Race Design Challenge

[Libertine Seguros]

Ha, my concern about the 180km average turned out to be a bit over-sold, since my average road stage length is 15km shorter than anybody else (!) then again, I had four tests against the clock as well.

Anyway, here's my library route overview:

Stage 1: Bologna - Bologna San Luca, 2,2km (ITT)

Stage 2: Bologna - Firenze, 212km

Stage 3: Ponte a Ema - Montalcino, 180km

Stage 4: Città della Pieve - Roma, 168km

Stage 5: Roma - Roma, 25,2km (TTT)

Stage 6: Frascati - Napoli, 229km

Stage 7: Caserta - Chieti, 198km

Stage 8: Pescara - Monte Terminillo, 187km

Stage 9: Spoleto - Carpegna, 184km

Stage 10: Cesena - San Marino Città (SMO), 38,7km (ITT)

- rest day -

Stage 11: Ravenna - Montebelluna, 172km

Stage 12: Treviso - Trieste, 173km

Stage 13: Monfalcone - Monte Zoncolan, 157km

Stage 14: Tolmezzo - Corvara in Badia, 183km

Stage 15: Bolzano - Aprica, 210km

- rest day -

Stage 16: Bergamo - Como, 159km

Stage 17: Induno Olona - Cittiglio, 54km (ITT)

Stage 18: Varese - Torino, 178km

Stage 19: Susa - Cuneo, 232km

Stage 20: Santuario di Vicoforte - Genoa, 174km

Stage 21: Novi Ligure - Milano, 141km

 

[BigMac]

Well done everyone.

 

[Eshnar]

Awesome work everybody This went way beyond my expectations. The final votes will come shortly, stay tuned!

 

[barmaher]

I heard there's an award ceremony, so I got dressed up.

 

[Gigs_98]

me too

 

[Eshnar]

Judge 1:
Couldn't really decide between two routes, so I'll give both of them a 4.
Barmaher 4: Fair amount of tt, great mountain stages and great hilly stages. Only real flaw is the final week, which imo has some issues.
Gigs 4: Same as above, but here the issue is the MTT, which is a bit too hard, and the pacing of the final stages, with two great mountain stages at risk due to the final ITT.
Libertine 3: Overall great, but the ttt, the fact that the longest ITT comes in the final week and other small oddities made me put this route on a level below the two best.
Stromeon 3: Not enough flat tt and other small problems. Honorable mention to your awesome stage 20.
Billie 2: Lots of tt kms (which is nice) but the overall not as awesome as the first 4 routes. Putting a Fauniera ITT on stage 19 is an enormous (and unnecessary) risk.
Brullnux 2: The first tt comes way too late, leaving a very nice first week at the mercy of the lets-wait-and-see approach. Yours is really a long Giro...
Finn 1: Giving 4 to the best routes sadly forced me to give a 1 to somebody. This route is way too backloaded, although some stages are great. Still, this will most likely be way better than the actual route of the 2017 Giro, so cheer up The competition was just crazy.

Judge 2:
Libertine: 5: A really well balanced route with great stages. I like that's it's not back-loaded and it should produce attacking racing.
Barmaher: 4: nice Giro with good Queen stages. Slightly too long like Brullnux's.
Gigs98: 4: really top Giro with some nice tributes. Don't agree with the iTT on the final day but that's a minor thing.
Brullnux: 3: A strong Giro, perhaps the mountain ITT is slightly too tough and overall length a little long.
Stromeon: 3: nice route with some strong stages.
Billie: 2: still a good Giro and some decent stages.
Finn84: 2: A nice tribute but others are just a little stronger and more rounded.

Judge 3:
Barmaher T: 5/5 (It was very close and you almost lost it because of the final ITT, but with Pila on stage 20 it should work, so I get 5 points, I really enjoyed)
Brullnux T: 4/5 (A great Giro, many interesting stages and great ideas)
Libertine: T: 4/5 (You only got 4 points because of the easier final week, going full Zomegnan on one stage would have been possible)
Gigs_98 T: 3/5 (It could have been a 4, it was very close)
Stromeon T: 3/5 (Your final rating was another one that could have been a 4, it was very close and I had to make a hard decision)
Billie T: 2/5 (Still a great Giro, the competition was just brutal)
Finn84 T: 2/5 (Still a great Giro, the competition was just brutal)


And here we have the FINAL CLASSIFICATION!!!!!!!!

Congratulations to....
1. Barmaher 643

2. Gigs 636

3. Libertine 634

4. Brullnux 597
5. Stromeon 591
6. Billie 534
7. Finn 467

Thanks again to everybody! I can guarantee that being a judge hasn't been easy at all. The ideas and the sheer work that all of you guys have put into this competition has been amazing

 

[Pricey_sky]

It's been a pleasure to judge and well done to everyone, 9 points between the top 3. Wow!

 

[jsem94]

Some great Giri. RCS should seriously take a look at this thread.

 

[barmaher]

Thanks very much to the other guys who took part. I actually learned a lot from reading other people's stages. It also made it much better that nobody spat the dummy midway through and gave up. It was a very well-contested competition.

Thanks very much to the judges for taking the time to read through all of the stages, as it must have been heavy going at times. I think almost all of the comments on my stages were spot-on.

Couple of comments on me winning. I genuinely don't think my Giro was as good as the ones that were 2nd to 4th, and that is not just false modesty. I was a bit underhand in how I "presented" my Giro, and I tried to maximise the cultural points at every turn. I think I could probably have written a few paragraphs about others' routes, to harvest a few more cultural points.

I also think I should have been penalised for breaking the rules. Now I look back at my route, I was far too focussed on trying to finish and end in an "important place". Flicking through my stages, I could have shortened stages 4, 5. 11, 17, 18 and 21 by around 10km each and stages 7, 9 and 14 by around 30km each without messing around too much with the spirit of the route. I think 150km less would have been a better route.

The judge who spotted my last week being a mess was also spot on. It was becuase I realised that I hadn't visited Trentino way too late. The only way I could visit Trentino was to start my Lombardia stage there, which meant messing the order of the final week.

My idea of visiting every region was maybe too contrived as it forced some of the longer stages. But I think with a bit more time to work on the route as a whole after, I could have done it well.

So all in all, I really enjoyed it. I learned an awful lot about Italy. I spent way too much time on my route. I was pleased to win, but I think it was undeserved.

And finally, a big thanks to Eshnar for pulling the whole competition together. Great idea, executed impeccably.

 

[Steven Roots]

Congrats to everyone involved, i wasnt able to participate and offer you several insane stages, but it was entertaining, and a very good concept.
And interesting to see that there is some differences between the point of views.

 

[Gigs_98]

Well some days ago I wrote that I often agree with judge 3 although that is always someone different. Now I finally believe that because obviously this time he doesnt know anything about cycling
No, joking aside, that was a well deserved victory by Barmaher. If I would be a judge I would have had troubles to decide if Libertine or Barmaher had the better route but personally I also don't think my route was really good. Especially my TT's were a mess. To explain my situation:
My biggest mistake was probably to do a MTT. The thing was that I really wanted to use Terminillo but there have already been two 1st cat. mtf's on the last weekend of the first week so I wanted to do something different and because the first stage finishing in Terminillo was also a MTT, the choice was obvious to do one too. Now I had a new problem: I obviously didnt want to make a second TT somewhere in week 2 so my flat ones had to be in the other weeks. The first one in the first week was kind of an obvious choice (although it still could have been a little bit flatter and longer) but I needed a second one to balance the route. Then my goal to follow the original giro route from 1909 became a huge problem. While most of you were already in the alps in the middle of the second week I only had the chance to make mountain stages in the most famous area for european cycling in the last week. Obviously I didnt want to "waste" one of my rare chances to use alps passes and I had to make at least one flat stage between these mountain stages because 5 gc relevant stages in a row don't work. So there was only one place left where I could put the last ITT, which was the last one, and because up to this point I had by far not enough flat TT kilometers I made it 24 k's long. I hoped that the fact that it is completely flat doesnt harm the racing on the two days before, but the judges were right that that's probably not the case.
Some other problems are:
-That in week 1, the stages 5-9 (so 5 stages in a row) included 3 high mountain stages, one medium mountain stage with very hard finish and a long ITT. Thats probably too much considering that the sprinters don't get a chance in 5 stages in a row although its the first week.
-Probably I should have made one more pure sprint stage
-The eastern part of the Italian alps was completely unused. Ofc, thats also due to my 1909 tribute, but using Zoncolan and the dolomites at the end of week 2 just causes better racing and these are also very important climbs for the giro history so they shouldn't be unused.
-Talking about week 2, that one was too easy IMO. Besides the hard MTT there were two hilly, two medium mountain and one flat stage. Especially the last three days were flat - medium mountain - hilly. If that happens in the first week its already not good, but at the end of week 2 it should already be all about the gc fight.

Btw, I also had another plan for a conventional giro route. The funny thing is that it was almost exactly as many of your routes with Zoncolan and the dolomites on the last weekend. The last week would have been:
Mortirolo stage (with Stelvio and probably gavia) - flat stage - ITT - two mountain stages (I was only sure that I wanted to use Finestre, probably on the penultimate day. The other stage probably would have been something with Fauniera, Aosta Valley, or a mtf in Oropa)

To sum up, my idea of following the 1909 route was actually not that bad, but the racing on a normal giro just would have been better, although there are still some mistakes, which have nothing to do with the 1909 tribute.

 

[Brullnux]

Well done to Barmaher, and to all the competitors involved.

I think that the 2 back to back stages over 240km were too long, and I could've shortened them. I needed a 10km prologue too, but my intention was to have 3 stages spanning all of Sicily and that was hard to do with the 75km transfer rule. That was also my problem for why I had so many long stages. I too believe that I should've been penalised for breaking the rules. My last week or so could've been better, and the stage 15 TT was wayyy too hard, ruined the route in my opinion.

 

[barmaher]

Same problem as me, so Gigs. We put some constraints around our routes, and then it made it tough to build a perfect route around those constraints.

And same as me, your mistakes would be avoidable.

I could have easily had a descent into a Trentino town in my Dolomites queen stage, and then I could have had what I really wanted in terms of my final week. Having to have a stage start in Trentino meant I couldn't go with my original plan:

Milan San Remo tribute
Medium mountains, Pramartino descent into Pinerolo
GDL tribute
Flat stage
Aosta Queen, Pila finish (it was originally 135km, but one of the judges criticised my 1st queen for being too short at 150km, so I changed it to 200km)
Superga ITT (as I said above, it was originally less than 15km)

 

[Stromeon]

Congratulations barmaher on a well-deserved victory, not only did you produce a great route but I also really enjoyed reading your write-ups

Although in fact congratulations to everyone for producing some great routes and sticking at it through the whole challenge, I'm really in awe of what some of you came up with!

Personally, my aim was not to finish last, so I'm very happy about where I came, and I think the judging was pretty much spot-on: there were a few stages that I was quite proud of, which scored well, and a few stages that I look back on and think I could have made more interesting. I think my biggest problem was that I hadn't finalised the route before I had started, and I kept tinkering with things, especially in the third week. Looking back I realise I have 5 pretty much pan-flat stages, and I'm very much of the Gigs school of thought: if you're going to make a sprint stage, then at least make the sprinters work for it a bit and give attackers an opportunity. Also, the fact that my mountain stages came in one massive block is something that wasn't ideal, although breaking it up with the rest day helped somewhat.

Anyway, even if I was a little time-constrained at points, I had great fun doing it and I would like to say a big thank you to Eshnar for organising this, and also to the judges for their thought and judgement.

 

[Gigs_98]

I forgot to write it before so I do it now:
CONGRATULATIONS to all the participants. Every route was great, also Finn's who IMO was just very unlucky with his points in some situations (F.e.: he had a great mountain stage on the penultimate weekend but while he was in liguria everyone else, besides me, made stages in the dolomites and that means that you generally don't have a chance to beat such stages). I find it kind of unfair that he is so far down, but the evaluations were just really tight and because everyone's route was great the result now looks as if Finn's was clearly worse, which definitely isn't the case.

Btw, Eshnar, do you plan to make another challenge like this again in the next few years? I think this was a huge success and I would love to have such a challenge again. Ofc I know that there has to be some time between such challenges otherwise they would get boring and I also don't always have the time for this. I think that also has to be mentioned, because I spent most of my freetime of the last month with this challenge. That really was a whole lot of work. I also think that if there is another challenge like this anytime, I will apply for jury. But to come back to my question. Do you, or anyone else want to make such a challenge again?

edit:

Same problem as me, so Gigs. We put some constraints around our routes, and then it made it tough to build a perfect route around those constraints.

maybe also worth mentioning that I also thought about visiting all the provinces, like you did. But I wanted to make exactly 1 stage finish / province and before that 3 days in Sicily. In my case I decided not to do so because 1.) its extremely hard to use the Aosta valley in such a route and 2.) some provinces are just way too big, so I don't have the chance to really design a stage because I have to find the shortest way from the start to the finish.
I also had the idea of adapting the idea, as you did, but at that time I already had some plans for my 1909 tribute so I didnt pursue that thought anymore.

 

[Steven Roots]

In the next few years ? Why wait so long ?
It was a great idea. Copycat stages were not that common, even though several stage finishes were done by a lot of people, and you can easily spice things up with some absurd restrictions.

Sardinia was outraged to be missing from the winners' road i heard.

The only problem i have is the length of some Tours. The barrier is supposed to be at 3500km.
You can be over it, obviously, its not that strict, but there is some candidates there who really went too far in that regard.

 

[Red Rick]

What's the grand prize, except for the Eternal Glory, Fame, and Bragging Rights

 

[Red Rick]

I have to say that looking at those routes, I'm glad I didn't participate, too good for me.

 

[Eshnar]

Yes, I will definitely make another challenge in the future. Probably in a few months. Gathering ideas.

 

[Eshnar]

Re:

What's the grand prize, except for the Eternal Glory, Fame, and Bragging Rights

Wait is there even something MORE than that?

 

[May0maniac]

It's been a pleasure to judge, the competitors created great routes, hats off to everyone!

 

[Eshnar]

****ANNOUNCEMENT****
To wrap up the thread, I decided to design and post my own 100th Giro route.
I plan to start posting it tomorrow, so stay tuned!

 

[Valv.Piti]

Re:

****ANNOUNCEMENT****
To wrap up the thread, I decided to design and post my own 100th Giro route.
I plan to start posting it tomorrow, so stay tuned!

Attention seeking whore!

Looking forward to it, without a doubt the race I enjoy the most being designed.

 

[rghysens]

Re:

****ANNOUNCEMENT****
To wrap up the thread, I decided to design and post my own 100th Giro route.
I plan to start posting it tomorrow, so stay tuned!

Can we judge it?

 

[Eshnar]

Re: Re:

****ANNOUNCEMENT****
To wrap up the thread, I decided to design and post my own 100th Giro route.
I plan to start posting it tomorrow, so stay tuned!

Attention seeking whore!

Looking forward to it, without a doubt the race I enjoy the most being designed.

Now that the real thing has been presented I'm officially in offseason... Need to do something to spend time. Plus, the idea of this route came to me this morning Before, it was just one of the many "it would be nice to do this idea...", but I never actually checked if it was possible until today, when I thought about it and said to myself that it was really a cool idea And surprisingly, I found out it IS possible. Basically I traced the whole route in a few hours.

So there it is, I'll explain the concept today, and tomorrow I'll start posting stages.

As the 100th edition, this will all be about celebrating the history of the Giro itself. As such, the grand concept of the route will be NOT to design any stage... but simply making up a route that repeats 21 of the most famous and significant stages in history, taking it as an occasion to summarize 21 editions (every stage will be coming from a different one), all with their champions and stories.
That doesn't mean however that the route will look random It is discretely balanced, although admittedly it is a very hard route, and I did all I could to make it look good, for obvious reasons. I also tried to respect my own rules, but I had to overcome the 75 km transfer limit in a couple of occasions (only by a few kms more).

Some random facts about the route:
It is 3610 km long overall
It features 4 individual TTs (one of which is a MTT)
Rest days are after stage 9 and 16
5 MTFs (of various difficulty, plus a few descent finishes)
6 likely bunch sprints