is so much better than the rest, and has such a strong team, at least the parcours should favour his rivals.

What's wrong with Froome winning (more realistically) the double every year? You don't handicap the best grand tour cyclist just so the other lesser riders have a chance of winning. It's ridiculous.

It ruins offensive cycling. Give Froome 100km of ITTs and he gets 4 minutes in the bank. Look at Froome's TDF history from 2012 onwards and tell me how many riders were able to take 4 minutes out of him in the mountains?