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Weird to put Bernal in the list of guys who would absolutely crush him after what happened in TA last year. Bernal is far less superior in 1 week stage races than Pogacar and Roglic. Remco is also just speculation before he really shows it on long climbs on the highest level.
Agreed. Both PN and TA should have HTFs like Mende or similar rather than these cat 1-climbs like Turini and Prati di Tivo. Change the Turini stage with a stage like that, and this would have been pretty close to a perfect PN route. A Stage like the Fayence stage in 2017 would been a good substitute.
Roglic is his teammate so I am not cfactoring him in, Pogacar is not slated to ride Paris-Nice and I think he can arrive at the foot of the Turini with a lead of over a minute on GC vs Bernal. Given he only lost 45 seconds on a very good Pogacar on Prati di Tivo in Tirreno-Adriatico last year I don't see Bernal giving out a heavier beating.
On Cyclingpro yesterday there was an interview of the race director celebrating how good it is having a Turini unipuerto.
What decade gets to represent the “classic” time period? Should we go back to a sprint stage in the end?
And even if they wanted to go with a more climber-friendly race they could always go with a shorter MTF like Mont Faron or a descent finish off a longer climb like the final stage of Tour du Var off Col de la Madone last year. Heck, Turini itself would be fine in the race if it wasn't the MTF.
You don't have to go that much back, until ~15 years ago the MTFs were a rarity in both races. For Paris-Nice let's say the routes could be defined classic until 2007 because even having Mende, Mont Faron or Eze ITT is far from being a climbers friendly route, then they suddenly thrown in Ventoux in 2008, Montagne de Lure in 2009 and 2013 and from 2015 onwards there has always been the big MTF.
Exactly. They can't afford to survive into the future having more winners of the calibre of Freire or Van Avermaet (TA) and Bananito or Soler (PN) without being compared to BinckBank or Poland.
An alternative would be to have the Eze TT back, but as the penultimate stage (with a difficult final stage as has been the norm in the past two decades).
Yeah, but there wasn't the need to have more climbers friendly races whereas they have functioned well for decades as fine tune for classics. Not to mention that in 2010 Catalunya was moved to the actual slot, if climbers needed an extra race in March.
If Van Aert sprints, he takes away bonis from both Roglic and Bernal. If he doesn't sprint he doesn't from either of them. It would only really matter if he can finish in between them, giving Roglic full bonis and pushing Bernal down, which seems risky. Or in case Bernal wasn't going to finish in the bonis anyway.
I agree with this. I never cared for Tirreno. hec I didn't know it was several days. To me it was like some Italian race with some sprinters in it. I only paid attention to Paris-Nice. Well, at least to some extent. Races back then at the beginning of the year were warm up for the GT GC contenders and good preparation for the other classics. As for the Colombians in those races, the dudes would have to live in Europe all year round to be in those races. They were non-existent. With the globalization of the sport so many things have changed. Like they wanted to make it more attractive for everyone. So one of the first things they did was add more mountains. I never would have dreamed of a Quintana type rider winning Tirreno twice. That was basically impossible back in the 80's. I think that both races changed for the better. Now it serves every rider purpose. IMHO.
I was just about to ask where the alt- PN thread is
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