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More races gone?

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TMP402

TMP402

Mar 13, 2015
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Noticed on the UCI calendar that two Italian races from last year, the GP Industria & Artigianato di Larciano and the Giro di Toscana have both disappeared this year.

Coincidentally both were won by OGE riders, with Adam Yates winning the former and Pieter Weening the latter.

What other races have people noticed as having disappeared since last year?
 
E

Echoes

Oct 8, 2009
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Most interesting (though sad) thread on CN since 2010, I think. Thanks TMP. ;)

So this year the Six-Days of Grenoble, the Mediterranean Tour, the Giro di Lazio (which I can't call Roma Maxima, it's beyond my strength), the Lillers GP, the Camaiore GP (saddest news for me), the Chateauroux Classic, the Templeuve race (1.2 cat, Top Competition) disappeared.

The Tour of Appennino (spelling probably wrong) was saved at the last minute by the Ligurian region, I think.


These races have disappeared since the start of the century [Edit: rather since 2000]:

In Spain:
Code: 
Trofeo Manacor (2005)
Trofeo Soller (2008) 
Trofeo Magalluf (2011)
(Edit: Those three are part of the Mallorca Challenge that simply changed locations; thanks Libertine Seguros)

Trofeo Luis Puig (2005)
Volta a la Comunitat Valenciana (2008)
Setmana Catalana (2005)
Vuelta a Aragon (2005)
Clasica a Alcobendas (2008)
Vuelta a Asturias (2013)
Circuito Montanes (2010)
Euskal Bizikleta (2008)
Subida Urkiola (2009)
Vuelta a Galicia (2000)
GP Llodio (2011)
Clasica Ciclista a los Puertos (2008)
Trofeo Luis Ocana (2000)
Subida al Naranco (2010)

In France:

Classic Haribo (2006)
GP de la Ville de Rennes (2008)
Circuit de Lorraine / des Mines (2012)
Trophée des Grimpeurs – Polymultipliée (2009)
GP du Midi Libre (2002)
GP de Villers Cotterêts (2006)
Classique des Alpes (2004)
Mi-Août Bretonne (2012)
GP des Nations (2004)

In Italy:

Trofeo Pantalica (2003)
Giro di Siracusa (2002)
Settimana Lombarda (2013)
Giro d’Abruzzo (2007)
Coppa delle Nazioni (2002)
Giro d’Oro (2008)
GP Industria e Commercio Artigianato Carnaghese (2012)
Trofeo Matteotti (2013) [revived this year, though]
Trofeo dello Scalatore (2001)
Giro del Veneto (2012)
Giro del Friuli (2011)
Trofeo Melinda (2012)
Coppa Placci (2008)
Criterium d’Abruzzo (2004)
Giro della Provincia di Lucca (2006)
Giro del Piemonte (2012)
GP d’Europa (2000)

In Switzerland:

GP Chiasso (2007)
Giro del Lago Maggiore (2006)
TOUR du Lac Leman (2002)
GP Winterthur (2002)
Schynberg Rundfahrt (2003)
Wartenberg Rundfahrt (2001)
Joseph Vögeli Memorial (2001)
Meisterschaft von Zürich (2006)
Giro del Mendrisiotto (2009)
À Travers Lausanne (2001)

Races have been created but not as many as were scrapped, I guess, certainly not in those countries. It's a tragedy and I'm not sure many CNF posters really care...
 
Libertine Seguros

Libertine Seguros

Feb 20, 2010
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Asturias is back this year. Echoes also left out the (not at all sadly missed) Giro di Padania. Including the Challenge Mallorca races is a bit of a misnomer because they change the locations of some of them, and the number has risen and fallen. Volta a Galiza continues as an amateur race.

Also, what about all the German races that went bye-bye after the Telekom fallout? Hessen/3-Länder Tour, Niedersachsen, Rund um die Braunkohle, Rund um Berlin, Sachsen Rundfahrt and so on. Also a few US tours have gone the way of the dodo following the loss of the initial interest due to the Lance effect - Georgia and Missouri most notably, though they are replaced by Colorado, Utah and California, all of which are better than the execrable race that was the Tour of Missouri anyway. Portugal has lost all of its short stage races except Algarve, the Trofeu Joaquim Agostinho and the Volta ao Alentejo.

There's also a great many women's races which we've lost, from the high profile (Tour de l'Aude, and the Grande Boucle Féminin, one of two races that fought over the role as the women's TDF along with the Route de France, resulting in both of them being weakened... women's Amstel Gold was another frustrating loss, as well as the women's Canadian races being cancelled as soon as the money to run the GP Montréal and GP Quebec was there) to some pretty small events.

Echoes also didn't mention the most important of all the races that's disappeared in the 21st century, the Peace Race. This was legitimately one of the biggest bike races in the world in its heyday, and a major focus of the sporting calendar in the Eastern bloc. It dwindled in importance throughout the 90s and especially after going professional (it had historically been the biggest amateur race in the world, due to restrictions on pro sport in the Communist countries, and was often used as a stepping stone for talented westerners with many GT and Classics names entering through the 60s, 70s and 80s during their development) before dying once and for all in 2006.
 
E

Echoes

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You're right, Libertine. Asturias is back this year and the list is restricted to these 4 countries. It's not my own list, I copypasted it from another forum, slightly edited it though but couldn't find the time to add all the German races that had gone.

I thought that the Peace Race was only cancelled in 2014?

Among the German disappeared races we may add the national tour itself and two races that I particularly like: the Breitling GP and the LuK Cup/Challenge. Both were TT's, individual or raced by pairs depending on the years. The GP Eddy Merckx is the biggest Belgian loss in the century and also was an ITT that evolved into a TT by pairs. But all in all Belgium has rather kept its races. The national tour has even been revived. :)

But I was wondering which TT was left outside of stage races: Worlds, Herbiers and ??
Firenze-Pistoia has gone too (should be added to the list of disappeared Italian races).

I find it such a disaster that all those Italian semis are now gone. Many of them had been created in the twenties or thirties... :(


PS: In order to respond to Libertine, I had to excavate this thread from page 2. That's a reply to Zam (the guy who thought we all laughed at Basso knowing he was sick. :D)
 
TMP402

TMP402

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I wonder if there's a way of crowdsourcing funding for these races. I would happily pay an amount towards keeping Chrono des Nations or reviving GP Eddy Merckx. Have negligible prize money and find a location that doesn't require shutting a load of public roads, and I think you could stand a good chance of raising enough money to break even.
 
TMP402

TMP402

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Echoes said:
You're right, Libertine. Asturias is back this year and the list is restricted to these 4 countries. It's not my own list, I copypasted it from another forum, slightly edited it though but couldn't find the time to add all the German races that had gone.

I thought that the Peace Race was only cancelled in 2014?

Among the German disappeared races we may add the national tour itself and two races that I particularly like: the Breitling GP and the LuK Cup/Challenge. Both were TT's, individual or raced by pairs depending on the years. The GP Eddy Merckx is the biggest Belgian loss in the century and also was an ITT that evolved into a TT by pairs. But all in all Belgium has rather kept its races. The national tour has even been revived. :)

But I was wondering which TT was left outside of stage races: Worlds, Herbiers and ??
Firenze-Pistoia has gone too (should be added to the list of disappeared Italian races).

I find it such a disaster that all those Italian semis are now gone. Many of them had been created in the twenties or thirties... :(


PS: In order to respond to Libertine, I had to excavate this thread from page 2. That's a reply to Zam (the guy who thought we all laughed at Basso knowing he was sick. :D)
Click to expand...

Echoes, could you please post a link to your list?

As for Firenze–Pistoia, it was first run in 1870! Which reminds me, I'd also be very happy to pay to see Bordeaux–Paris as a pro event again. At 560km, I guess it would be the ultimate slugging match between Kristoff and Degenkolb.
 
E

Echoes

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It's from velo-club.net in French. Most of the info that I gave come from that same thread too. These French are quite informative, methinks.

Yes, there was a first edition of Firenze-Pistoia in 1870 but it remained a single edition until it was revived in the eighties by Loretto Petrucci, dual Milan-Sanremo winner in the fifties and former Rai co-commentator (if I'm not mistaken), who is native of Pistoia. He was nicknamed the Miller of Pistoia, I think. The 1870 winner was an American - Rynner Van Este or sth? - who was the son of a diplomat at the American consulate in Tuscany.

Firenze-Pistoia was an end of season ITT. I remember it from 2004. At that time, Cunego & Bettini were battling out for World #1 spot at the UCI ranking (good old pre-Pro Tour era). Cunego had just won Lombardy but had to defend Japan Cup title while Bettini announced a last minute participation at Firenze-Pistoia for World #1 rank. But at the end of the day, Bettini eventually recalled his decision and Cunego came 2nd at the Japan Cup, enough for World #1. :p

I've already discussed these old endurance races with Maarten: Bordeaux-Paris & Paris-Brest-Paris but when you see how the two ended, you understand it's wishful thinking to revive them. For Paris-Brest-Paris, there was traffic problems, I think. Bordeaux-Paris in the seventies & eighties became ridiculous in terms of participation. It was getting too hard to prepare. The calendar was heavier & heavier and that race needs at least a month to focus on specifically. It was a race of another age. Willy Voet referred to it several time in his book (won't get into details because it's against the rules but you understand).

However Paris-Brest-Paris still exists as a cycloctourist race and as an audax race. :)
 
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Derrick

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When I was racing, and I realize it's a long time ago, there were 228 days of pro. racing per year in Belgium alone without the tours, the national champs, and the classics.
 
Libertine Seguros

Libertine Seguros

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Echoes said:
I thought that the Peace Race was only cancelled in 2014?
Click to expand...
Nope, the Course de la Paix U23 continues to run to this day, but now only in the Czech Republic as they have the rights to the name. Therefore there is no opportunity for Peace Race classics like the Teufelstein, Karpacz or the Steiler Wand.

The full race disappeared in 2005, was resurrected in 2006, then hasn't been organized since. There have been a couple of attempts to revive it, most recently by Czech politician and former cyclist Jozef Regec, who raced the former race and in early 2014 tried to organize a new, 5-6 day revamp of the race at the 2.2 level with the idea of developing along the lines of former open-amateur events from the 70s and 80s that the Soviet, DDR, Poland and Czechoslovak teams used to enter alongside some decent pros. This was eventually abandoned in favour of four one-day races over the course of a week, one each in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland and Hungary (to save on travel and costs, Hungary subbed in for the former DDR although it never hosted the Peace Race); this year the same series of races took place over two weekends.

Regec has said the ultimate aim is to bring back a form of Peace Race, but at the moment anything like the scale of the original is unworkable. And in fairness, the real Peace Race was damaged irreparably by the introduction of professionals and trade teams in the late 90s; it no longer had the same feel as it previously had. If they were to resurrect it (I have a very long piece I've written about the viability of restoring the race, the romanticism of it and the difficulties in finding a place for it in modern cycling, but I decided against posting it as nobody wants to read thousands of words of my rambling about a race that most fans who've come to the sport since its ignominious demise would barely even know), it would have the issue of either being an anomalous pro race, or being a bit like the GiroBio due to a less closed age restriction than, say, Aosta or Avenir; if they're really lucky they could make a less strong Tour de l'Avenir from the pre-U23 days (open, mostly young stars, national teams).

They're trying, and I desperately want them to succeed, but it isn't likely to quite meet what I hope for because what I hope for is simply unachievable in cycling today.

If some people want to take that last bit out of context to call me out a few times in the future, then by all means do. I'm aware I can be overly idealist. I dream of a world where course design is strong, riders make the race and events are harder to control, women's cycling gets good quality support and billing, pure sprinters win rarely and Peter Sagan even less.
 
Zam_Olyas

Zam_Olyas

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Echoes said:
You're right, Libertine. Asturias is back this year and the list is restricted to these 4 countries. It's not my own list, I copypasted it from another forum, slightly edited it though but couldn't find the time to add all the German races that had gone.

I thought that the Peace Race was only cancelled in 2014?

Among the German disappeared races we may add the national tour itself and two races that I particularly like: the Breitling GP and the LuK Cup/Challenge. Both were TT's, individual or raced by pairs depending on the years. The GP Eddy Merckx is the biggest Belgian loss in the century and also was an ITT that evolved into a TT by pairs. But all in all Belgium has rather kept its races. The national tour has even been revived. :)

But I was wondering which TT was left outside of stage races: Worlds, Herbiers and ??
Firenze-Pistoia has gone too (should be added to the list of disappeared Italian races).

I find it such a disaster that all those Italian semis are now gone. Many of them had been created in the twenties or thirties... :(


PS: In order to respond to Libertine, I had to excavate this thread from page 2. That's a reply to Zam (the guy who thought we all laughed at Basso knowing he was sick. :D)
Click to expand...
I got you there about Basso.
 
M

Max Rockatansky

Jun 16, 2015
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Echoes said:
Most interesting (though sad) thread on CN since 2010, I think. Thanks TMP. ;)

So this year the Six-Days of Grenoble, the Mediterranean Tour, the Giro di Lazio (which I can't call Roma Maxima, it's beyond my strength), the Lillers GP, the Camaiore GP (saddest news for me), the Chateauroux Classic, the Templeuve race (1.2 cat, Top Competition) disappeared.

The Tour of Appennino (spelling probably wrong) was saved at the last minute by the Ligurian region, I think.


These races have disappeared since the start of the century [Edit: rather since 2000]:

In Spain:
Code: 
Trofeo Manacor (2005)
Trofeo Soller (2008) 
Trofeo Magalluf (2011)
(Edit: Those three are part of the Mallorca Challenge that simply changed locations; thanks Libertine Seguros)

Trofeo Luis Puig (2005)
Volta a la Comunitat Valenciana (2008)
Setmana Catalana (2005)
Vuelta a Aragon (2005)
Clasica a Alcobendas (2008)
Vuelta a Asturias (2013)
Circuito Montanes (2010)
Euskal Bizikleta (2008)
Subida Urkiola (2009)
Vuelta a Galicia (2000)
GP Llodio (2011)
Clasica Ciclista a los Puertos (2008)
Trofeo Luis Ocana (2000)
Subida al Naranco (2010)

In France:

Classic Haribo (2006)
GP de la Ville de Rennes (2008)
Circuit de Lorraine / des Mines (2012)
Trophée des Grimpeurs – Polymultipliée (2009)
GP du Midi Libre (2002)
GP de Villers Cotterêts (2006)
Classique des Alpes (2004)
Mi-Août Bretonne (2012)
GP des Nations (2004)

In Italy:

Trofeo Pantalica (2003)
Giro di Siracusa (2002)
Settimana Lombarda (2013)
Giro d’Abruzzo (2007)
Coppa delle Nazioni (2002)
Giro d’Oro (2008)
GP Industria e Commercio Artigianato Carnaghese (2012)
Trofeo Matteotti (2013) [revived this year, though]
Trofeo dello Scalatore (2001)
Giro del Veneto (2012)
Giro del Friuli (2011)
Trofeo Melinda (2012)
Coppa Placci (2008)
Criterium d’Abruzzo (2004)
Giro della Provincia di Lucca (2006)
Giro del Piemonte (2012)
GP d’Europa (2000)

In Switzerland:

GP Chiasso (2007)
Giro del Lago Maggiore (2006)
TOUR du Lac Leman (2002)
GP Winterthur (2002)
Schynberg Rundfahrt (2003)
Wartenberg Rundfahrt (2001)
Joseph Vögeli Memorial (2001)
Meisterschaft von Zürich (2006)
Giro del Mendrisiotto (2009)
À Travers Lausanne (2001)

Races have been created but not as many as were scrapped, I guess, certainly not in those countries. It's a tragedy and I'm not sure many CNF posters really care...
Click to expand...

Portugal...

GP CTT Correios de Portugal (2009)
GP CCRLVT (2001)
GP do Minho (2002)
GP Jornal de Noticias (2001)
GP Mitsubishi (2004)
GP Portugal Telecom (2005)
Clássica Porto-Lisboa (2004)
Volta ao Distrito de Santarem (2008)
Grand Prix du Portugal (2011)
GP Paredes Rota dos Moveis (2009)

Germany...

Deutschland-Tour (2008)
Hessen-Rundfahrt (2007)
Rheinland-Pfalz Rundfahrt (2007)
Regio-Tour (2008)
LUK-Cup Bühl (2003)
Sachsen Tour (2009)
Rund um Düren (2010)
Niedersachsen-Rundfahrt (2007)
Rund um die Nürnberger Altstadt (2009)
Rund um den Sachsenring (2007)
Sparkassen Giro - Bochum (2011)
Mainfranken-Tour (2010)
GP Schwarzwald (2009)
Thüringen Rundfahrt (2013)
 
Carols

Carols

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Re:

TMP402 said:
And also I just want to note my general annoyance at the San Francisco Grand Prix not existing any more. We've had enough millionaire cycling fans starting teams - if I was a millionaire cycling fan, I'd start/restart races.
Click to expand...

Yeah that was a good one, I miss it.

Another USA race that most likely no one misses except me and my friends was a grand little crit in Trenton NJ. I met many big international stars there because it was a warm up for the Philadelphia Classic when it drew big teams. Now Trenton is long Gone and Philly is a pale shadow of its former glory :(. Another race close enough for me that drew great riders like LeMond, Fignon, Bugno etc. was the Tour DuPont but that and the Tour of Georgia are long gone. There isn't a decent pro race on the entire east coast of the USA now :(
 
TMP402

TMP402

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I don't know if we need a new thread for this season but either way I'm glad to note that two of the races held today, the 1.2 Grand Prix de la Ville de Lillers and the 1.1 GP Industria & Artigianato di Larciano were not held last year. Two races back on the calendar!
 
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