So, not content with missing the initial deadline due to going out, and then wasting most of the extended deadline I was given tweaking a later race in the series and watching a bunch of cute otter videos on Youtube, I will belatedly join the competition.
I sense there’s a chance I might have got the wrong end of the stick on this one, as I have approached it from what looks like a completely different angle from Devil’s Elbow and Lemon Cheese Cake. To an extent, this is my own fault, as if there’s one thing that I do like to pay homage to in course design, it is racing tradition and heritage. And one problem is that, within the constraints of the competition, a major problem is that I actually kinda like the late season classics, and didn’t want to alienate, devalue or hurt too many traditional races, and as a result my classics series is much more geographically limited, dealing with traditional racing locations and encompassing a bit of logistical simplification in order to try to entice more riders to enter a wider array of these races; I’m sure the fact that other than the pretty specialised Roubaix being a somewhat different challenge, the close proximity of both geographic location and calendar location helps establish the fields for the spring classics - especially with the increase in prestige of Brabantse Pijl meaning that it almost forms a kind of bridge between the northern Classics and the Ardennes (and means that the races kind of get hillier on a sliding scale, through Brabantse Pijl to Amstel Gold and then onto the Ardennes proper even if AGR has been considered part of ‘Ardennes week’ for many years).
A major consideration for me was that this racing will be taking place
after the World Championships Road Races. It is a key part of end-of-season tradition to see the new rainbow jersey parading said jersey for the first time, and so I wanted to make sure there was a race that would justify the new rainbow jersey being prominent no matter what the World Championships Road Race parcours was - I didn’t want a situation where the jersey winner’s parading of their new threads was purely for the sake of showing it off, like seeing Thor Hushovd riding in Lombardia in 2010. For several years we had the rainbow jersey calling their season to an end after the Worlds unless they are a Valverde or an Alaphilippe who can be competitive at Lombardia, which has helped contribute to the relatively low esteem of other late season classics; in three years as World Champion, the only race Peter Sagan did after winning the rainbow stripes was the Tour of Abu Dhabi in 2015, hardly a prestigious classic of the kind befitting of a debut in the stripes, especially for a rider who could indeed be a genuine victory candidate at many of the late season classics (of course, for a rider of his
personality, the Tour of Abu Dhabi does seem more Sagan’s cup of tea, if not his skillset as a rider).
Another factor I had in mind was the increased homologation of the men’s and women’s calendars, as well, so I constructed races where a women’s race can be incorporated into the proceedings as well with the minimum of logistical adjustment or alteration.
As a result I fear I may be a little left behind at least at first, as I’m leading off with probably the least inventive of any of my races.
Race 1: Paris-Tours
Men: 214km
Women: 165km
When Olav set the rules for the competition, one key point was for only one race to feature cobbles, and the rest needed to focus around other elements of the sport and major elements of classics such as hills, sterrato and sprints. And while I do consider sprinters to be a kind of lesser species, they are nevertheless a major part of the classics season; there are many races like Kuurne-Bruxelles-Kuurne, the Koksijde one-day race and of course the Official Worst Race In The World© which are frequently contested by sprinters, as well as other World Tour races outside of the main classics season such as Hamburg Cyclassics. There is Milan-San Remo which is considered the monument that sprinters can win - although many a rider conventionally renowned as a sprinter has also won the Ronde or Roubaix as well, such as Kristoff and Degenkolb, plus of course there are classics specialists and all-rounders who mix it in the bunch gallops too, like Boonen, Sagan or, latterly, van Aert.
In the late season, traditionally the biggest one-day classic in northern/northwestern Europe at the end of the season has been Paris-Tours. I felt it would be absolutely sacrilegious to not include Paris-Tours within the five races, simply because of its history and prestige over the years even if its distance and standing has been eroded in recent times. After all, this is a race which dates back to the 19th Century, has well over 100 editions and has run continuously since 1941 - yes, it has only missed three editions even during two World Wars. Its list of winners is elite beyond elite, including the likes of Lucien Petit-Bréton, François Faber, Philippe Thys, Octave Lapize, Henri and Francis Pélissier, Briek Schotte, Rik van Looy, Herman van Springel, Guido Reybroeck, Francesco Moser, Freddy Maertens, Sean Kelly, Joop Zoetemelk, Phil Anderson, Adri van Der Poel, Johan Museeuw, Erik Zabel, Philippe Gilbert, Óscar Freire and Greg van Avermaet. Truly, everybody who’s anybody in the Classics has won Paris-Tours.
Well, of course, with one notable exception, and that’s kind of the reason that Paris-Tours’ status needs protecting. It can’t be
The Only Classic Eddy Merckx Never Won if it ceases to have the status of a Classic. In fact, 1972 winner Noël Vantyghem was quoted as saying (paraphrasing here), “between me and Merckx, we won every Classic on the calendar. I won Paris-Tours, he won everything else”. Other iconic stories of the race include Francis Pélissier winning the race riding on his rim because he punctured and, in snowy conditions his hands were so cold he had to use his teeth to rip the tyre off the rim.
Eddy laments yet another failure at Paris-Tours, this time in 1973
While the race has changed many a time, including inverting the route, the biggest change had been the removal of the traditional stage finish on the Avenue de Grammont, a 2,7km drag race that frequently resulted in a bunch sprint being contested. Much like other “sprinters’ classics” like San Remo, the race historically would have a wide range of outcomes but as cycling became more professionalised and the péloton became deeper, the sprint outcome became more and more common until it was the norm and, much like San Remo, hills were added to the run-in to try to incentivise broken up racing. Occasionally a solo attack or small group might outfox the bunch, and noted baroudeurs like Jacky Durand did so, as did, memorably, post-suspension Richard Virenque in one of the most unlikely Paris-Tours winners of all time, but more often than not, that run-in meant that a sprint would ensue.
Óscar Freire wins the last ever Paris-Tours on the traditional finish
In 2010, however, a new tramline was approved for construction on the Avenue de Grammont, and so the race route was changed as they could now only use the final 300m on the traditional finishing road. This resulted in the inclusion of a few small côtes and ramps on the southern side of the city, and moved some of those climbs nearer to the finish than the traditional route had been. The first few editions were far more suited to baroudeurs and resulted in wins from small groups, although 2013 and 2016 saw field sprints. In recent years, the race has then tried to vary things up even more by including gravel roads from 2018 onwards, a decision which did not please everybody but has certainly given the race some impetus in varying its outcomes and pushing the sprinters way down the list of likely winners - even if recent editions of Paris-Tours have seen riders typically seen as sprinters showing versatility to win from small groups, such as Matteo Trentin and Arnaud Démare. The problem was that some of these sectors were well maintained and, though gravel with grass centrelines, were akin to what we see in Tro Bro Léon and similar, while others were barely tracks at all, and many team managers criticised it as having nothing to do with road cycling, and likely a sop to the popular but potentially faddish gravel scene.
Paris-Tours 2018
So… with a route which has been varying so significantly in recent times in order to make itself harder, what have I chosen to do with it?
Er… to be honest… make it
easier.
Yes, you read that right. I’ve actually made Paris-Tours easier than the last few editions. You see, while the introduction of
ribinou has certainly toughened up the race and has created some good racing, the real problem is that the race no longer
feels like Paris-Tours; it feels like a kind of late season facsimile of Tro Bro Léon. When considering the Classics, one of the key things I was looking for in choosing and designing these races was
identity. If you look at the recent additions to the calendar that have been most successful, these have largely been situations where the race has something which gives it its own bespoke identity, whereas some of the mockery thrown in the direction of races like the Tour of California was the way they tried to sell the race by using the identity of another more famous race, rather than letting it be its own race. And while I appreciated the attempt to shake Paris-Tours up, Paris-Tours
should be a race that the sprinters can contest. Not always, and not inevitably, but they should feel like they’re in with a chance, which 12,5km of dirt roads in the last 65km felt like it took away. That’s not to say that I have removed these entirely, however - it’s good for variety and I don’t have an all-out sterrato race in my quintet - but I have scaled things back to mean that the sprinters’ teams
can potentially think they can be decisive - however they will have to earn it in two ways:
1) the sprinter themselves has a bunch of obstacles in the last quarter of the race that they have to get over; and 2) the surviving domestiques will need to commit hard to bring back attackers meaning that controlling the latter stages could be tougher. That’s the thinking, at least.
Various cities have played host to the start of Paris-Tours over the year, but the most common, at least since the Paris-X races ceased to actually use central Paris as a départ, has been Chartres, so I used this as my choice of start town. The town of Brou has also been used as a common start town as well, and appears at just under 50km down the line, so I decided to use this as the start town for the women’s race - for the women’s péloton this will be a long race on their calendar, and the rolling terrain with a few côtes in the final part of the day match up well with what we see a lot of on the women’s calendar, so more or less all the big guns should have their reasons to be here, save for those who are specialists in skills like climbing only (so the likes of Rooijakkers, Mavi García and Aalerud rather than the climbing-biased all-rounders like Moolman-Pasio, Niewiadoma and Cecilie Uttrup Ludwig) who will have to wait until later in the week for their part of the day.
For the most part the route meanders through traditional Paris-Tours stopoffs like Bonneval, Brou and Vendôme before getting to the final period of 50km, which includes all of the obstacles. These obstacles are broken up into two groups - those harking to the 2018-21 version of Paris-Tours with its dirt roads and shorter distance; and those harking to the 2010-17 version of Paris-Tours which stuck to tarmac but had some small côtes close to the line.
Obstacles (as the only difference between the men’s and women’s races is the start point, these distances to the line are the same for both):
Côte de Goguenne, 0,7km @ 7,5%, 49,1km from home
Chemin de Vigne du Gros-Pierre (1500m) 47,6km from home
Côte de la Vallée du Vau, 1,0km @ 4,0%, 43,3km from home
Chemin de Vigne de Noizay (600m), 42,7km from home
Chemin de Vigne des Épinettes (1200m), 39km from home
Côte de la Rochère, 0,4km @ 9,8%, 37,8km from home
Chemin de Vigne de Vernou (900m), 36,9km from home
Chemin de Vigne de la Solidarité (1500m), 33,3km from home
Côte de Vouvray, 0,7km @ 4,7%, 29,5km from home
Côte de Rochecorbon, 0,7km @ 5,1%, 25km from home
- Côte du Beau-Soleil, 0,9km @ 3,6%, 10,7km from home
- Côte de l’Épan, 0,5km @ 4,3%, 7,3km from home
Run-in of the majority of the 2010-17 editions, which I have adapted for my race
2019 Paris-Tours run-in, part of which has been utilised by me
You will note that 12 obstacles seems a lot for a race designated as the ‘sprinter’s race’ in my set of classics, but this is a case of quantity over quality in terms of selectivity, as none of these obstacles are especially difficult. The dirt roads have been trimmed down from 12,5km in the current design of the race to a much more palatable 5,7km, and all of them are done over 30km from the finish. Three of the five segments follow directly from climbs, and the longest climb is only a kilometre in length, while only one, the Côte de la Rochère, features gradients that would be considered challenging. The last two climbs have a maximum of 8%, so really this is very much a case where
the time to attack is between 25 and 50km to go, as most of the remaining 25km is going to favour the chasers; the final doublet is only really there for the break to make decisions before the run-in back toward Tours.
I have also chosen to traverse Tours after the Côte de Rochecorbon, heading through Saint-Cyr-sur-Loire and then across the river into Tours, then looping around to the west, meaning I actually take the riders past the base of the Côte de l’Épan before climbing Beau-Soleil, rather than, as the real life race did during the period of using these in the run-in, approaching from the south after looping past Tours, and then heading east to the final climbs. I have also truncated the section that contains the decisive sectors in the current race; looking at the 2019 route, I climb the first climb and take the first Chemin des Vignes, but then cut directly to the base of the Côte de la Vallée de Vau, omitting the second climb and dirt sectors 7 and 8. We then follow the current route through sectors 6 through 3, but then omit a climb and a sector to go straight to the Côte de la Rochère, and then return directly to the road we were on previously, by the banks of the Loire, to cut out the final off-road sector before the Côte de Rochecorbon. We then follow the route of the course into Tours, until crossing the river, where we turn right as the current course does but then do not turn south again, instead continuing on this route to head out to our finale, which ends on the Avenue de Grammont, because
it’s Paris-Tours so it damned well should.
It’s not the most innovative or inventive way to start, I know. But it’s one of the absolute most traditional and sacrosanct races of the end-of-season rush. For better or for worse - I remember talking to a (not WT level) pro that I won’t name who raced in France and Belgium several years ago who told me that a lot of teams prefer Paris-Tours to end up in a sprint because most teams have already locked up their sprinters for the coming years, whereas small groups and more broken-up, typical Classics style racing can result in performances from out of contract riders who can only improve their negotiating position with results in the late season. Even if, of course, some of these can at times be attributed to the Steve Houanard Principle.
But… its placement here also has some consideration given to it. This is the
only one of my five races where the one-dimensional sprinters (well, maybe not the completely one-dimensional ones like, say, Jakub Mareczko, because there’s still obstacles, but the rider known for bunch finishes only) will be to the fore. If we get a Zolder, or a København, or even something like Geelong, and the rainbow jersey is on the shoulders of a sprinter, they can at least be one of the main protagonists for one race here. And also, because those sprinters will have to work hard - and work their
team hard - in order to contest this one, it can hopefully have implications further into the week when it comes to other races as well.
And if the sprinters have to win by being smart and racing classics style? All the better.